A German regional publisher has been pioneering AI-driven page layout in a system that promises long-term sustainability for printed newspapers.

Pioneered at Nordwest Mediengruppe in Oldenburg, the system based on technology by Méthode developer Eidosmedia, has automated production of almost all local and regional print output, including the ten daily editions of Nordwest Zeitung and its seven Nordwest Sonntagsblatt weekend editions.

Underscoring the system – credited with cutting print layout costs by 65 per cent – is a Sophi.io engine trained on machine-readable model pages, story structure descriptions and a classification of editorial content components.

The application has evolved since it was first shown in 2022, and was explained by editor-in-chief Ulrich Schönborn at a recent INMA event. “Page automation ensures the continued survival of print editions,” he said.

Others have followed suit, with three German media groups using the solution, and a French publisher planning an implementation handing about 15,000 pages a month.

Eidosmedia media and corporate head Stefan Bresslauer says automating print layout brings significant savings, and can improve overall quality by freeing up staff to carry out quality control on page contents, including improving and updating the editorial content.

“NWZ estimates that the cost of producing an automated edition is 35 per cent that of a manual edition because of reduced staff expenditure,” he says. “Savings on that scale are a massive contribution to the long-term sustainability of the news operation.”

The layout engine is fully integrated into the editorial platform, with stories are prepared for digital and print publication as usual. Text and images in JSON format are then sent to the cloud-hosted Sophi.io AI model, together with a ranking for their news values. After a few seconds the page data is returned to the editorial workspace and the pages are filled with the selected content.

Time for a ten-page edition is typically under two minutes, with the option of pages being adjusted manually before PDFs are generated for print production.

Across a typical 24-hour cycle, NWZ publishes approximately 120-150 unique print pages, a task which had depended on 18 print channel managers who manually constructed the layout for each local edition. The system is now in full production and is used to lay out around 1800 pages a month.

Méthode users include the Financial Times, the Boston Globe and Le Figaro, as well as NewsCorp’s Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The Australian and sister metro tabloids in Australia.

Bresslauer says the Méthode edition-building workspace now features a fully-integrated AI pagination engine, with the option to exclude front pages from the automated pagination process because of its branding and promotional importance.