Shaping the Future of the Newspaper

WAN is a leading provider of industry research and analysis through its Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world. The morning’s first session focused on the six strategy reports the project released in the past year: Envisioning the Newspaper 2020, Engaging Young Readers, Investing in Newspapers, The Value of News Content, Scenario Planning for Newspaper Companies, and Benchmarking New Digital Revenues.

During the presentation, WAN President Gavin O’Reilly made the case for a vibrant future for the newspaper industry.

“The fact is that newspapers are winning well in a world of heightened digital fragmentation,” he said. “In properly assessing the performance of newspapers, one needs to calmly analyze the underlying audience trends for our industry - the quantum of our readership and the quality demographic that we deliver, coupled with the incremental and growing audience that we garner from online - and the conclusion is that our industry is extremely well-positioned at weathering the storm that is media fragmentation, guaranteeing as we do sizeable, reliable and relatively stable audiences. “

Newspapers are a US$190 billion dollar industry globally, reaching 1.7 billion readers daily, said Mr O’Reilly. The industry is expected to grow its advertising by 17% over the next 5 years, or at a faster rate than the preceding 5 years.

“Newspapers are a vibrant, relevant and commercial proposition for readers and advertisers alike. For investors, the investment in new technology and the delivery of new audiences produces an unrivalled cocktail of success: strong, definable demographics coupled with strong margins delivering consistent returns.”

For more on the SFN project, visit www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

From print to multi-media and more

Gazzetta dello Sport is one of the largest and most respected sports dailies in the world. How it evolved from an old-style, traditional newspaper into a multimedia brand for sports infotainment was the subject of Mr Valerio’s presentation.

In 2006, Gazzetta dello Sport was a prestigious, black-and-white newspaper printed on distinctive pink paper. Both circulation and advertising revenues were falling. Its website traffic was growing substantially but not producing significant revenue.

“To face this situation, we posed to ourselves a strategic question. We went through deep market analysis to decide how to refocus our strategy”, said Mr Valerio. “We found out that, on the positive side, Gazzetta dello Sport had a tremendous brand awareness and tremendous engagement with our readers, especially young readers. On the negative side, we were an old-style paper with an old image and product concept hat needed renovation.”

The company implemented what Mr Valerio described as a ”radical” new strategy. Among the actions he discussed were:

  Brand repositioning with stories focused more strongly for younger readers.

  Innovation in editorial content - for example, adding non-sport content for the first time, again targeted at young people.

  A multi-media and multi-channel approach with full integration among all channels.

The results: Circulation grew 3.5 percent to 385,000 daily copies between 2006 and 2007. Advertising revenues rose 10 percent in 2006, 3 percent in 2007 and 10 percent in the first three months of 2008. Digital audience went from 2 million to six million visitors a month, and digital advertising climbed 300 percent.

Providing India with local news

Long before the online world discovered the benefit of personalization Eenadu “wove customization into the very fabric of its offering,” says Mr Venkat.

The newspaper in central India’s Andhra Pradesh has a circulation of 3.2 million copies daily in 23 main editions and 31 district editions.

Mr Venkat described the strategy behind this intense localization. When Eenadu was launched in the 1970s, Indian newspapers only provided national and international news - never local.

Eenadu set out to fill the vacuum. Subscribers get national, state and local news in different editions, depending on the district and locality.

The newspaper is sold through 9,200 agents - 7,600 of who sell than 100 copies each.

After attracting an audience that didn’t read newspapers before, it now also had to attract the advertiser’s interests in reaching them. It had to create opportunities for unconventional advertisers - companies that had never advertised before - and it did this through the idea of “concept selling”.

To entice non-advertisers, it created model advertisements, where the retailer or politicians message and details were added to standardize ad designs. “We brought the creative to them,” Mr Venkat says.

It also created specific event advertisements - opportunities to send messages on special days, such as mother’s day, Valentines Day etc.

Media Gluttony

Consumers have more media choices than ever before. Problem is, they don’t have time to use them, says Ms Ohrvall, who provided a “future media map” of media usage.

She described three trends, and the media usage patterns that grow out of them:

  The growth in media choice. “The media explosion is definitely here,” she says. For example, niche TV channels, which didn’t exist in the Swedish market just a few years ago, now have a 38 percent market share. New magazine titles are growing 10 percent to 30 percent every year and niche publications are growing three times as fast as general publications. On-line consumers are using, on average, 16 different sources for news and information.

  The time-starved consumer. “People are skipping breakfast, long coffee breaks at work don’t exist anymore, families don’t eat dinner together. There are a large number of media sources but, at the same time, consumers don’t have time for that.”

  The growth in “personal technology platforms,” particularly mobile devices.