1. You always need to have an umbrella with you. The weather here changes every 10 minutes, or at least that is what it feels like. Sometimes it can be really hot and later it may become too cold. So in August, for example, you can wear light clothes but should always combine them with a jacket or coat.
2. Despite being a tourist and shopping destination, Hamburg’s shopping life ends at 8 pm. It is difficult to find places to buy food, medicine and other stuff after hours. The parks close early too.
3. Speaking of parks — Hamburg is a very green city. You can find green areas everywhere and sometimes they are rather large. It took me an hour and an half to find the place for the water-and-light concerts inside Planten un Blomen (“Plants and Flowers”), an urban park that covers 47 hectares (I should have researched this on Wikipedia beforehand).
4. No matter how much food you buy from a supermarket, they will not give you a free bag to put all your shopping in.
5. Policemen here are very friendly. They are keen to help and show you exactly how to get somewhere, even if they just see you staring desperately at the city map in the underground station.

The first webinar speaker was Dan Gillmor, Director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Dan Gillmor

Gillmor and 14 program participants discussed the question “Should journalists be activists?”

His answer was a resounding YES!

“Journalists must be activists when it comes to protecting freedom and consumer rights”- he concluded.

A general discussion was followed by questions about social networks and ethical issues.

Both webinars provided interesting insights, notwithstanding the technical issues caused by Internet connection problems. The organizers are discussing the possibility of hosting webinars during the e-learning stage as well.

Egbert Nießler shows the Hamburger Abendblatt newsroom to the journalists

The name of the newspaper translates to “Hamburg Evening Newspaper,” as it used to be delivered in the evening after World War II. At the end of 20th century, it introduced an online version, which meant some technical challenges for the publication, as well as a slight change in its number of readers .

The second major step taken by this local paper was in 2009, when it introduced paid content. Today, the Hamburger Abendblatt has 20,000 subscribers to the online platform, who pay for absolute access to the online content, and 180,000 readers who prefer to pay for the printed newspaper.

The journalists from Eastern European countries who are currently participating in Interlink Academy’s digital journalism program and visited the newspaper’s offices in Hamburg several days ago, say these are big numbers. Jakob Drechsler, another representative of the daily newspaper, says no advertising campaign was used to achieve them.

20 people work for the online edition of the Hamburger Abendblatt, and there is  a cooperation between the printed and online departments, so the staff all write for both platforms. The general strategy is that breaking news is published in the online edition, then the next morning the newspaper publishes a more in-depth story, which the online edition then republishes, embellishing it with videos, tweets and other digital content.

Some stories, especially entertainment, only work online. Overall, 70% of the newspaper content goes online.

“For a short period several years ago we tried to do both. Our boss at the time declared that every print guy would have to be an online guy as well, and you have to do both things at the same time. But that didn’t last longer than two or three weeks because machines can do that, but not the people operating them,” says Egbert Nießler.

Even the audiences of the two outlets differ: 57% of online readers are male, whereas in print the same proportion are female; 66% of online readers are between 20 and 50 years old, while the newspaper readers are older, “over 60”, and one in five readers are “decision makers”.

Responding to one of the journalists’ concerns about the imminent end of printed media, Egbert Nießler, who has been working for the Hamburger Abendblatt for 24 years (and two days as on the day of the meeting), jokes that he is hopeful printed newspapers will be around at least until he retires.

Another concern expressed by the guest journalists was that the Hamburger Abendblatt doesn’t have an investigative department.

“Sure we have corruption, but I don’t think it is the main problem”, says Egbert Nießler, explaining that  some regular staff journalists may cover certain cases, but if they had a team dedicated to investigative journalism, it would have nothing to do for most of the year.

Asked about the main topics covered by Hamburg’s popular local newspaper, the editor lists construction sites, traffic jams, bicycles…