Thomas Goetz, deputy editor-in-chief of Kleine Zeitung, says during the World Editors Forum, in a session about Innovations in Print, that the newspaper was launched for two simple reasons: to reach this critical audience at an early age to educate them about newspapers, but also to help out their reading skills along the way.

According to a national survey, he says youth’s reading habits were troubling. “We felt we had a responsibility here to improve the reading skills of our kids – it was that simple,” he says.

The paper builds its content based on intimate meetings with children themselves. They are invited into to participate in planning the content. “We always have children running around in our office. It’s actually quite fun.”

And they are delighted to see Paula, the newspaper’s dog, who has become an icon for the paper and served as a real connection with kids. Her photo is featured in ads throughout the paper, and she "even has a chair in the editorial planning room,” he says.

The newspaper took two months to break even as it quickly had 10,000 subscriptions. He says the paper was not that expensive to launch, since half of the content comes from contributors for free. Today, it has a circulation of 18,000 and a paid circulation of 13,500. The extra circulation is needed as the company partners with a number of institutions, government, libraries, to distribute the papers.

The newspaper uses rather thick newsprint so children can draw and paint some of the games featured in the edition. “It is a little bit more expensive, but absolutely worth it.”

Interestingly, the paper does not have an online or digital channel, and that’s by design, says Goetz. “We don’t want it to be online because we want them to realise the importance of newspapers and we fear that if we offer content online, they will not see the significance.”

Moderator George Brock, professor and head of journalism of City University in London, countered this by asking, “So that means not sharing this content to the world on Facebook and the like?”

Goetz: “It’s true that we will probably look at this in the future, but for now we want to focus just on print.”