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It is no secret that I love NRC.next, a newspaper that is aimed at people aged 25 to 35 with little to no sparetime. NRC.next is my main source of up-to-date information and provides me with the latest happenings in the world that I did not pick up through CNN.

One of the great things about NRC.next is that ever so often, there is some way to participate in the creation of the newspaper in one way or another; this time around, students from sister-college St. Joost Breda were offered a shot at getting their work published on the front page.

The guidelines were rather simple: students were tasked to come up with two pictures, one for the front page and one for the actual article.

The students had a mere week to find a solution and in the end, Sophie Verstappen, sophomore student of St. Joost, came through with an interesting picture that fit the overall theme of the article very well.

In more personal news: I have never been a photographer nor do I see myself ever becoming one, apart from the occasional snap I take just about everywhere I go, yet two of my pictures of this year’s Edu-Fair in Utrecht were used for a short article that gave a short account of the event.

In the late 20th century, most people would select newspapers based on their political preferences or religious beliefs, only a small percentage, namely the (y)UPs would select a publication based on the merit they would get out of reading it.

While this percentage has increased quite a bit in recent years, it is still evident that people don’t like to break with old traditions and would rather read a newspaper that feeds them information that is deemed fit by their particular “group” rather than a newspaper that reports just because there should be reports.

If you take a look at Middle Eastern countries, you’ll see that just about every journal, gazette and in general, 98% of the publications are tainted by religious beliefs. The reasoning for this is simple: If you control what the masses believe, you control what they do.

Yes, information in today’s world is still worth it’s weight in gold and with the right information you’ll still be able to wield power over someone.

However, with everything that can be abused for personal gain, there are also some things you can do that will eventually result in something good happening (or something bad not happening).

A week ago, in a tragedy that caused a huge ripple effect in the Dutch media unfolded. A father, of reasons unknown to me, first disposed off his mother-in-law and then threw his children in front of a train.

Many newspapers, especially the ones aimed at the lower working class, described the whole event in great detail. One newspaper however decided that they’d rather not fuel the fear and hate of their readers.

De Volkskrant opted to publish an interview with an expert in the field of suicide prevention and suicide research. Said expert conducted a study about the effect of articles that discuss tragic events, like the one listed above, have on the society at large. His conclusion: the more you read about suicide and murder, the more likely you are to become victim to one of those events yourself.

His statement, of course, needs to be put into proper context: if you are a perfectly sane person, you will probably not experience any side effects, other than a feeling of sadness that will quickly subside. On the other hand, if you are a person suffering from depression and have already tried to mutilate yourself, you are a lot more likely to be affected by news reports about this kind of events.

All in all, I believe that these two publications made the right choice by not describing, in vivid detail, how the events unfolded exactly but rather only mentioning it “by the way”.

Sure, if you don’t see something, doesn’t have to mean that it isn’t there, but I’d rather not open my newspaper every day to be greeted with, yet another, firsthand account of someone killing his next of kin.

A bit more than a year ago, a famous Dutch newspaper, primarily aimed at the group of people with higher education, went forward with an idea to attract a new group of readers, namely the myriad of young professionals who didn’t have the time to read the full story behind events and only wanted a bit more than a blurb.

The publisher came up with a way to, basically, spoon feed information to their prospective, future clients and they called it NRC.next. The journalists like to think of their publication as a way to get up-to-date on what has happened in the world in the fastest way possible.

Now, a newspaper on it’s own wouldn’t really be worth the time to talk about, but NRC.next is different. They are one of the first Dutch newspaper to embrace crossmedia publishing and embrace it the right way.

Apart from the actual, printed, publication, there’s the online edition, with additional information. Many of the journalists also contribute to a platform that could actually be considered a blog. NRC.next even toyed with the idea of publishing podcasts but it would appear that that step was just a bit too much.

The best thing? Half of the web-based content is freely available to everyone, either via the browser or through a RSS subscription.

The resulting numbers speak for themselves, after one year, they are still standing strong, In a market that is very highly saturated, they managed to gain a foothold and attract an audience that normally wouldn’t bother reading newspapers due to time constraints or the lack of interest.

The newspapers distribution time is also different to that of it’s parent’s. While NRC Handelsblad is published in the evening, targeted at decisionmakers who want to relax after a long day at work and spend some quality time with the latest news, NRC.next is published in the morning and is supposed to be on your doorstep at 07:00am.

The idea behind that is simple, I figure: “if you’re the first to bring news to your reader, you win (and get paid, eventually)”, And it makes sense, if your client has a chance to get his news somewhere else, say, on the web, for free, there’s no incentive left to actually buy your publication.

While I don’t read NRC.next regularly, I’ve still been able to enjoy the newspaper for quite some time now and in fact still have the first issue at home. As a reader of the first hour, I have to say that this publication manages to amaze in ways previously unseen, in the Netherlands anyway.

So here is to you, you editors, you journalists, you bloggers, all of you who make NRC.next the great thing that it has become. I compliment you on a job well done. You’ve managed to amaze the (Dutch) publishing world, for a year already, don’t stop now.

As one wuld expect from a market leader in (publishing) innovation, NRC.next also gifted it’s readers with something very special: a 14 track CD.

The songs are a compilation from tracks published my favorite, online, music publisher Magnatune as well as from jamendo.com.

I’ve been listening to these tracks while writing this post and, like the newspaper, the featured songs are of high quality. The listing is very diverse, however, it doesn’t try to cater to all wishes at the same time but rather present the listeners with new music they probably haven’t heard before.

The whole album, free of charge, is available via this link, cover art and all is, naturally, included.