You might think now is not the right economic climate in which to launch a new print title, but digital document management company Océ and founder of the Digital Newspaper Network, is taking its chances with a new venture, ‘niiu’.

The premise is that readers choose the content: niiu will publish different news and blog stories online and users select their favourites to go into  a personalised paper, delivered to its subscribers daily. It’s a concept Océ has patented, it states.

The team thinks that print will attract its audience: “Even young people prefer to read on paper. With the niuu concept we bridge the gap betweek web and print,” said co-founder of niuu Wanja S. Oberhof, in a press release.

Berlin is the first market for niiu, but it plans to expand the concept to other places, such as Hamburg or Munich, he said.

Online-print precedent

Another example of online-to-print has been launched in beta by TheBlogPaper. Its idea is to publish blogs, photos and comments on the website and put the highest rated and most discussed content into a printed paper newspaper.

French site and publication Vendredi.info also publishes online material in print, but both these models produce one version, not individualised content.

Niuu launched its first issues on Tuesday (October 13), at the Océ stand at the Ifra Expo 2009 newspaper exhibition in Vienna. It hopes to gain 5000 subscribers within the first six months.

It launches at 1.80 euros per issue, with a reduced price for students. Or a pre-pay voucher of 45 euros  is available.

Whether it will be a gimmick or goer remains to be seen. Guardian media blogger Roy Greenslade has strong doubts.