Innovation strategy: Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen chooses technology from alfamedia and Aptoma

The long-standing media house Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen, known for its strong local reporting, is deepening and expanding its partnership with alfamedia and Aptoma. With the recent purchase of alfamedia’s alfa EditorialOrganiser, together with Aptoma’s Print Automation solution, Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen reaffirms its commitment to position itself as a pioneer in the digital media world. This is the first time that Aptoma, the market leader in Scandinavia with its print automation solution, has been used in Germany. The system rollout began in January and is scheduled for completion in autumn 2024.

“Our aim is to decouple content production from the newspaper,” says Editor-in-Chief Frank Nipkau. “The majority of the editorial team will focus exclusively on digital content and working in one system. We are using the efficiency gains that Aptoma and the AI functions of the alfa EditorialOrganiser bring us to reorganise the editorial team in order to further increase our reach and our Plus subscriptions.”

“We can utilise Scandinavian cutting-edge technology with our German partner alfamedia,” says Jens Hilpert, Head of the Medienwerkstatt and responsible for the implementation of the project at the publishing house. “As we already use alfa Newssuite as our editorial system, we can proceed step by step with the changeover to alfa EditorialOrganiser and Aptoma and incorporate our findings into the process.”

Oliver Andrich, CTO at alfamedia, is equally positive about the cooperation: “We firmly believe that the integration of our ContentLine solution with Aptoma’s print automation can be a game changer for Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen and beyond for the media industry. With our technology, we are not only striving to improve efficiency and quality, but are also helping to reshape the way digital and print media are handled.”

Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen is a modern, medium-sized media company located near the state capital Stuttgart. With four printed newspapers, the weekly papers, the online presence zvw.de and the ZVW News app, it is the market and opinion leader in the Rems-Murr district. The print circulation sold is just under 26,000 copies, the publisher has almost 7,500 e-paper subscriptions and 3,000 Plus subscriptions. With zvw.de, the Waiblingen newspaper publisher reaches up to 800,000 users in the Stuttgart region.