News

The newsrooms-cum-cafes are part of a new venture in so-called hyperlocal journalism, which aims to reconnect newspapers with readers and advertisers by focusing on neighborhood concerns at a neighborhood level: think garbage collection schedules, not Group of 7 diplomacy.

Hyperlocal publications have been springing up across Europe and North America as newspapers seek a formula for survival. But the Czech plan, the project of PPF Group, an investment firm, goes unusually far in its goal of weaving journalists into the communities they serve.

“There is no option to close the door” between the cafes and the adjacent newsrooms, said Roman Gallo, director of media strategies at PPF. “It’s a feeling for the reader that you can touch your editor and tell them what you want.

“The position of the journalist is not just to be observing and writing something on the newspaper or on the Web, but also to help people have the tools to do something in their community.”

A free press is a relatively recent development in the Czech Republic, but it has not been immune from the travails the newspaper industry has faced in more-developed markets. Dozens of papers have been shut down in recent months as the economic crisis has deepened. Yet PPF, a firm based in Amsterdam with banking, insurance and media holdings in Central and Eastern Europe, sees an opportunity in the turmoil.

“While everyone else is closing, we are expanding,” Mr. Gallo said.

PPF is starting small, investing less than €10 million, or $13.4 million, in the project for now, Mr. Gallo said. It plans to begin publishing seven weekly newspapers and about 30 Web sites serving four distinct regions of the country next month, clustered around the four cities in which the “news cafes” will be situated: Olomouc, Usti, Teplice and Kromeriz. The cafes, Web sites and newspapers will operate under the name Nase Adresa, or “our address,” with the names of the local communities included for the publications. If the Web sites and newspapers are successful, Mr. Gallo said, the goal is to add scores of similar ones across the Czech Republic — and perhaps beyond, in other Central and Eastern European countries.

Mr. Gallo, who left Vltava-Labe-Press, a German-owned publisher of local Czech papers, to join PPF, is confident that the newcomer can succeed because it is starting with a blank slate. While some established publishers are scrambling to meet their payrolls, PPF plans to keep costs low; most of the 90 or so staff members it has hired so far are under 30, Mr. Gallo said.

The new venture will face competition from Vltava-Labe-Press, which publishes dozens of local papers across the Czech Republic. It may also encounter skepticism from analysts, some of whom question the ability of hyperlocal publications to attract advertising, despite their apparent popularity with readers. While marketers value the ability to pinpoint readers by geography, this fragments the audiences exposed to the advertising.

But in its Czech journalism project, PPF has a partner that knows a thing or two about making money on the Web, but one whose relationship with many organizations in the news business seems increasingly fraught: Google.

That Internet company has not invested directly in the venture, but it is making its local staff available to help teach PPF journalists how to use tools like Google Maps, Google Translate and YouTube.

Training will take place at a central newsroom in Prague, where journalists will also provide articles for the local papers.

“There is not always a deep understanding of technology by the media, and vice versa,” said Tatiana Le Moigne, director of Google’s operations in the Czech Republic.

The project is also supported by the World Association of Newspapers, a trade organization based in Paris that has battled with Google over copyright issues.

Last year, the newspaper group also objected to Google’s plans for an online advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo, which the two scrapped in the face of U.S. regulatory opposition.

“We want to work with Google,” Mr. Gallo said. “You can’t just pretend they are not there.”

For Google, Ms. Le Moigne said, the partnership provides an opportunity to increase its market share in the Czech Republic, one of the relatively few countries in which it is not the dominant search engine, or the largest seller of search-linked advertising.

With about a 35 percent share of both, Ms. Le Moigne said, it comes in second, behind a local company, Seznam.

If the new publications succeed and grow, she said, they could help Google generate significant new business. The Web sites will use Google’s AdSense service to sell online advertising and share revenue from it.

Another partner in the project is Atex, a provider of publishing software, which sees Eastern Europe as a promising market despite the recent shakeout in the news business there, said Jerome Laredo, vice president of sales.

While Google is working with publishers elsewhere to try to develop ways to generate more revenue, the partnership with PPF is one of the first cases in which Google has gotten involved in a startup journalism venture, Ms. Le Moigne said.

That is one thing that attracted the company to the project, she said, along with the focus on using a variety of media.

“Sometimes you need to clean your desk and start from the beginning,” she said.