To protect press freedom and the economic independence of newspapers.

  To support the growth and development of newspaper publishing world-wide.

  To protect the professional and business interests of newspapers.

  To actively promote the newspaper and its role in _ society.

  To continually improve the association, its programmes, services and activities.

This Activity Report will give a broad picture of the actions and programmes undertaken over the second year of this plan in pursuit of these objectives.

Press Freedom

WAN has accomplished its day-to-day mission of monitoring and protesting the persecution, jailing and murder of journalists and the censorship, suspension and banning of newspapers, magazines and electronic media world-wide.

We have organised dozens of protest campaigns, directed at more than 30 countries, through petitions, letters, complaints to inter-governmental organisations, editorial exposure, and diplomatic pressure. In several cases, the outcome of the campaign was successful and we noted an increasingly high level of response from the governments and other authorities whom we challenged (including from the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge).

WAN campaigns dealt with cases of imprisonment and murder of journalists, cases of suspension imposed on independent publications, as well as the adoption of laws that seriously restrict and threaten press freedom.

A protest was sent to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to express dismay at the 28 March adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of a resolution that undermines the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

In the framework of its campaign against the repression of press freedom in China ahead of the Olympic Games in August 2008, WAN invited the major sponsors of the Olympic Games to express their “strong moral opposition to the repression of basic human rights in China and, in particular, the daily violation of all acceptable standards for freedom of expression.”

Events

2nd Arab Free Press Forum, Beirut

In December 2007, WAN in partnership with the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, organised a second major press freedom conference in Beirut, building on the success of the first, December 2006 event. The 2nd Arab Free Press Forum, entitled "Fighting Back - Challenges and Opportunities for the Arab Press", focused on the latest government policies that affect the media throughout the region, on independent newspapers that have managed to become profitable while upholding their editorial independence, on blogs as an alternative way of telling the news, and on existing structures and initiatives that truly benefit the Arab newspaper community.

120 leading publishers, journalists and press freedom advocates from across the Middle East discussed these challenges and opportunities in lively debates during the two-day conference.

"Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom" conference, Paris

WAN partnered in April with the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Asia Press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Human Rights in China (HRiC) to organise an international conference dedicated to the press freedom situation in China.

The conference, entitled "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom", spotlighted the situation of the press in China and raised awareness of the state of play for journalists going to Beijing and their audiences. Through six panels the conference dealt with the following subjects: "Press freedom and the Beijing Olympics", "How are Chinese news media controlled?", "What reporting conditions should you expect in Beijing?", "China’s Internet: What freedom/What limits?", " Trading with China: What risks, responsibilities, opportunities?", and "How does China deal with foreign and peripheral news media?".

More than 160 participants attended the conference. Its quality and timeliness was emphasised by many. A comprehensive post-conference report is being published and several hundred copies will be distributed by WAN to interested parties in the run up to the Olympics.

World Press Freedom Day

WAN again organised a major campaign for 3 May, World Press Freedom Day, to bring attention to global press freedom problems. The 2008 campaign - entitled “The Olympic Challenge: Free the Press in China!” - highlighted the press freedom situation in China, with a focus on the Olympic Games. The campaign website (still open) (www.worldpressfreedomday.org) was launched in early April.

Essays and editorials by He Qinglian, Writer and Economist, Harry Wu, Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, Li Datong, Freezing Point former Editor in Chief, and Li Pu, former Deputy Director of the Xinhua News Agency, as well as cartoons by leading French cartoonist Michel Cambon, an animated movie, newspaper ads, photos from Agence France Presse (AFP) and infographics, as well as worldwide statistics on killed, arrested and imprisoned journalists, were made available to news media worldwide for publication on the day.

All editorial and advertising materials were available in six languages - English, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. There were 30,126 page views on the site between 2 April and 3 May and 5,871 downloads.

"One Dream: Free Expression in China" event in Hong Kong

WAN was one of the main organisers of an international event that was held in Hong Kong from 30 April (100 days before the beginning of the Olympic Games) to 3 May. The event consisted of a press conference, a seminar on press freedom in China, a street demonstration and an arts fair. The events took on a particular significance since they were held on Chinese territory. The WAN representative participated in the press conference, spoke at the seminar and handed over a petition to the mainland authorities, calling for greater press freedom in China.

“What strategy to face up to attacks on the press in North Africa” event in Casablanca, 2 & 3 May

WAN was co-organiser of a regional round table held on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day in Casablanca, Morocco. Entitled “What strategy to face up to attacks on the press in North Africa”, the two-day meeting was called by the Working Group on Press Freedom and Free Expression in North Africa (WGFENA) in cooperation with the Moroccan independent weekly Tel Quel. The status of press freedom in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Mauritania was discussed by newspaper publishers, journalists and press freedom advocates.

Campaigns

The 2008 China Advertising Campaign

In January 2008, WAN launched an advertising campaign inviting newspapers worldwide to run ‘public service’ advertisements calling for the release of all imprisoned Chinese journalists. The ads, which exist in both paper and electronic format, have been translated into eleven languages.

To date, newspapers in over 20 countries are known to have published the ad, reaching out to millions of newspaper readers. For example, in Denmark, the JP/Politiken group published the ad 25 times in three of their papers over a period of two months. In Poland, the Metro newspaper, with a circulation of 1,5 million, ran the ad seven times. In Latin America, Clarin, the world’s largest Spanish-language daily, published the ad. A number of papers worldwide have also published articles about the ad campaign. In Yemen and Morocco, the Chinese embassies protested to newspapers that ran the ad.

An additional feature of the ad is an invitation to newspaper readers to send a letter to the Chinese authorities, calling on them to release all imprisoned journalists. Over 3,000 people from countries all over the world have to date sent the letter.

The Online Platform

Under the title “The Olympic Challenge: Free the Press in China!” this website features a variety of materials relating to the press freedom situation in China, including news stories, interviews and press releases. The site also contains profiles of the journalists currently imprisoned in China.

The Declaration of Table Mountain Campaign

WAN and our World Editors Forum adopted the Declaration of Table Mountain in June 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa, to appeal to all Africans, particularly those in power, to recognise that the political and economic progress they seek flourishes in a climate where the press is free and independent of governmental, political or economic control.

The Declaration calls on Heads of State to review and abolish libel and defamation laws, where in force, and to promote and implement the highest standards of press freedom. It also urges the African Union to include in the criteria for "good governance" in the African Peer Review Mechanism under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development programme, the vital requirement that a country promotes free and independent media. As part of an ongoing campaign throughout the year to gain change, WAN invited newspapers in Africa to publish exclusive cartoons created by noted French cartoonist Michel Cambon on the theme of criminal defamation, one of the major obstacles to press freedom on the continent.

Press Freedom Awards

Golden Pen of Freedom

Li Changqing, a Chinese journalist imprisoned for alerting the public to an outbreak of dengue fever before the authorities announced the danger, was awarded WAN’s 2008 Golden Pen of Freedom. It is the second consecutive year that a Chinese journalist has received the award, an unprecedented decision that reflects the repressive conditions for media in China. The 2007 laureate was Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist who was imprisoned after the American search engine company Yahoo provided information to the Chinese authorities that led to his arrest. He remains in jail.

Mr Li, a reporter and deputy news director of the Fuzhou Daily in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, was sentenced to three years in prison in January 2006, for "fabricating and spreading false information" after being detained without charges for nearly a year. The charges stem from an anonymous report posted on Boxun News Network, a Chinese-language website based in the United States. Due to censorship and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party Propaganda Department on sensitive social issues, no reports of the outbreak in Fuzhou of dengue, a viral, mosquito-borne disease, had been reported in the Chinese press, nor had health officials officially announced the outbreak. Mr Li reported on government corruption and other sensitive social issues before being imprisoned.

Li Changqing was released from prison at the end of February 2008.

Gebran Tueni Award

In 2006, WAN established an award to honour the memory of Lebanese publisher Gebran Tueni who was killed by a car bomb attack in December 2005. Gebran Tueni was a unique figure in WAN affairs for almost twenty years, as a leading member of the WAN Press Freedom Committee, a Board member for more than a decade, a regular participant in missions to press freedom ’hot spots’ and a constant adviser and support to the leadership of WAN on Arab and press freedom issues.

Michel Hajji Georgiou, a senior political analyst at the French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour in Lebanon since 1999, was awarded the 2007 Gebran Tueni Award.

Mr Hajji Georgiou is a member of the newspaper’s editorial board and chief of its political supplement since 2005.

Electronic networks

Arab Press Network

APN is a digital platform with a focus on media issues in the Arab world. On a daily basis, it offers the latest media news from 22 countries in Arabic, English and French.

Since two freelance writers joined the APN team in January 2008, the network has increased its production, and now publishes between 8 and 10 exclusive articles each week.

The network has over 900 subscribers and more than 9000 visitors to the website every month. APN stories are regularly picked up by news websites and blogs both in the Arab region and beyond.

African Press Network - RAP 21

RAP 21 is a pan-African media network that was initially launched by WAN together with the Union of Publishers in Central Africa (UEPAC).

The network successfully resumed its weekly publication both in English and French in April 2007 and has seen a progressive increase of its readership (1,100 subscribers to date). High quality interviews with African publishers and editors and feature stories on important developments in the press industry and in the field of press freedom have been published since then, as well as news of direct relevance, and opportunities for African media professionals.

Missions and Cooperation

IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG)

In July 2007, WAN, as a member of the TMG chairing committee, addressed a letter to French Foreign Affairs Minister to highlight the continuing violations of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Tunisia on the eve of a State visit to Tunis by the French President. The letter called on the French government to pressure the Tunisian authorities to respect its domestic and international obligations in the field of human rights. The letter notably referred to the case of Mohamed Abbou, a Tunisian human rights lawyer and writer, sentenced to three and a half years in prison for exercising his right to freedom of expression. Abbou was released on 24 July.

On behalf of the IFEX TMG, WAN addressed a second letter to the Foreign Affairs Minister to protest the vicious attack against journalists and freedom of expression advocates Sihem Bensédrine et Omar Mestiri upon their return to Tunisia from a trip abroad in March 2008.

Centres of Excellence in Journalism Training

In March, the Press Freedom team participated in a meeting to set up Centres of Excellence in Journalism Training across the African continent. The meeting, which took place in Grahamstown, South Africa, brought together representatives from journalism schools in Africa as well as donor and media development organisations. The WAN representative introduced the media development work of WAN and explained how the organisation could contribute to the programme.

Other Cooperation

WAN endeavours to support, cooperate with and advise as many organisations as possible on press freedom and media development issues.

In the past year WAN has consolidated its cooperation with organisations such as the International News Safety Institute (INSI), the International Press Institute (IPI), International Media Support (IMS), the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations, the European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA), the International Publishers Association (IPA), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and Human Rights in China.

With its special status of Associate Relations with UNESCO, WAN has continued to work closely with the freedom of expression staff of that organisation on a wide range of initiatives in different areas of the world.

WAN also continues to be an active player in the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, an electronic network linking dozens of press freedom and human rights groups world-wide.

Monitoring and Updating of Journalists Killed

In the past year, WAN monitored and published cases of all journalists killed worldwide. A total of 95 cases were documented in 2007. The highest number of journalist casualties occurred in Iraq, with 44 killings.

Media Development Programmes

WAN seeks not only to defend press freedom, but to promote it. In essence, this means to help newspapers in developing and transitional countries to acquire the legal guarantees and economic means to fully exploit their freedom and to resist pressures.

In a move to give new dynamism and ambition to all WAN’s press freedom initiatives, former President Bengt Braun was appointed Chairman of a Management Board for the Press Freedom Development Fund. It was decided that the Fund’s Board would over time co-opt committed personalities who can be instrumental in achieving the Fund’s objectives. Immediate action points, including meetings with the Heads of States of Azerbaijan, Cuba and Eritrea to address press freedom violations in these countries, were agreed.

In one of the first new actions, press freedom staff met in May with two senior European Union officials to talk about jailed journalists in Eritrea in the light of an EU aid programme for that country.

Iraqi Newspaper Development Programme

This programme, aimed at independent Iraqi newspapers, which was launched in December 2006, was completed in October 2007 when WAN organised a Newspaper Layout and Design Course for the newspaper designers from five independent newspapers in Iraq.

On the request of the United Nations Development Programme, WAN submitted a second project proposal in September 2007, applying for funds to continue working with the independent press in Iraq. The project is still pending.

The aim is to create a group of five to six Newspapers of Excellence, which will receive relevant training in various fields of media management, and in the future serve as models for other independent newspapers in the country.

Arab Newspaper Development Programme (ANDP)

The goal of the Arab Newspaper Development Project (ANDP) is to support and promote the collective intelligence that editors, publishers and press managers represent when they act together. The project encourages exchange between newspapers throughout the Arab region and supports them in implementing successful commercial and editorial strategies. In practice, the ANDP project will support a total of twelve selected newspapers from the Arab region. In the first phase of the project, there are three core partners: the El Watan newspaper in Algeria, the An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon and publisher Hisham Kassem in Egypt, who is currently in the process of launching a new independent daily.

Each of the three core ANDP partners devises and implements a commercial or editorial strategy, with the support of an external consultant. Once carried out to completion, each newspaper, in collaboration with the WAN team and its external consultant, develops a programme to disseminate the expertise and lessons learned from their own projects to three newspapers in countries within the region. Significant progress was made on all three projects during the year.

Vietnam Press Leaders Training Programme

In 2005, WAN launched a training programme for Vietnamese newspaper executives. Designed to accelerate the growth and professionalism within the newspaper market, the programme was tasked with identifying the key training needs of the Vietnamese press.

All of the six scheduled programmes have now been completed successfully. The latest programme, Newspaper Marketing, was completed in January 2008, and was attended by 28 senior managers, sub editors and general reporting staff. The other programmes, which were carried out in 2006 and 2007, dealt with Advertising, Editorial Issues, Digital & New Media and Circulation & Newspaper Sales and Management of People.

WAN is currently planning for the last phase of the training programme, which will consist of five in-depth media management workshops for a selected number of Vietnamese newspapers. These papers will also be invited to next year’s WAN annual Congress in India, to be followed by a ground-breaking seminar with Vietnamese overseas publications.

Conferences/Training and Events

The 60th World Newspaper Congress, 14th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2007 took place with great success in Cape Town, South Africa, last June, hosted by the Newspaper Association of South Africa. The attendance - 1600 newspaper publishers, senior executives and editors from 112 countries - was the second highest in the history of the organisation and the programme, social events and planning were unanimously found to be outstanding.

The Training & Events division, which organises all other WAN conferences, held another full programme of events over the past twelve months, with quality programmes and high attendances.

The past year saw an important increase in both the number and diversity of events organised, based on the WAN mission statement - “To help newspapers increase readership and sustain and increase advertising and other revenues through events, conferences and publications.” The quality of the events, which we constantly look to improve, produces an increasingly satisfied audience as the numerous testimonials we receive demonstrate. The revenues also help finance growth of WAN activities in general.

In the course of the year, the division organised:

Info Services Expo 2007, June, Cape Town, South Africa

The 2007 Expo attracted dozens of exhibitors and industry suppliers who made the most of this unique opportunity to meet and network with newspaper publishers and editors. We hear increasingly from our exhibitors how important this event has become to newspaper suppliers over the last few years. The Shaping the Future of the Newspaper stand was, as always, the centrepiece of the event, increasing participants awareness of the SFN project.

The 2nd World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo, October 2007, Amsterdam

The 10th World Editor and Marketeer Conference & Expo, October 2007, Amsterdam

USA Study Tour, ‘Digital Revenue Generation’ New York & Washington, December 2007

Scenario Planning Seminar, Paris, January 2008

The 18th World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo, Budapest, March, 2008

Digital Winners Conference, Oslo, March, 2008

UK Study Tour, ‘Digital Revenues at Newspaper Companies’ London, March-April, 2008

Promoting the Newspaper project

Two new advertising campaigns to promote the impact and influence of newspapers were undertaken during the year. The campaign concept is now focussed on promoting the unique selling points of the newspaper. The advertisements have appeared in publications all over the world; they are available for downloading on our website at www.wan-press.org.

WAN will organize a new event in 2009 entitled ‘The Power of Print’, which is a part of the same project to assert the enduring importance, popularity and effectiveness of print and will highlight, among other features, the technical developments which enable greater efficiency and more attractive products.

Marketing & Sales

For the first time in its history,WAN created a dedicated Marketing and Sales department during the year, to provide support for all its activities and services. The continued expansion of the organization demands increased funding from sources other than membership fees. The goal of the Marketing & Sales department is to raise funds for every department within the organization, in order to better attain all the goals and objectives of WAN. Early results of the new team show very promising results.

The Marketing & Sales department is also responsible for WAN’s database, which has been considerably improved in terms of application and content. Cross-selling strategies have been introduced, together with a customer service desk to improve the quality of WAN’s relations with its multiple audiences.

The central focus of many WAN activities to help newspapers become better and more profitable continues to be the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project.

The central focus of many WAN activities to help newspapers become better and more profitable continues to be the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project.

Shaping the Future of the Newspaper

Strategic Business Partners

There have been five SFN Partners in the course of the year, with the addition of Atex in January 2008:

Atex, the leading supplier of solutions and services for advertising, content management, circulation and online applications.

MAN, a leading world company for newspaper production systems.

PubliGroupe, the Swiss-based international advertising promotion group.

UPM-Kymmene, one of the world’s leading printing paper producers.

Telenor, the leading Norwegian telcom, IT and media company.

SFN Team

The SFN Team has four full-time members, including the director, business analyst, editorial manager and page/graphics designer and various other WAN Secretariat staff give support. We also have occasional freelance help, including bloggers and guest writers.

2008 Study Tours and Company visits

All of the study tours, site visits, surveys and interviews which take place over the project year are fed into the analysis that is published in the SFN Strategy Reports and presentations. At the heart of this content focus are our customers: newspaper publishers world-wide. In the course of preparing reports, 70 media companies around the world have been visited, and no fewer than 250 interviews have taken place in person, by phone and by email. The project has produced more than 400 trend charts over year, which are used in SFN reports and presentations. These data sets are also made available to Partners and members through SFN presentations and the SFN graphics database.

Strategy Reports 2007/08

Six strategy reports were completed and distributed during the year, together with the World Digital Media Trends survey:

- 7.1 Envisioning the Newspaper 2020 (October 2007)

- 7.2 Engaging Young Readers (December 2007)

- 7.3 Investing in Newspapers (December 2007)

- 7.4 The Value of News Content (February 2008)

- 7.5 Scenario Planning for Newspaper Companies (April 2008)

- 7.6 Benchmarking New Digital Revenues (May 2008)

- SFN Extra: World Digital Media Trends (April 2008)

Websites

SFN and industry information is now published on two WAN websites: www.futureofthenewspaper.com and www.sfnblog.com.

The blog now has thousands of subscribers, and its usage is growing at a healthy pace. We continue our content-sharing partnership with the Media Management Center in the USA.

Presentations: Conferences and Events

Presentations on the SFN Project have been made to numerous conferences, companies and academic institutions in the past year, including:

WAN Digital Publishing Conference, Amsterdam

WAN Editor & Marketer Conference, Amsterdam

Hungarian Publishers Association, Hungary

MAN conference, Augsburg, Germany

PANPA, Australia

Newspaper Association of America, Washington, DC

HEBDOS conference, Montreal

Ringier annual management seminar

MAZ Convergence Conference, Lucerne, Switzerland

FLEET Convergence Conference, Brussels

Telenor Digital Winners, Oslo

Digital Publishers Association, Oslo

WAN Advertising Conference, Budapest

Atex conferences in Monte Carlo, Nice and Malaga

Upcoming China conference for PubliGroupe

Die Burger Conference in Cape Town

WAN Congress in Cape Town

Media Management Center Conference, Northwestern University, Chicago

New SFN Initiatives 2007-2008

Print-Digital Metric Consortium: WAN/SFN has hosted four meetings with top leaders from a variety of media metrics organizations to join a consortium whose main objective is to discuss and build an apt currency for print and Web newspapers combined. The organisations include ABC, IFABC (UK), Scarborough, Newspaper Association of America, Canadian Association of Newspapers, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Scandinavian newspaper associations, Brazillian Newspaper Association, Media Metrics, ComScore and many more. There are no international standards and no coordination when it comes to debate on how the Print-Web Currency would be constructed. WAN is filling that void by creating a consortium to discuss the possibilities. At the last meeting in New York in February, we decided to compile a book about each members’ areas of expertise and work on cross-media metrics. We expect this could be the “bible” of cross media metrics to date.

Research

WAN again published its huge annual World Press Trends survey, tracking press industry data in 234 countries and territories, backed up by a searchable database available to members.

Innovations

The Innovation International Media Consulting Group again cooperated with WAN to track exciting new developments in the industry over the past year and produced its 2008 Global Report on Innovations in Newspapers for the Göteborg Congress.

World Editors Forum

WEF, the WAN division for senior news executives, has been actively preparing its future over the year, with high focus on digital issues.

A new 2008 - 2010 strategic plan has been adopted. The first results include:
  launch of the new Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org) which is now developing as a professional network and a marketplace.

  development of online surveys such as the Newsroom Barometer.

  experimentation of an e-Editors Forum in Göteborg for editors who cannot attend the conference.

  “E-consulting for editors”, an online coaching programme focused on the newsroom integration process, also launched in Göteborg.

The goal is not to neglect traditional activities: at the moment, they allow WEF to invest in the future and they are still developing well.

The annual Editors Forum conference

The event in Göteborg showed an increase of 25 per cent in attendance over 2007, with participation going from 340 to more than 420 news executives.

As in 2005 and 2006, seven social events (editors’ cocktail, breakfasts, lunches...) are part of the classical Forum and reinforce the loyalty of participants, as well as the distribution to all Forum participants of the Trends in Newsroom report.

WEF membership

Membership of the Forum has more than 10 per cent over the year, to 325.

Trends in Newsrooms

TIN remains the most successful WAN report in terms of sales. Based on the analysis section of the Editors Weblog and on the Newsroom Barometer, Trends in Newsrooms is focused on:

  newsroom management

  editorial quality and new storytelling processes

  citizen journalism and user-generated content

  convergence and integrated newsrooms

  online strategies and e-paper.

The World Editors Partnership Programme

33 sponsored editors attended the annual WEF conference in Göteborg thanks to the WEPP coaching programme for emerging country editors.

In this its fourth year the World Editors Partnership Programme was backed by Northern European sponsors (the Swedish Institute, Norwegian publishers foundations...) and again by the Knight Foundation in the US through the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)

The sponsored editors become WEF Members for one year and are coached by the WEF staff before and after the annual conference.

The Newsroom Barometer

More than 700 editors participated in the 2008 survey to establish the second Newsroom Barometer, which aims to gain better knowledge of the changes in newsrooms through the eyes of editors-in-chief and senior news executives. Every year, the poll will ask the same questions in order to track important shifts at news organizations around the world.

The survey was sponsored by Reuters Thomson.

WEF Study Tours:

WEF understook five study tours around the world during the year:
  in Spain in July 2007 about the integration process

  in Finland in September 2007 about mobile news

  in the UK in December 2007 about integrated newsrooms

  in Paris and London in February 2008 about Young Readers

  in the US in April 2008 about digital media activities

These 5-day programmes were all successful, with demand double the seats available on each tour.

The Editors Weblog - a central hub for WEF

Launched in January 2004, the Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org) has becme a major activity of the World Editors Forum, as important as the annual conference. The weblog can be seen as the voice of editors-in-chief, with its own interviews and reports.

Its major redesign in March 2008 is aimed to make it a profit center, with advertising paying for the editorial staff dedicated to this activity.

With 1,600 unique visitors per day in May 2008, the Editors Weblog can become the hub of all WEF activities and WEF will transform it in a professional network and a marketplace.

Activities to promote young reader and literacy programmes

WAN continues to invest a great deal of time and resources in developing the use of newspapers by young people. The past year has seen extensive activity to introduce and reinforce Newspapers in Education programmes in emerging and transitional democracies, as well to encourage newspapers everywhere to use all platforms to engage readers under age 25.

Norske Skog, the Norway-based newsprint producer, committed to a renewal and expansion of its support for this work through 2012.

Actions over the year included extensive work in both emerging and mature markets and included:

World Young Reader Prize

WAN awarded top honours in four categories of activity in the World Young Reader Prize and named a “World Young Reader Newspaper of the Year” to La Prensa-Grafica of El Salvador, for committing to a “Total Youth Think” approach through retreats with the young and integration of their needs into the core editorial decisions of the paper.

Top awards also went to Gazeta Wyborcza of Poland (public service) for a multi-media national campaign to save a river that focused on the young and to The Patriot News (NIE) for a multi-faceted literacy project that targeted families. WAN awarded commendations to newspapers in Bulgaria (Borba), Brazil (Zero Hora), Namibia (Republikein), Poland (Gazeta Wyborcza), Russia (Delovoy Peterburg), Spain (Diario de Navarra), Venezuela (Urbe) and the United States (Denver News Agency and the New York Daily News).

Details at www.wan-press.org/worldyoungreaderprize

Young Reader Study Tour & Round Table

A young reader study tour in February organized through WAN’s World Editors Forum, focused on niche products and strategies for print, online and mobile telephone. Visits included Play Bac Presse, publisher of three French dailies for children, the French sports daily l’Equipe, which is launching a youth edition, and

Oink, a London-based business newspaper for children, plus companies with expertise in connecting to the young on non-print platforms such as Daily Motion (the Eurpe-based video sharing netowrk), Apple, mobile telephone specialists from mobileYouth and g8wave mobile telephone specialists Skyblog (from Skyrock radio). Participants also did some youth-centered exercises.

The annual Young Reader Round Table examined how El Correo (Spain) changed to meet young people where they were on multiple platforms, including print, while retaining older readers, how Ouest-France gave validity to youth “solidarity initiatives,” and what the decade-old award-winning South African youth supplement READright has done to remain an effective and valued resource.

International Literacy Day

Dozens of newspapers used a free serialized story WAN offered in connection with International Literacy Day on 8 September to help newspapers remind readers that they are a core reading resource. Newspapers in markets as rich as Switzerland to those as struggling as Liberia committed to using “The Monkey King,” a 17-part story based on a Chinese fable set in Cambodia.

WAN provided the story, illustrations and an activities guide in English and Spanish. Breakfast Serials (USA) donated the story and The Use the News Foundation (USA) donated an activity guide. WAN also provided free feature and photos about the plight of some of the world’s real monkeys, donated by Sardine Features (France). WAN also offered public service advertisements that highlighted research showing the academic benefits for children who are exposed to newspapers in schools.

Young Readership Research

The “Engaging Young Readers” report was released in December as part of WAN’s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project, a sequel to the 2003 report on that topic. The report included a survey of newspaper executives and explored what the industry needs to address in this matter as well as cases of good practice.

WAN also took the next steps in Youth Media DNA, an ambitious multiphase, global research project to build a new picture of the news and information needs of the young both nationally and internationally. D-Code consulting group of Canada created a questionnaire for use in the first wave of country studies, the United States, The Netherlands and Finland.

Previously, DECODE had made a preliminary analysis in 10 countries to test hypotheses that had emerged from a detailed assessment of research since 2000 that related to young readership.

Freedom of Expression and the Young

WAN increased work to help assure that young people learn the importance of freedom of the press. In its role as an official advisor to UNESCO, WAN is helping create a freedom of expression toolkit.

For World Press Freedom Day (3 May), WAN offered a new set of activities newspapers could use in a special insert or page on that day and encouraged newspapers in more than two dozen countries to support activities young people had devised for that day in cooperation with Loesje, a global free speech youth organization. WAN also is also supporting publication of a book of those actions.

In both 2007 and 2008, WAN encouraged young people to work for the release of Shi Tao, WAN’s 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom laureate.

The WAN Newspapers in Education Development Project

This major activity continues to bring the value of reading newspapers to classrooms around the world, and important support to those who do this work locally.

The NIE Development Project, supported by Norske Skog, provides a wide range of programmes for using newspapers and magazines in education. Uniformly, teachers have been enthusiastic in launching this approach in schools wherever it has been introduced. The next main challenge will be helping stakeholders determine how to keep it all going.

Training activity in the last 12 months concentrated on strengthening existing programmes both in content and in sustainability. WAN conducted follow-up NIE workshops in South Africa, Jordan and Russia, plus a roundtable on sustaining NIE in Africa with coaches from South Africa and Ile de la Réunion working with teams that had created excellent NIE projects in Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Uganda and Zambia.

In a new agreement with Norske Skog, WAN will expand this work to include the full range of young reader strategies all around the world.

Other young reader support work

WAN endeavours to respond whenever a partner, member association or newspaper asks for help in young reader work. This happens as much in developed as poorer countres. Over the past year, WAN has helped programmes in Germany, Luxembourg, Russia and the United States in various ways. A new part of this advisory work has concentrated on assuring that the growing body of “media literacy” efforts include an understanding and appreciation of the newspaper.

Communications

Though not included as a specific objective of the Action Plan, the extension and improvement of WAN’s communications lies at the heart of all the plan’s ambitions.

The success of an organisation like WAN depends very much on its ability to achieve impact, influence and prestige both within and outside the global newspaper industry.

The continuation of a global WAN initiative to promote the power of the newspaper and to rectify some of the absurd and damaging claims being made about its imminent demise has offered new opportunities to demonstrate that newspapers are the medium of the future and not the past.

In addition, through its SFN programme and other activities, WAN has been generating data and analysis about the global press industry and has been distributing this information to a wide audience. The increase in this information not only promotes the activities of the association. It also has news value in its own right, resulting in greater coverage in both the trade and general press.

As a direct result, WAN is recognised as an expert source of information about the world press industry and is receiving an increasing number of unsolicited press queries on a wide variety of issues of concern to the world’s press. WAN’s experts have been the source for stories about media in publications and web sites across the world.

Developments in the past year include:

- The launch of the first WAN "social networks" around the World Newspaper Advertising Conference and around the World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2008. The networks, an emerging communications tool, facilitate contacts among conference participants and between participants and WAN.

  A re-design of WAN’s websites to provide a more attractive interface and increased functionality. The re-design is being introduced section by section and is nearly complete.

  Traffic on WAN web sites continues to grow, now reaching 120,000 unique visitors a month, and increasing steadily month-on-month for three straight years.

  Dozens of press releases have been sent to a media list of more than four thousand correspondents over the year and regularly also to nearly 32,000 executives on the WAN database. Press coverage is increasing steadily, with hundreds of articles on WAN activities and views appearing in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines.

  The quarterly WAN Newsletter has increased its print run to 31,000.

  WAN continues to provide daily reports from all its conferences, sending full summaries of presentations to its members, with a shorter version available to non-members via e-mail and on its websites.

WAN Membership

The vast majority of newspaper associations in the democratic world are now WAN members and there is limited scope for bringing in new countries. Nevertheless, WAN gained two new member organisations:

  RIA Novosti news agency, Russia

  The European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS)

WAN continues to help create and reinforce newspaper associations in developing and transitional countries to bring them up to the level which will permit their entrance into the organisation.

WAN now groups 77 national newspaper associations, 10 regional and world-wide organizations, twelve news agencies, individual executives in 102 nations and 77 press groups who have joined under the new Company Member category.

Public Policy

The past year has again been dominated by two issues which have fully engaged WAN in the defence of the business interests of newspapers.

ACAP

The pilot phase of this initiative, launched by WAN and a global coalition of newspaper, magazine and book publishing organisations to create a technical solution to enable publishers to make their digital content available while protecting their copyright, was completed during the year.

The Automated Content Access Protocol project, which is now being implemented by publishers world-wide, is a tool through which content providers can communicate permissions information relating to access and use of their material in a form that can be readily recognised and interpreted by search engine crawlers, so the operators can comply with policies or licences.

Sports Rights

The News Media Coalition, a new organization comprised of leading media companies and associations, was set up to help protect the rights of newspapers to free and open access to sports matches and other events. The Coalition, in which WAN is playing a leading role, is making it possible to expand and intensify negotiations with sports organisations. WAN also took a seat on the FIFA Media Commission earlier this year, which will allow input into the terms and conditions for news dissemination from the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa.

Conclusion

In my view, WAN continues to serve well the global newspaper industry with a wide range of highly focussed and high quality programmes and products. The past year has again been one of significant progress and development in both the quantity and quality of WAN activities and services for the newspaper world-wide.

Special thanks are due in this progress to our President, Gavin O’Reilly, for his leadership of the organisation, to our Treasurer Fred Arp, and to the Executive Committee for their constant support and unfailing loyalty, to other members of the Board who have supported so well the mission and objectives of WAN, and to my colleague Directors of WAN Member Associations, for their support in so many ways.

My staff at our Secretariat in Paris also merits, as each year, my admiration and warm thanks for their hard work and good results.

Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of Newspapers

May 2008