"Newspapers: The Media Businesses of the Future" Hotel Okura Amsterdam 18 and 19 October 2007 400 participants from 70 countries WAN Calendar of Events Summaries from Thursday sessions Envisioning the Newspaper 2020 Join WAN The Truth About Free Newspapers Piet Bakker, Professor Cross Media Content, Research Centre for Communication and Journalism, Hogeschool, the Netherlands Free newspapers are a major force in print, particularly in Europe, where two-thirds of the 42 million copies every workday are published. Mr Bakker, one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, provided an overview of the free newspaper phenomenon and their impact on newspaper markets. Some of his findings:  The number of people abandoning paid-for newspapers for free newspapers is minimal.  Free newspapers don’t necessarily reach the target audience they claim to reach.  They bring new readers to newspapers -- half of free newspaper readers are new readers, while half read both print and free titles.  The free newspaper is diversifying with sports, quality, "lite" models of paid-for titles, local papers and weekend editions entering the market.  Free newspapers generally face competition from other free papers in their markets, start-up costs are rising and it generally takes three-to-five years to reach a break-even point. On the other hand, there are positive market forces to encourage them -- their target audience is growing, newspaper advertising is liked and valued by consumers, and the free newspaper is now an accepted model. Mr Bakker’s website dedicated to research on free newspapers can be found at www.newspaperinnovation.com. Challenging the existing order Rajiv Verma, CEO, MINT, India The newspaper market in India is booming: more than 220 million readers today, the literacy rate growing at 25 percent, and the number of middle class and urban citizens growing quickly. Into this boom times steps MINT, a new business daily which wants to challenge the existing order of several daily business titles in a market dominated by one big player, the Economic Times. Mr Verma provided a case study -- everything from market research to design and content to marketing -- of this new newspaper that has grown from zero to 100,000 readers in six months to become the number 2 business daily in terms of readership. Its innovations include a weekend edition with a lifestyle focus, its marketing to a gender-neutral audience profile, a Berliner format unique in the category, and a partnership deal with the Wall Street Journal for exclusive content. Though the market for business newspapers in India is crowded, Mint set out to carve a niche for itself among a booming audience of what Mr Verma called "look at me conscious strivers" -- ambitious 24- to 33-year olds, double-income families with one or two children. Mr Verma says this audience numbers 2.5 million today and is set to grow to 10 million by 2010. Perhaps the biggest measure of Mint’s impact was the reaction of the competition: the Economic Times dropped its cover price and ran a bundled offer with the largest English language newspaper; Business Line increased the number of stock pages, and the Business Standard started a Saturday paper. How to start a business web site in 3 months (and survive) Arend Van den Berg, Managing Director & Chief Editor, Z24, The Netherlands "We want to bring business news to a younger and broader audience than the usual business site does," says Mr Van den Berg. "Ninety percent of the usual business audience is male, and that doesn’t reflect the role women play in Dutch society. Our target audience is young and affluent, 24 to 40, and we think there is a huge market for them." In addition to the audience, two other unusual aspects of Z24 stand out. It was launched only three months after conception to beat competitors to market. And it was created as a separate company that competes directly with its mother company. Mr Van den Berg presented a case study of Z24, which is a joint venture between FD Mediagroep, RTL Nederland and Schibsted and is based on Schibsted’s successful E24.se business news site in Sweden. The decision to set up a separate company was a key component, says Mr Van Den Berg. "If you start in an existing company, you’re always going to be number 2. There is always emphasis on the existing brand because it is already making money", says Mr Van den Berg. "If you set up your own company, you’re the only one." "When you go to advertisers or media agencies, it makes a hell of a difference if you can say, ’I’m telling you about a new company, I quit my job and gave up my pension scheme because I believe in this.’ This is very important, this concept of entrepreneurship." Competition leads to innovation Gregorgz Piechota, Special Projects Editor & Katarzyna Kolanowska, Promotions Director, Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland At Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper promotion program is on steroids. To boost circulation, the newspaper sells some sort of entertainment product along with the newspaper every single day -- popular TV series on DVD, first-run movies, music CDs of Polish oldies, language courses, automobile maps for all of Europe, driving courses, Polish novels -- you name it. They even premiered a popular television series on DVD in the newspaper, one week before the shows appeared to TV. Mr Piechota and Ms Kolanowska said they don’t really have a choice -- the Polish newspaper market is also on steroids, one of the most competitive in Europe with seven new daily titles introduced since 2003 and resulting circulation and price wars. And all the new papers are taking aim on Gazeta Wyborcza, with its 460,000 daily sales and six million daily readers. The promotions have clearly filled the gap -- they now produce 33 million euros, or 11 percent of the company’s total annual revenues. "The impact on circulation is huge," says Mr Piechota. Newspapers on the net: a new vision Jan ’t’ Hart, Deputy Editor in Chief, de Volkskrant, the Netherlands Forget your print newspaper when you’re building your newspaper website, says Mr Hart. "Your competitors are on the net, you have to fight them with internet weapons", says Mr Hart, who described his company’s transition from newspaper to multimedia, a process that took two years. "Because we are in this media world, we try to develop a lot of new journalistic things. We’re not just using the technology to spread the content we already have. We make new things and, at the same time, keep up the quality of our newspaper," he says. Some of his advice:  Create many websites. In addition to its main newspaper site, de Volkskrant developed websites for travel, health and psychology, dating, history, web TV among others. "Organise as much traffic as you can," he says. "Build more than one website because you need the traffic."  Create your own research department to develop your own software. "You can’t just go along buying things, it’s too expensive," says Mr Hart. "We built our own media player, and we sell the software throughout the whole world."  Offer as much as you can in your "webshop": DVDs, music, gifts, books, wines, etc. Integration and convergence are passé Marcelo Rech, RBS Newspapers, Brazil "We don’t talk about integration and convergence anymore. The word is unification," says Mr Rech, whose newsroom produces everything from neighborhood newspapers to live television. Mr Rech’s presentation focused on the new RBS multimedia strategy, which is based on a culture in which news and analysis -- which he calls "the two halves of the journalistic brain" -- determine how content is distributed across platforms. "The new culture means that news and analysis must think and act together," he says. "Half should go immediately online in diverse forms -- text, audio, video, slide show, graphics. Half must wait to be printed and become a guide for the breaking news of the next day. Both halves interact and converge on both platforms." Mr Rech said multimedia unification was more about content and culture change than about technology. "We don’t need a zillion dollar newsroom - we need a sense of urgency for innovation," he says. "Readers don’t buy a newsroom," says Mr Rech "They buy, watch, hear and read an editorial product. At the beginning and at the end, it is the editorial product that makes a difference." Here’s some two of the attributes of the RBS multimedia strategy:  The managing editor of the flagship Zero Hora newspaper became the dot-com publisher. The newspaper company’s news agency, art department and editorial coordination merged with online.  Thirty-five journalists were hired for a 24/7 multimedia operation. Making print and digital communicate Chris Lloyd, Assistant Managing Editor, Telegraph Media Group, United Kingdom Here is the catalyst for the Telegraph’s 18-month journey from newspaper to integrated multimedia company: "The newspaper market in the UK is ferocious. When we looked at it in detail, we found that, even though we were selling 900,000 copies a day, the total number of people who came into contact with the Telegraph brand each month was 9 million. That’s where we saw the opportunity to bring some of the newspaper readers into our website, and the website users into our newspaper, if we brought them together, and get them to talk to each other." Mr Lloyd provided an account of how the company made the transition and move to a state-of-the-art multimedia newsroom, from researching the best integrated newsrooms around the world, to putting together a small group with wide skills to drive the change, to launching a pilot project to test the new organisation. One of the key steps was the largest training programme for journalists the Telegraph had every launched. "Many of them had spent their entire careers in newspapers and they saw this as their future. The internet was this big bad thing over there, where you gave it away for free, and they didn’t understand how it would work," says Mr Lloyd. "The internet opens up the audience for journalists. You can communicate with them 24 hours a day, they can interact, and you can communicate with them in video and audio. So we wanted to let them know the opportunities. It’s all about how the story can be enhanced by using other media," he says. Local media: the new platform Robert Ray, Marketing Director, The Newspaper Society, United Kingdom Local media in the United Kingdom includes more than 1,300 newspapers, 1,100 web sites, 750 magazines, 36 radio stations and two TV channels. Or, as Mr Ray described it, "The UK’s new platform, local media." The Newspaper Society has been running an advertising effectiveness research project called "The Wanted Ads" to demonstrate the power of local newspaper advertising when compared with other media. Phase three of the project, which Mr Ray described, extends the newspaper research to include local web sites. Using four major brands, the research demonstrated that advertising in local newspapers and on websites increased brand recognition, word of mouth from those who had seen the ads and action by consumers. "What we’ve researched is how the core values of our local newspapers -- trustworthy, relevant and up-to-date -- has passed along to local online," says Mr Ray. Seven Ways to Alienate Readers Linda Sease, Director of Marketing, E. W. Scripps Company, USA If you want to avoid alienating readers, ask them what bothers them most. Ms Sease, whose company queried more than 8,000 readers on what they want and don’t want from a newspaper, has distilled their negative answers into what she calls "the seven deadly sins." The one true measure of success with readers, she says, is to have customers who are willing to recommend your content to others. "True readership satisfaction is not about behavior; but rather, about your customer’s willingness to recommend you to other potential customers," she says. Here’s two of the "sins" to avoid if you want to keep readers loyal:  The sin of gluttony: don’t jam the paper full of content that readers find irrelevant. Using unedited news agency copy to fill space is a common problem; Ms Sease cited an example of a small Texas newspapers that devoted 42 inches (107 centimetres) to an agency story about prisoners in Spain being allowed conjugal visits.  The sin of pride, or covering only the topics you find interesting and ignoring what readers want -- or, even worse, not returning reader phone calls and e-mails. "One paper was not much interested in the topic of health, even though readers said they wanted more. To test how serious the readers were, the paper ran a Sunday front page headline and a story about diabetes -- single copy sales went up 7 percent," says Ms Sease. Using research as part of journalistic change Poul Melbye, Director, Strategy and Research, Politiken, Denmark The Danish newspaper market is as tough as it gets -- a freesheet war, the introduction of an additional million new daily copies into a market of 1.5 million copies, internet reach of more than 60 percent and broadband penetration among the highest in the world. "It was clear that you had to do something if you wanted to stay in this market as a paid-for daily, and we’re an expensive daily," says Mr Melbye. The paper turned to a new journalistic vision, and Mr Melbye described the role of research in the new formula for the paper. He described three-types of research:  Desktop research, which takes advantage of studies that have been already been done. "It is likely that you asked readers two years ago, ’what would you like to see?’ This doesn’t change in two years," he says.  Targeted ad-hoc research. "No matter how much research you’ve done, you’ll always need additional research."  Evaluation. "Your best tool is to get the reader’s evaluation of your thoughts, not the evaluation of the reader thought." Here are the assumptions that drove the journalist change at Politiken: News is now a days a commodity that is accessible everywhere and always therefore the job of the newspaper is to refine the raw material of news into insight The job of the news organisation is to give the reader news and insight but not necessarily on the same platform.