Paperless and intelligent: The future of publishing with e-paper and AI

Christian Kallenberg:

Welcome to the Digital Publishing Deep Dive from sprylab technologies and We like Mags. My name is Christian Kallenberg and also sitting across from me today is Benjamin Kolb, CEO of sprylab technologies.Hi Benni!  

Benjamin Kolb:

Hi Christian! After this long summer break I really want to see the new episode. You too?

Christian Kallenberg:

So am I, because we have an exciting guest: Professor Christof Seeger is a professor at theHochschule der Medien in Stuttgart. We want to talk about new insights into the use of e-papers and in the use of artificial intelligence in media companies. Hello Christof!

Christof Seeger:

Good morning,Christian. Hello Benjamin.

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Christian Kallenberg:

Hello Christof, nice to have you here. But before we get into medias res, could you tell us what you do as a professor at the HdM? What do you do? Especially as a professor at the HdM?

Christof Seeger:

That's a nice question. Good question, is the podcast already filled with my job alone, so to speak. The HdM is one of the largest media universities in Germany with five and a half thousand students. We have over 30 courses of study and I am allowed to work in two courses of study. One is the Media Publishing Bachelor, a course of study that revolves around publishing houses, so to speak. I'm in a professorship there for periodical media, so I deal with newspapers and magazines in print and digital form. And yes, I teach a lot about magazines and newspapers, from marketing, from journalism. But I'm also actively involved in empirical research. So, we do studies, surveys, interviewing people on a scientific basis and then also giving me our findings to the industry or in publications. I also get to lead a master's program. It's called Cross Media Publishing and Management. On the one hand, we deepen the publishing direction, but for the past three years we've also had a special focus on sports communication, where we deal exclusively with communication issues in, from and with sports.

Christian Kallenberg:

You didn't promise too much, Christof. That was a long answer. I read that you are also part of the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence. Would you like to say two more sentences about that?

Christof Seeger:

Yes, HDMI - as I said earlier - has a very broad base. We also have media computer scientists here, we have ethicists here, we have people here who deal with visualization. And for us, it is, so to speak, also a corporate culture, a university culture, that we work together on an interdisciplinary basis. Colleagues from the various disciplines have come together to found and operate an Institute for Artificial Intelligence. So I come to this team with my domain knowledge, so to speak, from the press industry, while others take care of the optimization of algorithms and we have joint events and projects of very different kinds.

Christian Kallenberg:

So we're dealing with a real expert today. And now, Christof, we want to call on your expert knowledge right away. You already said at the beginning that magazines and newspapers are a topic for you, and I know from our preliminary discussion that you are currently working on a new study that will certainly interest many of our listeners, which you are preparing together with ZMG on the topic of e-paper. Could you briefly describe the study design?

Christof Seeger:

Yes, very much so! We very often work with partners from the business world or with organizations. One of them is the newspaper market research company, a subsidiary of the German Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers, the BDZV. Last semester, we set up a teaching research project, with the participation of master's students, and our question was simple: Now that e-paper is on everyone's lips and has growth forecasts and has moved very strongly into the focus of publishers' marketing, so to speak, our question, which we took to heart, was how easy is it for the user to register for an e-paper, for a purchase process on the websites? The methodological mix was that we approached the matter with two different methods. On the one hand, we started with a quantitative content analysis. That is, we developed a codebook with 18 variables and examined 587 websites of publishers here.
For example: Where is the subscription menu item? Is it on the first page? Do you have to scroll? Does it exist at all? How many types of subscription with e-paper are there? How many clicks does it take to complete a subscription? All these questions were asked, and we then used these results to conduct another test, an eye tracking test. We also have laboratories here for measuring eye tracking and then asked selected test subjects certain questions, which we then measured and which they fulfilled. We also recorded and evaluated these questions and are now in the process of working with ZMG to actually compile and interpret the results and then publish them in a suitable form,

Christian Kallenberg:

When will the study be made available to the general public?

Christof Seeger:

I can't say exactly now. But I think we will hear something about it by the end of the year.

Christian Kallenberg:

Would you like to reveal a little sneak peek here? So the insight or an insight that you can already say is interesting for publishers.

Christof Seeger:

Yes, I don't think I'm giving too much away, for example, that when it comes to the presentation of the offerings, i.e., when e-paper plays a role in marketing, that we, that the publishers often still have a bit of a need for optimization when it comes to the presentation on the website. There are already a lot of good approaches. But there are always 20-30% that don't have a subscription or e-paper button on the first page. Then you would have to scroll, for example. I think these are points where it is obvious that there is potential for optimization. But what we also learned was that we counted the number of clicks. How long you actually have to click to then get to the offer form. And at three to four clicks, it's still a relatively large number.
Especially when the test person also had the investigator put it into perspective, so to speak, as to whether it would be easier or more difficult compared to Netflix or Spotify. From the subjective perspective, it is very often reported that it is more complex and complicated. These are the kinds of basic findings that we still need to work out in order to perhaps come up with recommendations for action on how things could be done better.

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Benjamin Kolb:  

What I would still be interested in then: You spoke earlier about the variables that you apply there. Did you also divide up the group of test subjects in some way to see whether they already have a digital subscription and not yet an e-paper subscription, or whether they have already subscribed to newspapers or magazines in general? So what are the basic requirements? Because you'll find many publishers among our customers who are always considering whether to launch hybrid products. That means digital+ plus e-paper in one app, so to speak. Whether that's an advantage or not is always an interesting question. Have you also conducted studies on the group of test subjects?

Christof Seeger:

We have to distinguish briefly between these variables, the ones mentioned earlier, which were created with coding. There were eleven of them. We carried them out in classical reliability tests to ensure that all of them coded correctly. There it was not at all about the personal subjective estimation. In fact, the only subjective thing was how the coder felt about the registration process compared to Netflix and Spotify. The tracking subjects - eye tracking is a qualitative study, which means you don't have the large case numbers - were not selected with real customers from the publishers, but we simply took the GenZ, which we have here at the university, and gave them the task, so to speak: Please book an e-paper from the selected websites. We clustered the websites. There weren't 570 that they had to look at, but we selected and defined certain criteria and it's simply qualitative supplementary information. I certainly agree with you on that, Benjamin! So, if you do this with customers who know the publishers, who also have a certain know-how to look around and navigate the websites and know the structure of publishers' websites, then that might give one or two insights again. But basically I think that if we want to address new customers who have had few contact points and touchpoints up to now, then we can still optimize this.

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Christian Kallenberg:  

Christof, the topic of e-paper has been on your mind in your research for quite some time. You appeared on my radar a few years ago on the subject of e-paper. I think there was a study by Motor Presse that you helped design. How would you say the importance of the e-paper has developed among publishers over the years?

Christof Seeger:

We did an e-paper insights study with Motor Presse last year. A purely quantitative survey with 5,400 respondents, real customers of Motor Presse and the individual publishing titles, from Auto Motor Sport to Caravan and Pro Mobil. And we simply asked about usage situations and acceptance values and how people use magazines of this kind. With results that others, such as the BDZV, have also found out in newspaper studies, similar values have come out on the subject of acceptance and credibility of the content and also the duration of use has been relatively comparable in magazine use compared to print use. On the one hand, that's nice and great, that the acceptance and of course you have to imagine it again with the motor press in particular. Here, the magazines are also used with a different motive, such as daily newspapers, for example. And also much more in the mobile, so just with titles like Pro Mobil or so. People might be at some beautiful mountain lake in their mobile home and download the e-paper edition, and then enjoy it and read it at their leisure. What's good is that these acceptance values, the credibility, the seriousness and also the satisfaction of the customers with the products - also with regard to the marketing of advertising space and for advertising customers - these are relatively positive aspects, in my opinion, and it's also a good thing. And the publishers have, not least because of the material development, i.e. the paper price developments and in general the capacity of the available paper up to energy prices and in the case of daily newspapers to the problem of the deliverers with the minimum wages and the ever more expensive logistics procedures, in order to deliver your daily newspapers to the appropriate subscribers, are of course forced and they yes already for a long time to produce and distribute various digital products. And that's where the e-paper came in, alongside the website and Plus subscriptions or Plus offers. But the e-paper is nothing new, as Benjamin can certainly confirm. It's been around for a relatively long time, I don't want to say a product that has been created in one way or another, to put it mildly.

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Benjamin Kolb: Also called waste product for a long time.

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Christof Seeger:

Yes, that's not what I said. But in terms of the production process, it was something that didn't require any further effort. In my view, however, this was not only due to the publishers' lack of imagination, but also had a lot to do with the IVW guidelines. Because the e-paper circulation was only counted in the IVW, i.e. added to the counted circulation, if it complied with the IVW guidelines and it was simply the 1:1 image of the printed daily newspaper until February 2023. And this is how these e-paper products came into being, which could certainly be given an uplift from a usability point of view.

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Benjamin Kolb:

But the exciting question is also in the direction of credibility and these experiences and so on, what would you advise publishers to do? Should they stick with the e-paper format, which has the feel of a newspaper or magazine, or expand in the direction of digitization, venture a little more, i.e. offer more interactivity, other formats, other types of reading experience, and still stick with the bundle, so to speak? Well, it's a curated collection of articles, but they are read digitally in a completely different way, especially on the smartphone - of course impractical with the classic e-paper format. What advice would you give publishers about the direction they should take?

Christof Seeger:

So I do think that the core, the principle of the newspaper, as I always say, the content, the curated content, the well-researched content, the quality journalism, that is the core of the brand. And I believe that for many recipients, this core of the brand is becoming more and more important, and under no circumstances should it be abandoned in any way or made arbitrary. The delivery form of this content, on the other hand, there is perhaps no one right answer. I think we all know that media consumption behavior is changing, that end devices are changing. You just said that media consumption is increasingly taking place on smartphones, and perhaps even more so in the future on smartphones. Of course, this means that a newspaper format as an e-paper page-turning PDF on a smartphone makes little sense at first, because it simply doesn't or can't fit on this device. And I do believe that there must be developments now, and there will be, to ensure that this user experience - because only then will people ultimately stay on the respective offer - will play a greater role. We will see the products adapted to the corresponding end devices in the medium term without having dissolved the brand core, the bundling, the curation. And IVW is now also allowing the extended e-papers, for example, to include moving images or audio formats or updates in the text. So it's no longer quite as static as it was.

Benjamin Kolb:

That's right! But what is an interesting point is that often the online offerings of the publishers were already inferior in quality, so to speak, to the printed version of the brand, especially at times when they really only earned money with advertising, and if you now go fully to a digitalized e-paper, which no longer seems like a magazine, but is instead a collection of articles that you just say are now of high quality, then you already have a problem in the first step with the customers, who then have to switch from their valuable print impression product to a fully digital edition, where you only have a collection of articles in it, so to speak. And of course we're also dealing with that a lot. Because of course it's much better to read on a smartphone, but this look and feel also imparts the quality in part and to educate customers that it's still the same content, just in a different look and feel. And that's not a very easy step, I think.

Christof Seeger:

Yeah sure, so, I mean we know that media use is a highly habitualized behavior. People have learned to deal with certain things, have learned certain characteristics and you say the visual appeal of print products is not just a collection of articles, like an endless website, where it's just one article after another. But rather, we have content structuring, we have resorts, we have large and small articles. This means that the importance of the article is emphasized differently simply by the headline. We also have in print products, that's a really great word, which I just learned recently, the possibility of serendipity. That means that you come across content while leafing through a print product and are pleasantly surprised by content that you hadn't even thought of before. And of course, that's not the case with a linear arrangement, for example, or if we only do customization, only send out newsletters, then of course this serendipity is limited. That means that under certain circumstances, I will no longer receive content that nonetheless advances my personality and my horizons. And from what I've heard, there's already a lot of work going on in the publishing houses to think about this. Everywhere I listen, the e-paper that we know right now is always a kind of bridging technology for most people, and that's not the end of the line.

Christian Kallenberg:

I'd be interested to know, Benni, how is that with your customers? Do they see it similarly on average?

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Benjamin Kolb:

The average, that's the problem with the question. Because you have to see that the publishers, or not the publisher, but the titles are at very different levels. There are now some in the English market that are very strong, so they are moving completely away from the e-paper to really completely digital bundles. The nice thing is that they are also trying out new business models by offering collections in addition to the standard editions. This is much easier in digital. Hiking magazines also offer the 10 most beautiful tours of an area and so on, and they can then put them together again thematically and thus offer completely different business models, because they have subscription levels and so on. And they take advantage of these opportunities, whereas other titles in Germany are just starting to get involved. First of all, they simply need an e-paper app that contains the same things that you get at the newsstand. And what we are fully automating for our customers, and this is already a first step that they no longer have to think about, is that you can of course switch an e-paper edition to article mode, where you can simply read it on your smartphone or have it read to you, much of it with voice output, which is actually used a lot. The usage situation is then probably when you're on the move, then simply to have the articles read out to you via headphones, which we bring along fully automated. And that makes many people think: Well, then we can actually do something completely different when we see that the reading mode is used more than the actual replica.

Christian Kallenberg:

With the topic of AI-generated voices, which actually translate print articles into audio, we could now transition very nicely to our second topic block, AI. Christof, as we heard at the beginning, you have very deep insights - both from research and from practice. What are your experiences in this area, and how far are perhaps particularly advanced media companies in the area of magazines and newspapers in the use of AI? Are we heading towards full automation?

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Christof Seeger:  

That is, of course, such a question. No, I can't answer this question like no one probably can. I just want to remember what happened to us about 1 year ago with Chat GPT. We are all in free fall, I think. On the one hand, this AI is a fascination. On the other hand, we get goosebumps when we think about possible consequences. What has now emerged a bit from my perception over the last few months has been a neat classification of the thing again. Because AI is the from in principle from my consideration at least yes not always Rocket Sciences. It is any probability calculation with certain outputs and depending on the algorithm and depending on the depth it is just then better or less predicted. And I think it's good to do that and that's what publishers are doing, saying AI is important. AI will affect or influence our work to some extent, not affect. Rather, influence! We will want and have to live with AI, you can't argue it away. It's here now, and I think the big question now is the sensible use of artificial intelligence. And perhaps it's not so much a question of what's technically feasible, i.e., full automation, as you asked. Otherwise, you could say: Yes, great, of course there will be algorithms that create texts fully automatically at some point now and perhaps even better ones later. By the way, this already exists, i.e. robot journalism, although I wouldn't call it AI, but rule-based text creation for service texts, for weather forecasts or in the area of sports reporting is something we know and have, and is nothing new, so to speak. And following on from what I said earlier, with the e-paper story, I also believe that hopefully for a long time to come we will still want and need people who write good texts, who write high-quality texts, who curate these texts and who stand behind these texts. So hopefully there will never be a fully automated editorial department. Nevertheless, AI is particularly important in supporting activities, as assistance systems, and there are many ways to use it there.

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Christian Kallenberg:

This is all true, of course. But I recently read that the number of fully automated portals/websites, whatever you want to call it, has multiplied in the last few months. Not only is AI being used to generate individual images or texts. But there is a complete website operated by AI, where no human looks over it, where then simply only display advertising is switched and thereby the website refinances itself. So there is an operator, in case of doubt a person, who pretends to be a journalistic company, but in reality only wants to have the advertising revenues and cares zero about what happens on the platform. That's status quo. That's already happening and the number of these portals is growing. Isn't that somehow something that should scare us a little bit?

Christof Seeger:

The pure fact I don't think that has to be scary. Because that's going to happen, that's going to continue to happen. What would scare me then, and where I would have fears, is if these websites then one day have more reach than the high-quality media brands. If that were to happen, then of course the door would be opened to manipulation and other things, but I would also hope that people would then - we have this in a similar way in other areas - suddenly handmade is in again, it is somehow sustainable again here, production things are in. In food production, everything is also much faster, cheaper and on a larger scale, and yet it is all the more important that we perhaps have more sensitivity to where our food comes from. And I believe that in a world that is becoming more and more complex, and that is where we live, at least from my perspective, and that this world is not getting any simpler, we need very reliable information and news sources. I believe that a media brand, however it is positioned now, whether it is a national brand or a local brand, is a media brand. That it's also very important to the people there that they know that journalists have already worked on it and that the AI didn't create the text. So, as I said, the worst thing for me is when the reach and user acceptance of the recipient markets exceeds that of the traditional media and when, for economic reasons, the publishers reduce the editorial staff of the media houses in order to then use AI to publish only automated or AI-generated texts under a quality brand, then I would also have great fears.

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Benjamin Kolb:

That's what I wanted to say, that's the greater danger that publishers will become such a portal for cost reasons - and they're under pressure, there's no question about that - and users won't be able to distinguish much between such a portal and a previously high-quality brand. But apart from that, the question is: Why do people read texts on the Internet? And I think that if you want to get information, now also pure information, then I don't care where it is. But if it's really a topic that you want to deal with, then of course you somehow go to a brand that you trust, that has some kind of opinion and so on, and these generated texts are a recycling, which is of course also exciting from a legal point of view. So, there will certainly be some changes in the direction that we had ten years ago with search engines and so on. The topic of AI, how these models are actually trained, what information they actually receive, that is also exciting. Do you have a forecast, Christof?

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Christof Seeger:

I don't have a specific forecast of where things will go, but I can tell you that we are having very exciting discussions in this AI Institute when the lawyers are sitting around the table and our media ethicists are sitting around the table, because that's exactly the point in the end. Not only what the computer scientists can manage technically, but also the copyright issues, the levels of creation, the responsibilities if certain false information is then there, and all of this needs a normative ethical framework. This is not only a media issue, but the European lawyers are considering how they can now legally grasp AI, up to and including the claims for damages that may arise from AI damage. And we also have very interesting perspectives with the media ethicists, who of course are also looking at precisely this question of how, for example, an AI is an AI is trained, into which area does the AI develop, when we talk about self-learning algorithms that develop further through reward systems, so to speak, and there are now also at least with the first AIs, which are now no longer current, but we know enough examples, which then radicalize in one direction or another, of course, politically or in the direction of pornography, because they have then simply learned here, that is, the algorithms, that they get more feedback more comments from it when they force certain topics. Then such an algorithm can also be manipulated in the learning process, so to speak, and that is a huge challenge. What kind of ethics do you put into this algorithm afterwards? Where are the limits? Because at the end of the day, an algorithm is also the work of humans, and that also reflects it to a certain extent.

Christian Kallenberg:  

On the subject of legal aspects, I have the impression that some companies are starting to protect themselves in such a way that they are using only their own material as training data, at least for the generation of images in particular. I read today or yesterday that Getty Images is now offering customers the opportunity to buy AI-generated images that were only generated with training data from Getty Images, i.e. where the rights have already been cleared. Is that something that you could also imagine more broadly? Could that be a model for media publishers in Germany as well?

Christof Seeger:

Of course. I mean, we generally have the discussion where the data comes from, whether the data should have been used for training purposes at all. We know that at ChatGPT as well. We generally have the discussion about, that's another topic, but how data is collected, the third party cookie discussion. That means that something is fundamentally changing. And if now, however, a publisher that generates data itself would use this training data. Or Getty Images, you mentioned. Imagine I'm an editor now and I'm looking for some illustration picture, a duck on a pond. Then you can debate whether an AI-generated duck on the pond, whether it would be more reprehensible or less quality than if I sent a photographer out to take that picture. On the other hand, we have seen pictures of then personalities wearing textiles. So the pope was in a Bogner ski jacket or something similar, then of course a line is clearly crossed, because it is then also manipulative. But I think and believe that there are also areas of application where we will perhaps take it for granted in a few years.

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Christian Kallenberg:

I would like to go back very briefly and take the opportunity, because you also have to deal with a lot of young people, to talk again about the topic of brand credibility. I recently read, I think it was a study from England, that news usage via social media is rising there, rising moderately but rising, while news usage directly via the portals of the individual brands is falling, at least by young users. Conversely, this means for me that young users no longer distinguish which brand they have seen on social media with some news, but they have read it on Instagram or TikTok. So for young people, the sender of the news is often the respective platform and not the media brand that published the news. How do you see that with your students? They can probably tell the difference better just by being based with you, can't they?

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Christof Seeger:
You'd think, but I was just thinking about what's hen and what's egg. Is it because publishers simply haven't taken full advantage of their brand positioning in recent years? So maybe it's an opportunity now even? I mean social media is nothing more than a vehicle. First of all, as long as Instagram doesn't run its own editorial teams and doesn't generate content, it is, after all, just a platform, a channel where I, as a publisher, have the chance to position and present myself. And many publishers have placed relatively little value on brands and brand positioning in recent years and even decades, the entire industry has not. And now it would also be an opportunity to say: Aha, we are rediscovering our media brand for ourselves and the importance of the media brand and we stand for high-quality content, for example, whether that is as a podcast, as a stream, as a subscription or as an e-paper, that is secondary for now. But that would be an opportunity, because on the other hand - and I think I'm not just speaking for my students here: I think it's important for everyone to get reliable information and to get reliable information.

Benjamin Kolb:

And I think with this study, you generally have to be a bit careful that you don't think, especially with regard to the usage behavior of young people, that a whole generation is growing up that shows a certain behavior. Of course, that simply changes over the years. So if you think back to how you consumed news when you were in your early 20s, and how you do it now. Things have changed quite a bit.

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Christof Seeger:
Exactly, it's important for publishers to reconsider these touchpoints, that is, these points of contact with the brand. And that they try to make offers for, let's say, newcomers. I don't mean young people, but newcomers who - as you say - at some point come to the realization that topics or that processes in their environment are important to them or that they want to understand something about how the world works or what's happening on the other side of the world. Publishers with their brands and their products have to think about this again. Because subscribing to the general interest product from 8 to 88 will not be a simple answer to a complex media usage situation.

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Benjamin Kolb:  

And above all, the print newspaper is no longer lying around at home with the parents, which means that this accidental contact with a medium, which you simply open and read and are then perhaps also interested in, is not as present. That's why it's important for our customers that we also offer publishing products that can always be published in many channels with corresponding variants that also appeal to the channel and the channel's user group, thereby always creating a connection to the brand and, of course, ultimately directing them to their own brand website or app.

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Christian Kallenberg:

And that's where AI can actually help again, in that the AI then adapts the content to make it suitable for the individual channels.

Benjamin Kolb:  

Exactly, right up to the issue of producing digital first for publishers, and more and more of them are doing so now. This means that texts can be shortened or lengthened in a semi-automated way so that they fit the print product. In other words, automated variants are created that adapt to certain layouts, so that you also have efficiencies in the output in the direction of print, if you want to call it that. And of course, now there's much more, i.e. automated generation of A/B tests for some headlines, which are then played out and try to get the best possible results in terms of retention. So, there's a lot that's already in use.

Christian Kallenberg:  

Christof, is that also your perception that this is a meaningful use of AI in the publishing environment that is already happening now - even with the collaboration partners you work with?

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Christof Seeger:

Yes, so, as I said, in general, I think AI is well used where there is assistance work, where additional work can be done. These can be different, as Benjamin just said. For example, in the adaptation to different output formats. You could go a step further that also the language style would be adapted, if you say, try to use a more relaxed younger language or use an academic language. I think AI can do that. AI can also do, for example, automated cross-referencing in texts and so on. But also in the research and topic identification, in the distribution in the sense of recommendation algorithm. Which topic makes sense for which channel, for which audience, for which target group do I write this for example. So there's that, and of course there's the simplification of editorial/organizational processes. I think there's a lot to be done to make processes simpler, to partially automate things that journalists previously had to do themselves, and if all of that, or a lot of it, can be automated by AI, then journalists will have more time for research and good articles, which will help the brand at the end of the day.

Benjamin Kolb:

And it's really exciting what you said, because the use cases that you just listed, from finding topics to linking articles or something like that, we've already had them in our product portfolio for about five years. And through this hype with GPT, we are now noticing that the whole topic is naturally getting a completely different drive, because the topic of AI was always exciting for the publishers before in the digital department, but as soon as it went towards the editorial department, it was a taboo topic. There were very few people who were really inspired by it. And this discussion is now changing fundamentally, i.e. since a year ago.

Christof Seeger:  

Well, we know that AI in general is nothing new. Some of the algorithms date back to the 1960s. We just have now the computing capacity and the speed and also the acceptance, as you say through these big language models, through the generative applications from last November. GPT you mentioned, Bard is next. More will follow. Like e-paper, this is nothing new. It's just that everyone is talking about it now, and now people are thinking about it, and acceptance is increasing that they want to transfer it into products and use it in a meaningful way.

Benjamin Kolb:

And quite banally, the fear of missing out on something fundamental also increases if you don't jump on the bandwagon now and see what you can actually do. Because, of course, the competition will be much more efficient and you'll have to do something yourself. So this pressure has simply increased as well.

Christian Kallenberg:

Then I would now be interested, Christof, we have now discussed a lot of professional things. As a professor at the Hochschule der Medien, you still use media in your private life, so do you actually still use anything in your private life or is it all part of your job?

Christof Seeger:  

I've never asked myself that question, because it blurs, blurs. You're generally curious, I'm interested in politics, I have hobbies. And whether I read the article in the newspaper for professional purposes or for private ones, I've never thought about it. I'm a digital omnivore and a news junkie. And I try to inform myself everywhere and always about everything possible. But maybe that's why I'm a professor, because there's no limit.

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Benjamin Kolb:  

So not a very special hobby where you read a very special brand for in your spare time?!

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Christof Seeger:

No, I would also be doing advertising now. No, no, no, no, the nice thing is, and I really mean this in all seriousness, is that I have a lot of access to information through my job, and I also have the privilege of having received one or two access passwords from publishers for teaching, where we also use them to show examples, and just preparing a lecture and looking at the current e-paper issue is enough. Logically, this blurs the lines between private and professional life, because the article I read there can also be of interest to me privately in certain circumstances.

Christian Kallenberg:

Correct hint! Thank you, Christof! And also for everything predicted today. We could have kept talking for quite a while, but maybe we'll just have to do another second episode in two years. Because I'm sure by then a lot will have happened on the topics we discussed, and I'm eager to listen to what you think about it then. Thank you very much for today!

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Christof Seeger: Thank you both very much for letting me be your guest and see you soon.

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Benjamin Kolb: See you soon, bye.

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