The Digital Renaissance

Torry Pedersen, Managing Editor, VG Multimedia, Norway

WE are in a second renaissance - but this time it’s a digital one, said Torry Pedersen, managing editor at VG Multimedia of Norway.

“The printing press was the invention that enabled the distribution of the ideas of the Renaissance,” he said. “Digitalisation will enable a cultural transformation of similar dimensions."

Pedersen argued that newspapers will have to exploit the digitalisation and use it as an opportunity to:
  Increase revenues;
  Cut costs;
  Strengthen and expand brands;
  Interact with their readers; and
  Improve their reporting.

Pedersen warned that newspapers have to deepen their relationships with their customers. And mobile phones, through WAP and SMS, will allow them to do that.

“If there is one thing that young people want to do it is to interact,” he said. “My generation hears, listens and sees. This generation wants to interact.”

Mobile Needs Newspapers

Frode Ugland, Telenor, Norway

Mobile telephone operators are keen to partner with newspapers, says Mr Ugland.

They need newspapers’ content to keep subscribers loyal and to make more money from them, said Ugland.

He warned that newspapers were facing new challenges: with new players entering the media business; media usage changing; young people reading less and watching less television.

But surveys showed that most young people are never without their mobile phones. In the 24-hour media cycle, mobile phones follow people all round the clock. Other media come and go.

But mobile operators still need the content that only newspapers can provide. Newspapers have a broad media reach, exciting content and an existing sales force - all advantages they can bring to the mobile world.

Multimedia Multiplies Money

Jan Lamers, Media Consultant, Belgium

A newspaper can transform itself into a profitable multimedia model, according to Mr Lamers.

Lamers explained how a small newspaper publisher managed to embrace the digital age so that now 30 per cent of its revenue comes from the multimedia division.

Voralberger Medienhaus publishes newspapers in a part of eastern Austria that borders Switzerland and Germany and is separated from the rest of Austria by a mountain range. The newspaper company has exploited this “hot valley” to the maximum, Mr Lamers says.

The company’s digital expansion, through its subsidiary Teleport, includes a regional portal, an Internet service provider and telecom provider.

Now, 76 per cent of net users in the region go through Voralberg OnLine. Its newspaper web site receives 40 million page views and two million visits per month. And it has 35,000 clients for 1036hello!, the telecom operator.

Revenue from the multimedia operation now totals 17 million euros a year. Traditional business models are based on two revenue streams: advertising and circulation. But the long-terms trends are for circulation to decline and advertising to fall in market share at least. “Maybe it’s time to rethink our business model,” Lamer s said.

Using SMS to Get to Know Readers

Ian Haywood, Digital Media Business Manager, Associated Newspapers, UK

MOBILE phones can help newspapers get to know their readers better, says Mr Haywood.

His company runs competitions through mobile phones and SMS messages rather than through the traditional post.

“What you get back is that you get to know who they are - you can profile them,” Haywood said.

The Evening Standard in London, which is part of Associated, gets up to 50,000 entries to competitions via SMS.

Over six months that can build into a database of 100,000 unique users, Haywood said. From that, the paper can tell what its reader s are interested in: whether it be cars, holidays or visiting restaurants.

Armed with that information, the newspaper can send prompts via SMS to go and buy the paper when it contains relevant material. And Mobile can also help to make money out of people who read the paper but do not buy it, Haywood said.

“If you can get them to interact with your paper through the mobile phone then you can take money from them,” he explained.

Extended Reach with Electronic Editions

Shaun Dail, Olive Software, USA

Electronic editions are bringing a host of benefits to newspaper publishers, says Mr Dail.

Electronic editions provide the ability for newspapers to leverage their core business. They also let them to increase their circulations - now that auditors are coming around to allowing electronic editions to count as sold copies. And they extend the reach of a newspaper, both geographically and demographically.

Electronic editions can also help publishers to target elusive young readers.

“We have some customers that have sold bulk subscriptions through colleges and universities and have them billed into student activity fees - and are able to count them on the audited figures,” Dail said.

Geographically, people like to maintain ties with their communities whether they move regionally or globally. E-editions help people to maintain those ties - and they are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Electronic editions allow newspapers to find out more about reader behaviour, Dail said. “We have the ability to track exactly what stories they read, what advertising they look at and how many pages of the newspaper they turn to. It’s very valuable information."

As a whole, Dail said, e-publishing means that newspapers can expand their advertising markets, enter the field of non-traditional publications such as newsletters, profit from sale of archive material, gain from internal economies, and extend their core values into new media.