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Brainsnack: Ekstra Bladet's Redaktionen attracts young readers

Louise Abildgaard Grøn, project manager for educational relations at Denmark's Ekstra Bladet, spoke about Redaktionen, an internet-based editorial platform where schools produce their own newspaper. This award-winning campaign has built intense loyalty with young people.

Today most schools produce newspapers in class — using a variety of software. Ekstra Bladet’s platform supports students’ learning process and helps them follow a professional process and produce professional results. The students lay out their newspapers online and experience increasing pressure as deadline draws near. Then, within 2–3 days, Ekstra Bladet delivers 1,000 colour copies of the newspaper directly at the school.

In the project students aged 12-18 are the journalists, the teachers are the gatekeepers. This internet-based learning platform targets more than 500,000 Danish students.

Alongside “The Newsdesk” (Redaktionen), an online dilemma game “The Front Page” was launched. A Gallup poll conducted in October 2008 found:

• Among students who have either played “The Front Page” or worked with “The Newsdesk”, the readership of Ekstra Bladet has increased by 20 percent.
   
• The number of students using ekstrabladet.dk has doubled since “The Front Page” and “The Newsdesk” was introduced.
   
• 25,860 students have played “The Front Page”. The game has been used in 43.1 percent of all schools in Denmark.
   
• 100 percent of the teachers are satisfied or very satisfied with the educational level of the products.
   
• 80 percent of teachers find “The Newsdesk” and “The Front Page” much better than any other educational newspaper production tools.

 The circulation of “The Newsdesk” reached 400,000 printed copies in two years.

Posted: 5 November 2009 13:52

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