"Newspapers: The Media Businesses of the Future" Hotel Okura Amsterdam 18 and 19 October 2007 400 participants from 70 countries Summaries of all presentations will be posted here throughout the conference. Please check back for updates. Selected quotes from the conference Envisioning the Newspaper 2020
Newspapers: A multimedia growth businessEamonn Byrne, Business Director, World Association of Newspapers "Newspapers are a growth business, with circulation, free dailies, market share, advertising revenues, and newspaper online consumption continuing to grow, as do the number of newspaper titles." Surprised? Mr Byrne says the unrelenting negative and inaccurate news coverage of newspapers, combined with exaggerated forecasts for the future of digital media, has given a false impression to many that newspapers are dead or dying. In fact, newspapers are thriving, both in print and online. "The indications are that the market wants print, and lots of it, every day" says Mr Byrne. "People still make the decision, every day, to buy a newspaper. There are 1.6 billion people who read a newspaper every day -- if that isn’t a global mass media, I don’t know what is." Mr Byrne presented an update on world press trends. Some of the figure he provided:
"Early indications are that we will see the same growth in 2007 that we saw in 2006," Mr Byrne said.
From evening daily to multimedia companyMark Rix, Managing Director, MEN Media, United Kingdom In three years, the Manchester Evening News has evolved from being an evening newspaper to become an integrated multimedia company, MEN Media, with television, newspaper and internet working together. Mr Rix presented the MEN evolution, which includes a new converged newsroom which supplies content to all platforms. Perhaps the most interesting part of the strategy was the decision to turn the evening newspaper into a part-paid, part-free model. It is given away in the city center at offices, on the street, in airports, hospitals and news agents and it is sold outside the city. "We haven’t given up our paid for sales, we recognise the value of that, but we’ll only do that where it makes economic sense," he says. The goal was to increase total readership, particularly wealthier readers. Readership is up 20 percent since the launch of the new concept in May 2006, on the back of 93,000 free copies and 88,000 paid-for copies Monday through Friday. "Many would say that free newspapers are the future of newspapers. Our research shows they are a vital part of the strategy of any newspaper that want to thrive rather than just survive," says Mr Rix. The future of circulation: audience developmentJohn Kimball, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Newspaper Association of America There has been a lot of attention focused on the plight of newspapers in the United States, but Mr Kimball noted there were some positive developments -- a long list of newspapers that are succeeding in growing total audience and loyal readership. His presentation focused on circulation strategies and execution to illustrate some of the techniques that are working to build subscription and single-copy circulation for newspapers large and small. Success doesn’t necessarily mean more readers -- it means more loyal readers who renew their subscriptions, so reducing subscriber churn has become one area of success in the industry. Mr Kimball cited an NAA study of more than 500 newspapers that found subscriber churn has dropped more than one-third since 2000. He presented dozens of examples of acquisition, retention and cost-reducing schemes that have led to circulation success. Among them:
Successful Circulation PromotionsTommaso Prennushi, Director, TP&Associates, SpainDumas, Balzac and Dickens -- all helped promote newspaper sales! Mr Prennushi pointed out that the very first newspaper circulation promotions were serialized stories in newspapers by these great writers. "Our work was not invented in the last few years. It has a long history, with interesting cases that can help us in our jobs," says Mr Prennushi. "Circulation promotion is a core activity of our industry, as important as good editorial content, good layout and design, good distributions," he says. Mr Prennushi, a newspaper promotion consultant with clients across Europe, presented case studies of successful promotions -- giveaways, coupons, and add-on sales. Here are some of his insights: How to attract and build loyalty among young peopleRobert Barnard, Founder and Partner, D-Code, Canada"If you don’t have young people adopting a newspaper by the time they’re 24, it’s unlikely that they’ll adopt newspapers at any time of their life," says Mr Barnard, who is researching young people and their news and information habits for the World Association of Newspapers. Mr Barnard showed why the concept of loyalty was a difficult one for young people. "Loyalty is a tough thing for them to understand. So much has been taking them away from loyalty," says Mr Barnard, who said an explosion of new products, social fragmentation and other factors were responsible for this lack of loyalty. There are things newspapers can do to attract and build loyal young readers, Mr Barnard said -- strategies built around emotions and experience are the key. Mr Barnard discussed some of the areas that his company is exploring in its global research project for WAN. Here are two of them:
For more information on the D-Code/WAN young reader reasearch project, click here. Salvadorian Newspaper Wins World Young Reader PrizeLa Prensa Grafica of El Salvador was today awarded the 2007 World Young Reader Newspaper of the Year prize from the World Association of Newspapers. The newspaper was honoured during the World Editor & Marketeer Conference and for a special young readers edition that involved young columnists and reporters, along with the newspaper staff, in a complete re-design of the newspaper to appeal to younger readers. In addition to taking the top prize, the project also won the Editorial Strategy category of the annual awards. The World Young Reader Prize in the Newspapers in Education (NIE) category went to the Patriot News (Pennsylvania) for a project that engaged families in NIE programmes. The prize in the Public Service category was awarded to Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland, for a youth-oriented campaign that helped stop highway construction in the Rospuda Valley, a rich bio-diverse river valley of Poland. The paper also won a jury commendation for a multi-platform project promoting the Polish language that included a reader-generated dictionary. Full details of all the award-winning projects can be found here. The World Young Reader Prizes, sponsored by the international paper manufacturer Norske Skog, are given annually by WAN to the newspapers that devise the most innovative projects to develop young readership. Details about entry requirements for the 2008 World Young Reader Prizes can be found at www.wan-press.org/worldyoungreaderprize. Marketing to the Young: A Few Things to TryAralynn Mcmane, Director of Young Reader Programs, World Association of NewspapersDuring the World Young Reader Prize presentation ceremony, Dr McMane shared some ideas that newspapers are using to attract young readers. Among her key points: |
Global newspaper circulation sales (paid-for titles), grew 2.3 percent last year and was up nearly 10 percent over five years. When free newspapers are added, the growth was more than 4 percent over one year and nearly 20 percent over five.