Internet portal Centrum.cz launched the country's first exclusively online daily, Aktualne.cz, Nov. 1, promising to bring hard news in Czech to Internet users.

Centrum, the nation's biggest Web portal after Seznam, has invested 35 million Kc ($1.42 million) in Aktualne.cz and hired 60 editorial employees in a bid to challenge print media and compete for advertising revenue.

Company CEO Ondrej Tomek said Centrum plans to get a return on its investment within one year.

As for competing with the print news dailys, said Tomek, "We definitely want to." He added that advertising revenue will account for 90 percent of Aktualne.cz's profit, with the rest coming from the portal's paid sections.

Aktualne.cz will offer multimedia coverage, including sound and video clips, in cooperation with Czech Television, a partner in the project. The portal will also include translated news from the British wire service Reuters.

Hard news online

Aktualne.cz has replaced Centrum's former news portal, lidovky.cz, put out in cooperation with the print daily Lidové noviny. Tomek said that his company decided to end cooperation with Lidové noviny as it was hampering its ambition to create a competitive hard-news outlet.

"We came to the conclusion that operating an online daily that would meet all readers' demands in cooperation with a print daily is very difficult," he said.

"If a newspaper gets a scoop, its ambition is to publish it in the print edition. That means that Internet users do not get the most up-to-date information right away."

Instead, Aktualne.cz is determined to scoop print dailies, and it has hired some of the country's top investigative journalists.

One of them, Sabina Slonková, a former reporter for Mladá fronta Dnes, landed in the headlines herself in 2002 when Foreign Affairs Ministry secretary Karel Srba was charged with taking out a contract on her life for writing about suspicious ministry dealings in Moscow.

Tomek stressed that unlike many other Czech Internet information portals, Aktualne.cz will focus on providing hard news to serious readers. Founders say it will be completely free of tabloid news and will only target a sophisticated readership.

"Our goal is not to have a maximum number of users," he said. "We want to attract the maximum number of those who are interested in hard news."

According to Tomek, portal readership will mainly comprise middle- and upper-class users with higher education often holding top management positions.

Challenging print media

Analysts are hailing Centrum's new project as an attempt to move Czech Internet forward. They estimate Aktualne.cz's chances of success, however, at fifty-fifty.

"I like this project," says Štěpán Wolde, marketing director at ARBO Media, which analyzes the media market. "This is the first open attack on the print media. And it is a nice attempt."

Wolde believes that Aktualne.cz's potential success or failure will depend on two key factors — media behavior of Czech Internet users and Centrum's determination to support the project and fight for advertising sales.

The Internet currently accounts for mere 3 percent of advertising revenues in the media market, while the print media enjoy a hefty 38 percent share.

At the same time, Internet portals are currently seeing a 30 percent annual growth in advertising investment.

Until now Czech readers have been using Internet news sources differently from print newspapers, according to Wolde, mainly going online to read short news stories and turning to print media for analysis and op-ed pieces.

Actualne.cz is betting on speed as well as the demand for solid editorial content.