Burda Reverses Content Flow: Web Stories Go to Print With AI

Burda Media Polska has brought back two magazines from the "true stories" segment, "Uczucia i tęsknoty" ("Feelings and Longings") and "Cienie i blaski" ("Shadows and Highlights"), both shut down in late 2022. The news isn't the titles' return itself but how they're being made: instead of a traditional editorial team writing from scratch, the publisher is using proprietary AI tools to carry over and adapt material already published online into print.

Content Flow in Reverse

For years, the standard model in glossy print worked the other way around: an editorial team prepared material for the print edition, and the best or most popular pieces later made their way onto the publisher's websites as a digital add-on. Burda has flipped that sequence. True-stories content, readers' accounts of relationships, family conflicts or neighborhood disputes, is now written first for the publisher's websites and only later adapted for the print edition.

In this case, we're drawing on content created for our websites in the true-stories category, which we then adapt for print editions - Tomasz Jażdżyński, COO/CFO of Burda Media Polska

Automation Without a Bigger Newsroom

Jażdżyński stresses that reviving both titles did not require a significant increase in staffing. The key, he says, is automating the editorial process itself, from selecting material to adapting it for print, through in-house tools built on AI technology.

We haven't significantly increased editorial resources in this area. The magazine production process is largely automated and relies on our proprietary AI-based tools - Tomasz Jażdżyński, COO/CFO of Burda Media Polska

Aneta Wikariak oversees the teams responsible for both relaunched titles. The publisher describes the project as a cost-efficient model suited to the current realities of the print market, where circulation and ad revenue have been declining for years and new investments need to pay off quickly.

Print Market Under Pressure

The decision to shut down both titles in late 2022 was part of a broader wave of cuts across Poland's glossy press. Publishers, including Burda itself, closed more than a dozen less profitable magazines at the time, citing a lack of digital potential to offset falling print revenue. The relaunch of "Uczucia i tęsknoty" and "Cienie i blaski" shows that with lower production costs made possible by automation, some previously shuttered segments can return to newsstands.

The true-stories segment has held onto a stable readership for years, largely older women who remain attached to the print format and are not necessarily active online. For the publisher, that means reaching the same audience without the cost of creating content from scratch, since the source material already exists in digital form.

Implications for Publishing

The model Burda is showcasing differs from the more widely publicized uses of AI in newsrooms, where tools typically assist journalists with research, photo selection or headline writing. Here, AI handles a substantial part of the production chain for an entire issue, from selecting texts to preparing them for print, with an editorial team that has stayed nearly unchanged in size.

For other Polish glossy-press publishers facing similar cost pressures, Burda's example could become a model worth following: reviving discontinued titles through automation rather than abandoning segments once written off as unprofitable. The publisher has not disclosed specific circulation or revenue figures for either magazine, however, making it hard to gauge just how profitable the model really is across its full portfolio.

At 4.99 PLN for a 40-page magazine, both titles sit in the lower price tier of Poland's glossy press, which, combined with automated production, is meant to keep them profitable even at limited print runs. Burda has not announced further relaunches of previously closed titles using the same approach, but hasn't ruled out the possibility.