Four sessions, featuring leading newspaper executives drawn from some of the world’s most interesting and innovative papers, will announce the findings of new strategy reports on winning circulation strategies, new advertising concepts, best business practice in newspapers, and the impact of new formats and new designs.
The reports, currently being finalised, are being prepared within the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project. The SFN project, a major activity of the World Association of Newspapers, identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world.
SFN is one of several major components of the Congress, the 11th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2004, the global meetings of the world’s press, to be held in Istanbul, Turkey, from 30 May to 2 June. More than 1,000 publishers, managing directors, CEOs, Chief Editors, other senior newspaper executives and their guests are expected to attend the events.
Full programme details, the evolving participants list, and other essential information can be found here.
The four SFN sessions are:
Circulation winners: Lessons from some of the world’s most successful newspapers, which will outline the keys to circulation growth, with case studies and speakers from circulation winning newspapers.
The session will feature presentations by Paul Cooke, Managing Director of The Irish Daily Star; Geraldo Correa, Vice President, Marcelo Rech, Chief Editor, and Cristiano Nygaard, Operations Manager, of Brazil’s Zero Hora; Tony Whiting, CEO of The Border Mail of Australia; and Vuslat Dogan, CEO of Hurriyet, and Hanzade Dogan, CEO of Milliyet, Turkey.
New advertising concepts, in which the impact of advertising migration to the internet -- particularly classified advertising -- is examined, with a focus on the trends and opportunities that are emerging for newspaper companies to capture and dominate the local and personal transaction process.
Melinda Gipson, the Director of Electronic Media for the Newspaper Association of America, will be a speaker in this session.
Best Business Practices in Newspapers, which reviews the best practices that have emerged from SFN project research and includes the first results of the new WAN benchmarking initiative.
Jim Chisholm, Director of Shaping the Future of the Newspaper, will present the studies.
Does Size Matter?, a look at how and why many newspapers around the world are reducing their formats to "compact" size -- and some are going even smaller. The session will examine the case of a publisher who has achieved extraordinary circulation success by switching size.
Speakers in the session include Ally Palmer, Director of the UK-based newspaper design firm Palmer Watson, and Ivan Fallon, CEO of Independent News and Media of the UK.
The latest SFN reports to be revealed at the Congress focus on these themes and more: New Classified Models; The Mobile Opportunity; Circulation Winners; Newspaper Development in Emerging Markets; New Designs, New Formats; and The Media Landscape. The reports are only available to Congress participants, WAN members or by subscription to the SFN project (www.futureofthenewspaper.com).
WAN conducts the SFN project with support from six international partners -- PubliGroupe, the Swiss-based international advertising and promotion group; MAN Roland, a leading company for newspaper production systems; UPM-Kymmene, one of the world’s leading printing paper producers; Unisys, a leading supplier of mission-critical solutions, services and innovative technology to the publishing industry; Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecommunications, IT and media group; and Samsung Electronics, a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, and digital convergence technology.
Sponsors of the Congress and the Forum now include the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmens Association, Anadolu Beverage Group, Efes, Coca-Cola, the Union of Chambers of Commerce, E-Kolay, the Dünya newspaper and Reuters. The main local organiser is the Milliyet newspaper.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 72 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 13 news agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.
Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr.
