Print and online hybrid will be the 'future newspaper'

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Danish newspaper The Jutland Post has created a hybrid print and online edition to prepare itself for what it sees as the future of the digital newspaper.

The JP2, which was developed in partnership with Microsoft, is essentially an e-paper with live feeds that regularly and automatically update the content featured on the platform.

The technology is similar to that used by the New York Times Reader and The Daily Mail's e-paper , with a feed linking the Post's content management system with the JP2.

"For us it's a major step towards digital publishing. When the digital paper comes, we will be ready," Jens Nicolaisen, director of electronic media at the Jutland Post, told Journalism.co.uk.

"It [the feed] connects with the articles automatically, so we can generate the JP2 without any journalists or production staff.

"That means we are able to distribute the whole newspaper or different parts on any given platform in any different way."

The JP2, Nicolaisen added, offers a model for content distribution more tailored to readers' demands by combining elements of print, online and RSS, and allowing readers to read offline or print out a paper version.

However, it is limited to being currently available only to PC users.

"If you look at the audience as different reader segments, we want to be able to reach as many as possible," he said.

"With the regular PDF version of the newspaper, people like it, because they can recognise that this is how it is presented in the paper.

"But the problem with that e-paper is that it's not using the technical possibilities that you have in the computer."

Despite recent decisions by some news sites to end paid-for subscription to online content, Nicolaisen believes that developments like the JP2 could offer a sustainable subscription model.

"Today we have a newspaper to which you can say 'I don't want it' and you don't pay anything, or you can pay for it - we don't have any variety in our products."

The JP2, he added, could become a more flexible edition of the paper, which could be varied to offer different packages of content to readers at different prices.

"In the future we will still have subscribers but we have to be able to give them diversified products, so some people only want it for the weekend and other people want it digital - and we'll find a price in between."

Ten thousand readers are currently testing the project, which at commercial launch later this month will be available on a subscription-only basis.