Summaries from the Congress and Forum

The World Association of Newspapers asked the Innovation consulting group to report on innovations in newspapers world-wide and where they are best implemented. Two hundred questionnaires were sent to 56 countries, and trends began to emerge.

Among the topics: how newspaper newsrooms become multimedia 'information engines'; how the Internet gives journalists new and fascinating information sources; why The New York Times is taking big strides with its national edition; what the Los Angeles Times is doing to end 'church and state' newsroom/marketing separation; where you can find the best university papers and training programs; and the impact of daily reader feedback.

The report also covers: why weekend supplements are so hot in Europe; what you can learn from the leaders in the infographics revolution; how elegant and popular design contribute to the high circulation of Scandinavian newspaper; and other trends.

 

"The Boston Globe & Boston.com - Building a Franchise in the New Millennium
Steven Taylor, Executive Vice President of the Boston Globe and President of Boston Globe Electronic Publishing

The Boston Globe believes in the Internet as a way to expand in the future. "It wasn't a hard choice to make," says Stephen Taylor. "Some even called it an investment or insurance for the future. If the Web was indeed going to make it, some of us said, 'we needed to be there.'

So the Globe, already a leading newspaper in New England, decided to go on-line in a big way in an effort to extend its franchise, particularly for classified advertising which for decades was the most important and largest category on which the Globe was built.

Among other things, They decided to go beyond the newspaper by creating a regional site for news and information built on partnerships with other local organizations and content providers. They now have more than 60 partners.

"In essence, our aim from the start was to position Boston.com as the leading source of news and information about Boston and New England. In this way, we felt, we could best fulfil our mission: to support, protect and extend the franchise of the Globe. That is still our aim, and I believe we are succeeding," said Mr Taylor.

 

"Tribune - More Than 150 Years Old, But Not Acting Like It"
John W. Madigan, President, Chairman and CEO, Tribune Company, USA

The newspaper business is still the foundation of the Tribune Company, whose flagship is the Chicago Tribune, but the company has undergone a great deal of expansion in broadcasting and new media.

In fact, the Tribune Company has, in the past month, formed a new business group called Tribune Interactive, which brings together the interactive functions of the company's four newspapers and 18 television stations as well as other Internet activities.

"We began our interactive publishing activities as part of our newspaper group, but today interactive has come of age, so that is can stand beside publishing, broadcasting and education," says John Madigan.

This presentation summarises what the Tribune Company has been doing in this area and covers: how it redefined its scope and took a fresh look at its business; the role of scenario playing; the importance of partnerships; and what it did to make the organization more highly motivated and effective."

 

"No Fear of the Millennium"
Frits Campagne, Deputy Editor, Het Parool, Netherlands

Will Het Parool make it to the year 2000? If you worked for the newspaper in 1997, it was a painful question as preparations were being made for the demise of what was once the most highly esteemed newspapers in the country.

But the newspaper was given one last chance. "We were given until the year 2000 to convince the Board that the paper had a future," says Frits Campagne. "We were cocky enough to think we already knew the answer."

The editors turned the failing national newspaper into a big city newspaper -- in this case, the city of Amsterdam. The remake included a new image -- "not only reliable, but cheeky, modern, exciting and controversial, with a special appeal for younger readers."

The newspaper is now the fastest growing in Holland. Will it make it to the year 2000? No question.

 

"JP Explorer - Off Road Journalism in 500 Days Around the Globe"
Ulrik Haagerup, Chief Editor, Morgenavisen Jyllands Posten, Denmark

Jyllands Posten bans focus groups and reader surveys. "We believe that we are paid for editing our paper and doing stories we find important. Focus groups are editors' excuses for not making their own decisions," says Ulrik Haagerup.

The newspaper believes it is good business to invest in content, in good reporting. It has added more than 100 reporters to staff in six years and increased the news hole by 50 percent. It has gone from being the fifth largest newspaper in Denmark ten years ago to being number one in terms of circulation.

Among new projects: to mark the millennium, the newspaper decided to send a car from headquarters in Aarhus to Copenhagen -- but the wrong way. "So instead of the normal two-and-a-half hours, the journey will take 500 days and bring us around Planet Earth -- just in time for us to return to City Hall Square of Copenhagen a few minutes before the turn of the year."

The mission: to rediscover the world and explore problems, tendencies and people of significance to Denmark and the Danes in the next millennium.

 

"World-Wide Research of Newspaper Pricing Policies"
McKinsey & Company, Inc.

What is the relationship between the price of a newspaper and its circulation? This question is at the heart of a broad range of marketing tools that can be used to affect the relationship between price and circulation.

"Price is an expensive tool to increase circulation, and what we have found is that to use price most effectively, it must be combined with the other elements of the marketing mix, for example, product content, promotions and sales strategy", said Luis Ubinas of McKinsey & Company.

In addition to examining the relationship between price and circulation, and how it can be used in effective marketing, the presentation includes several case reviews for newspapers that operate in different market positions. These studies show how high growth newspapers have successfully combined price strategies with other marketing levers through their understanding of the market dynamics in which they operate.

 

"Neuroscience and Advertising: Incompatible No Longer?"
Noel Coburn, Managing Director, Caxton Ltd, South Africa

To better understand how advertising may work, one should better understand the physical mechanisms which the brain uses to process information, says Noel Coburn. In particular, he believes that information presented in a "brain-friendly" way can be more easily processed by the brain than information presented in a "confusing" way.

"I further argue that the structure of the information presented by print media is potentially less confusing than the structure of the information presented by TV," he says.

Mr Coburn has conducted three experiments in how the workings of the brain "interfere" with an external an external communication such as an advertisement. Science, he says, will provide an objective, predictive and measurable way to determine how advertising works.

 

"Passion for the Reader"
Christian Van Thillo, Chief Executive Officer, De Persgroep, Belgium

The Belgian media company De Persgroep was a nameless "incoherent whole" of loss-making publishing houses and printing companies when Christian Van Thillo arrived ten years ago. Today, it is a well-positioned and profitable media group, which is active in newspapers, magazines and television.

"We strongly believe that our sharp focus on the end-consumers, who are our readers, our viewers and our listeners, has been essential in the favourable evolution of the group. Despite our diversification, newspapers continue to be the heart of our company. And our belief in the future of newspapers remains intact," says Mr Van Thillo.

The company's turnaround began with the divestiture of printing plants, because it wanted to be a pure media player and not an industrial company. Loss-making magazines were sold or titles were merged -- all in a few months time. Finally, a strategic plan was formulated that called for investment in newsrooms to increase editorial quality and marketing.

"Everything that was not directly related to what we believed would become our core-competence, being our reader-driven strategy, was decided to be outsourced," he said. "Not only the printing of our magazines but also the distribution of all our titles and even the collection of advertising were outsourced."

For more information -- including copies of the presentations and WAN's soon-to-be-published Congress Report and Forum Report -- contact WAN, 25 rue d'Astorg, 75008 Paris France, Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00, Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. E-mail: contact_us@wan.asso.fr.

 

"World Trends in the Newspaper Industry: An Update"
Timothy Balding, Director General, World Association of Newspapers

Newspapers in many countries saw circulation gains in 1998, in some cases after a long period of decline, according to the 1999 edition of World Press Trends, the annual WAN survey of the world-wide newspaper industry.

Newspapers in no less than 19 countries experienced growth or stabilisation in sales over the year. These included markets which recorded circulation growth for the first time in a decade.

Newspaper advertising revenues showed significant, and even spectacular, growth in nearly all countries that WAN surveys. Newspapers in Western Europe actually increased their market share of advertising in 1998, for the first time in the 10 years that WAN has been conducting the survey.

"There seems to be clear evidence that newspapers are making a comeback after this tough decade, and in many cases are reversing or stabilising the downward trends," said Mr Balding.

 

"Newspaper Companies in a Saturated Market: Networking as a Key Factor of Success"
Marco Stoppani, Chief Publishing Officer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland

In an effort to increase the press' potential for greater efficiency, Swiss newspapers have been practicing a form of "co-opetition" -- a combination of co-operation and competition. This presentation focuses on the challenges of collaboration among newspaper publishers who in fact are in a competitive relationship.

"In the past five years, there has been a marked increase in editorial communities, linked ad acquisition, shared production facilities, joint media data banks and distribution networks," says Mr Stoppani.

Mr Stoppani, along with Ernst Grab, general manager of Publicitas, and Kurt Zimmerman, marketing manager of TA Media, discussed three areas of "co-opetition": -- "PrintOnline," a joint venture among media companies to provide digital transmission of layout materials from the advertising client to the publishing house and print shop; the creation of "advertising pools" and other newspaper alliances to strengthen print advertising; and "Press Web," a digital ad platform.

 

"Tradition, Planning & Vision - Competing in the Information Marketplace of the 21st Century"
Michael Golden, Vice Chairman and Senior Vice President, The New York Times Company, USA

The New York Times Company, owner of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, 21 regional newspapers, The New York Times syndicate, nine television and radio stations, three magazines, and fifty percent of the International Tribune. This presentation focused on what the New York Times newspaper is doing to maintain journalistic and financial balance and it's strategy for competing in the global information marketplace.

"The primary reasons why we have been able to prosper during good times and bad, bull and bear markets and war and peace is because our long-term thinking and our day-to-day activities are both guided by a well-established tradition and a clearly defined set of principles," said Mr Golden. Among them: "Editorial excellence and independence are essential to our profitability, and profit sustains them."

But tradition is only one side of the coin -- the New York Times also had to move in a new direction that married its traditional print strengths with new digital platforms. "We can no longer be a separate print strategy and a separate broadcast strategy and a separate Internet strategy. Instead, we will be guided by a single strategy that unifies all our actions and focuses on the information marketplace."

 

"Censorship and Propaganda in the 1990s"
John Pilger, Journalist and Film-maker, UK

Focusing on the Western media, Mr Pilger contends that media monopolies create what he calls "orthodoxy of the trivial, a sameness and a predictability that leads to the most effective from of censorship - censorship by omission, and self-censorship."

Censorship and propaganda in democracies is more "thorough" than in dictatorships, he said. "No imprisonment is required, no loss of fingernails is called for. There's another, far more effective way. Unlike totalitarian societies, the conformity of information and opinion is insidious, ingrained, even celebrated. Occasional dissenting voices reinforce the impression of diversity of opinion."

Mr Pilger says reporters must be able to "break the ties that bind us to the state and its vested interested" in order to be able to report objectively and humanely.

 

"Advertising Trends Past, Present and Future"
Robert Coen, Senior Vice President and Forecasting Director, McCann-Erickson, USA

Mr Coen provides an overview of advertising trends from the beginning of the 20th century -- when marketers realized that, in addition to mass-producing superior products, they also had to persuade consumers to buy their products -- through the last year of the century.

What shaped advertising trends? It was the great events of the century -- the Depression, the Wars, the rise of automobiles and the vast road network that changed the way we live, television and many others.

In the third quarter of the century, for example, "most media lost share to television. On the other hand, television helped to fuel exceptional growth in advertising usage, and even with a lower share, most media enjoyed a very good advertising revenue growth as they changed and modified themselves to fit into the new media strategies."

Today, the Internet should be included with radio, broadcast TV and cable to make up electronic media. "Radio and TV have made considerable inroads on the shares of all other media, but cable and the Internet appear to be following a much more gradual trends," he said, adding it was unlikely that non-electronic media would lose serious market position for at least two or three decades.

World Bank President Urges Cooperation at WAN Congress

World Bank President James Wolfensohn laid out a framework for development strategy Sunday and said the press could play "an absolutely pivotal role" if it focused more attention on the non-financial aspects of development.

"Most of the debate is focused on the questions of economics and finance," said Mr Wolfensohn, who was addressing some of the 1,100 publishers and editors from 88 countries who are in Zürich for the World Association of Newspapers' 52nd World Newspaper Congress and 6th World Editors Forum, the global meetings of the newspaper industry, 13-16 June.

"You have a responsibility to bring the attention of your governments and people to the fact that this is only part of the story. Countries don't move forward solely on the basis of money," said Mr Wolfensohn, speaking via a two-way video link-up from New York to the joint WAN/World Bank conference on Sunday.

The issue was "a question not just of development, but of freedom. Freedom of expression and freedom of the press are clearly essential to the development process," he said, adding, "the press can play an absolutely pivotal role in keeping the eyes of the country on long-term strategy."

But some of the journalists accused the Bank itself of being too "dollar oriented" and called for additional economic support to help the development of a free and independent press.

Mr Wolfensohn identified the non-financial aspects of development as:

-- Governance and corruption. "If you give money to countries which are well governed, you have a better chance that the money will be used effectively," he said.

-- Existence of a legal system. "In too many countries where we operate, there is not a legal system," he said, adding, "rights have to be defined. And there must be a justice system to carry it out."

-- Supervision and control of the financial system. "Clarity of presentation. Appropriate supervision. Independence," he said.

-- A supportive social system -- "a framework that will allow you to deal with poverty, unemployment. What do you do when you bring in economic change?"

"This is not complicated -- you don't need to be an economic journalist with a Ph.D. to understand. It is common sense," he said, urging the journalists to focus more on these issues, as well as the financial issues which dominate the development debate.

The joint WAN/World Bank conference, entitled "A New Approach to Development: The Role of the Press," included editors from more than 20 developing countries and territories where the World Bank operates. Many of them criticised the Bank itself for being too "dollar oriented."

"By all means be critical of us," said Mr Wolfensohn. "But I do urge you that we should all think of a higher purpose. We have to set our sights, not on individual criticism today, but on a course that will make our globe a better place and a safer place in the future."

The conference also included two panel discussions on the theme of the role of the press in development strategy. One panel included T.N. Ninan, Editor and Publisher of Business Standard, India, Robert J. Samuelson, Syndicated Columnist, Newsweek and The Washington Post, USA, and Beat Kappeler, Columnist for Weltwoche, Switzerland.

The second panel of editors and publishers from developing countries were William Pike, Managing Director of The New Vision, Uganda, Nahil El-Sharif, Chief Editor, Ad-Dustour, Jordan, Chungsoo Kim, Senior Analyst for Economic Affairs, The Joongang Ilbo, South Korea, Diegou Bailly, Publisher of Le Jour, Ivory Coast, Cornel Nistorescu, General Manager of Evenimentual Zilei, Romania, and Harold Hoyte, President and Editor in Chief of Nation Publishing Co., Barbados.