Setting the Record Straight

Mr Balding said the World Editor and Marketeer Conference, which drew 450 participants from 64 countries to Athens, was a good opportunity to set the record straight about the strength and influence of newspapers.

"The facts are that almost 400 million people buy a newspaper in print every day," he says. "A conservative estimate is that over one billion people read a newspaper daily, and the numbers keep growing."

Over the past five years, worldwide circulation has increased 5 percent, and it grew 2 percent in 2004. Much of the increase comes in developing markets, but there was growth in mature markets as well -- eight countries in the European Union saw sales increases last year, as did 44 percent of the countries surveyed in WAN’s World Press Trends survey (www.wan-press.org/article7268.html). Eighty-four percent of the countries surveyed saw an increase in the number of newspaper titles.

"Yes, the challenges that newspapers face are intensifying. Our industry is not being complacent. There are a lot of new developments -- new titles are emerging, new formats are spreading like wildfire, together with a range of new products and new services," says Mr Balding.

"There is an effervescence in our industry globally and a real willingness to innovate."

Newspapers and the Birth of Democracy

In the birthplace of democracy, the Minister welcomed delegates with a tribute to the role and importance of newspapers to society.

"The free flow of information is important to democracy," he says. "The press, especially the print press, which you represent, is a forum where ideas are exchanged and you create a common sphere for that information exchange."

"This is especially important today. In addition to freedom of the press in the classical sense, these discussions must reflect a balance of opinion. The challenge of our age is to show in practice that both ideas can exist harmoniously."

Newspapers Need R&D

The conference Chairman called on newspapers to invest in more research and development.

He says the Unilever company spends 2.6 percent of revenues on R&D. Using that as a benchmark, Gannett would have 192 million dollars to invest. The Tribune Company would have 148 million, The New York Times, 85 million, Knight Ridder, 78 million and Dow Jones & Company, 43 million.

"I could go on," says Mr Smith. "Today, other media are trying to position newspapers as old and dying. They may be old, but they are not weak. They have the resources for the future.".

Mr Smith presented several examples of innovative newspaper research and experimentation and said more such projects were needed.

Islands of Value in an Ocean of Data

If the bulk of on-line advertising revenue goes to the search engines and big portals, and the subscription revenue goes to niche, focused web sites, how can a general interest newspaper make money on the web?

Mr Kamaras, who runs a profit-making sports website says newspapers should follow a mixed, layered model of free and paid content. His presentation focused on market conditions that favor this approach, and the variables that help determine what should be free and what should be paid.

"In the long term, all media will be two-tiered, with a free and a paid dimension," he says. "Think about it: 25 years ago, all TV was free, and all newspapers were paid. Now you have free and paid TV, and free and paid newspapers."

Readers as Contributing Partners

La Dépêche du Midi in southern France is undertaking an experiment with interactive television that it hopes will bring readers closer to the newspaper.

"One concern is to get the reader into the newspaper," says Mr Pachent. "We want to make it possible for them to express themselves, share their viewpoints with other readers."

The newspaper plans to organize conferences and workshops at which subscribers can participate in person or remotely, at home, through their interactive service. They will also be able to send video "letters to the editor" through the service -- "and their comments will go into the newspaper the next day, with a photo -- a virtual ’man in the street’ interview," says Mr Pachent.

The newspaper also plans to send questionnaires to readers through the service, and can use it to easily send targeted information. The newspaper will test the new service in January.

What Should A Newspaper Cost?

Circulation is vanity. Advertising is sanity.

That is the mantra of a new study by the World Association of Newspaper’s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which examined the impact of pricing on newspaper sales and revenues.

"Through our studies, we discovered that a company retains only 30 percent of revenue generated from circulation -- the rest is costs -- and retains 87 percent of revenue generated from advertising," says Ms Iordan.

Her presentation described all the factors that should be calculated when determining pricing strategies -- the company’s generic strategy, the perception of the newspaper among advertisers, strategic objectives, price elasticity, type of market, and costs. Using these factors, she ran several scenarios -- price wars, price increases, price decreases, and more.

For more on SFN studies, go to www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

Harnessing the Interactive Generation

In 2020, airline travel will have trebled, 60 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, broadband access will be ubiquitous, Play Station users will be parents, and a generation brought up with interaction will be taking charge.

How newspapers can take the challenges of this already developing new world and change them into assets was the subject of Mr Chisholm’s presentation.

Among other things, Mr Chisholm examined the phenomenon of how easy it is becoming for anyone, anywhere, to write a story and see it published -- if not in print, then online.

Citizen journalism can be a boon for newspapers.

"The world is full of millions and millions of people who want to do our job for us, and publish stories on their own," says Mr Chisholm. "Production editors no longer have staffs of 50 -- they have a staff of 50,000. The problem is, nobody knows what is good among all that. But certainly we have to be better than Google and the other aggregators at developing the tools to determine what is valuable," he says.

For more on the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, go to www.futureofthenewspaper.com.