Confronted by a deep, three-year crisis in the advertising industry, Germany's dailies have begun launching small, tabloid versions of their newspapers to attract younger readers.
In an effort to get their financial heads above water, a number of papers have started to emulate their British and Scandinavian counterparts with transport-friendly, compact editions of the day's main news.
It is a transition that may end up destroying the morning routine of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The German leader is known to start the day skimming the headlines of Bild Zeitung, despite an almost love-hate relationship with the owners of the country's most widely read, and regularly derided, daily.
According to reports in other parts of the press, Axel Springer, the publisher of this national institution, has secret plans to launch a cheaper, smaller version at the end of the year.
Since the end of May, Axel Springer has been testing the format elsewhere in the form of the respected daily Die Welt.
The Welt Kompakt is a 32-page version of the broadsheet with most of the same articles only shorter. It is sold for 50 euro cents (US0.20), compared to 1.30 euros for its bigger brother.
While most of the German press print their newspapers at around 6pm, Welt Kompakt is put to bed at midnight, which means the latest news, closing figures on Wall Street and the sports results can be put inside.
The main aim is to attract youth to a newspaper that is in chronic financial straits and has been steadily losing its readership, which is now estimated at around 200,000 people.
But a secondary goal is to relaunch sales in news agents and kiosks and broaden its buyer base, which is currently dominated by subscribers.
Many young people in Germany tend to ignore the written word in news.
Between 80 percent and 85 percent of people aged from 40 to 69 regularly read a daily newspaper, according to a study by the German federation of newspaper editors (BDZV).
But that figure falls to 72 percent for those aged 30 to 39 and down to 63 percent for the 20 to 29 age group.
It was in an effort to redress those figures among its reader base that the Holtzbrinck press group launched the daily 20 cents in Cottbus, eastern Germany.
Indeed the trend toward smaller, more compact newspapers, which studies show young readers tend to prefer, is gaining currency around Europe.
In Sweden and Norway, major dailies are being printed this way while The Independent became the first British newspaper to do so last year, followed later by The Times, and sales have improved since the changes were made.
So far Axel Springer has been pleased with the tests results.
"Market tests have show that we have reached new readers with this innovative concept. The reactions have been very positive, in particular from young people and cultivated people, and the sales have also been promising," said chief editor Jan-Eric Peters.
But some experts remain sceptical about the chances of the idea being a success in Germany that would match the results in Britain.
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