Karen House, Senior Vice President of Dow Jones & Co. Inc. and Global Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, will examine the current definition of "news" and how this has changed in the face of rapid, transformational global economic change. There are now, she says, 63,000 multinational companies against only 7,000 in 1970, an evolution that has altered news definitions and created new reader needs. At the same time, Ms House will give her views on how subscriptions and advertising should be priced to reflect the value offered by newspapers. "In an era when media choices are proliferating, there is a tendency by the newspaper industry to fall into a sort of ’commodity pricing’ mindset," she contends. "As we are coming out of a recession, we are busy reassessing our pricing on both the advertising and circulation fronts, looking to make sure we remain the market leader and that we price according to the unique and premium value we offer our customers." Finally, Ms House will say how she believes newspaper publishers should view other media - as potential threats or as potential sources of new customers?

  The Daily Mail and General Trust is one of the world’s largest media companies, with national and regional newspaper titles and trade publications, together with broadcast interests, new media and events organization in 30 countries. The company has enjoyed extraordinary growth in recent years, both through aggressive diversification and the rise of its national newspapers, in particular. Every day, DMGT titles are read by half the United Kingdom’s adult population. Lord Rothermere, the young Chairman of the group, will tell the Congress why newspapers can continue to grow, provided they are focussed, well-managed and well-funded. The DMGT group includes: Northcliffe Newspapers, the best regional performers in the UK, with good profits and relatively stable circulations; the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, which have been uniquely successful through a combination of high investment in editorial content and the strongest marketing operation in the industry; the Evening Standard in London, which has eliminated two competitors and many new entrants to the market and has managed to compensate sales loss in the evening by sales growth in the morning; and the London Metro, a brand which has been extended across the leading regional centres in the United Kingdom.

  Brendan Hopkins, Chief Executive Officer of APN News & Media Ltd, Australasia’s largest regional newspaper, radio and outdoor advertising group, says that newspapers are the most exciting sector of the global media market and he pinpoints product and promotional innovations and editorial content as the areas most worthy of current attention. "Increasingly it is product and promotional innovation where we must invest more to attract our time-starved audiences, " he believes. "How many newspapers are investing more than 10 % of revenues on their product and promotion? Consumer products spend as much as 25 % of net revenues!" Mr Hopkins reckons that cost controls must be employed across all areas, and traditional cost centres restructured, to free up the necessary additional resources for marketing and promotion. "We must provide the consumer with what they want or, better still, what they believe they want. Editorial content must excite and entertain and be relevant particularly to the younger end of our markets," says Mr Hopkins, who describes newspapers as "the ultimate browser in our time-starved environment".

   The De Telegraaf company, one of the leading media groups in the Netherlands, dominates the newspaper market but faces a fast-changing business environment, with declining and aging readership and fierce competition on the advertising markets and the resultant pressure on revenues. Fred Arp, Director of De Telegraaf Holding, will tell the Congress how the company is facing these challenges by changing rapidly into a multi-media publishers. He will give examples of how they generate new revenues by targeting new advertisers and consumers and developing new business concepts.

  The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) group is the second-largest publisher of newspapers in Germany and one of Europe’s biggest regional press groups. It has interests in newspapers and magazines in seven countries and in total around 500 titles. The group is also well established in radio, television and on the web. Lutz Glandt, Managing Director of the WAZ Media Group, will explain, through case studies, the optimization, expansion and diversification strategies of his company.

  At the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora, Chief Editor Marcelo Rech says: "We make the journalists work more, so that the readers can work less". But it’s not just the journalists who strive to make life easier for the readers: all Zero Hora’s staff are passionate about customer service. Every person who contacts the newspaper’s call centre, even those just changing their addresses or making an enquiry about their subscriptions, is questioned about Zero Hora’s content that day, as a permanent way of responding to readers opinions and suggestions. The result of this and other strategies to adapt the title and keep close to readers has resulted in very high subscription retention levels and continuous sales growth. Marcelo Rech, together with Vice President Geraldo Correa and the Operations Manager Cristiano Nygaard, will present Zero Hora’s case in a special session on Circulation Winners.

   One of the successful newspapers featured in a special Congress session on ’Circulation Winners’ will be The Border Mail in Australia which is achieving constant annual circulation growth and has picked up the Newspaper of the Year award of the Pacific Newspaper Publishers Assocation for the past four years in its category (20,000 - 50,000 sales). Tony Whiting, Chief Executive Officer of The Border Morning Mail Ltd. will tell the Congress the secrets of the newspaper’s success, which include - say the PANPA judges - "pushing the barriers on innovation and creativity".

  This year the Innovations in Newspapers Global Report covers such issues as how The New York Times extends its brand with the Discovery Times TV channel; what newspapers are doing and can do to increase their advertising revenue; the "tabloid fever" sweeping the industry and the wrong way to compact newspapers; successful cases of new and innovative newspapers; new local sections as an editorial tool to add value to your newspaper; the secrets of three of the best European news websites, Le Monde, La Repubblica and Guardian Unlimited; why newspapers are wrong when they cut editorial and newsroom budgets... The English, Spanish and Italian printed versions of the new report will be distributed during a multi-media presentation of the 2004 Innovations in Newspapers at the WAN Congress in Istanbul in a session led by Juan Senor (London), Claude Erbsen (New York) and Juan Antonio Giner (Norfolk), consultants of the Innovation International Media Consulting Group.