Oliwia Serdeczny, director for international partnerships, presented Niiu, an individualized newspaper that readers can personalize using articles from more than 20 local, national and international newspapers.
Created by Wanja Oberhof and Hendrik Tiedmann, the German entrepreneurs met through mutual friends and combined their talents to compose the innovative paper. Niiu was launched in Berlin on October 13, 2009 and began printing just over a month later.
The process for readers is simple. Readers log on to www.niiu.de, create an account, and choose their content. Niiu offers many subjects for readers to choose from, from politics to sports.
“We don’t touch the content; we just reproduce it,” said Serdeczny. Readers can also further personalize their papers with gadgets, add weather or personal photos, choose their own layouts and add a greeting. The idea is to make it theirs.
The paper compiles 20 pages of the reader’s chosen sources, which must be selected by 2 p.m. It is then printed by state-of-the-art printers and delivered to the buyer's home.
Aiming for the younger generation, students are offered discounts and pay €1.20 and €1.80 for all others. “The internet generation gets what they want and nothing else,” said Serdeczny. So why shouldn’t this concept apply to a newspaper?
