Since 2007, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner had announced plans to expand digital expansion. In line with this, between September 2006 and October 2007, the IFRA Newsplex began 20 specialized 3-day workshops on cross-media production to train more than 200 journalists from the Welt Group, comprised of Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag, Welt Kompakt, and Berliner Morgenpost.

"When we started the workshops, journalists were aware that the Welt Group was shifting to becoming a cross-media company, but they had not practiced multimedia at all - they were still working in a separated way," said Ulrich Lingnau, publishing director of the Welt Group.

The workshops were scheduled as:
- First day of each workshop provided background information for an understanding of why the shift from print to multimedia publishing is necessary.
- Second and third day practiced cross-media production, including writing and planning for the web, multimedia storytelling, podcasting and producing audio slide shows.

Prof. Joachim Blum, IFRA associate consultant and workshop leader, says the biggest challenge was "to convey to participants enough background information to make them appreciate that the change to multimedia publishing is necessary, and to get them to think in a new way about the media industry, in particular about the newspaper industry."

Thomas Exner, chief business & financial editor, says training such as this is an essential part of a journalist's job today: "..It's great to be working in an environment where there are constantly new things to learn. This is particularly true for online journalism, where things aren't as firmly established as in, say, print, where things have been done in a certain way for ages."

Source: LifePR