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Paris,
18 October 2000
Newspaper
Business or News Business?
It isn't just
a newspaper anymore, and it isn't just about the internet,
either.
"The
vision is not about paper, and it's not about electronics.
It's about information," said Rolf Lie, Editor of the Aftenposten
in Norway, adding that journalists these days should say,
"I'm not working in a newspaper, I'm working in news."
At "Beyond
the Printed Word," the world electronic publishing conference
held in Amsterdam last week, many of the participants agreed.
More newspapers are pursuing "multi-channel" strategies
where the unique content of the newspaper appears not only
on paper and on web sites but on web radio, digital television,
portable telephones — everywhere, all the time.
And
that is a long way from the days when newspapers feared
the internet. "We don't think one medium will replace another.
There will always be a combination of these things," said
Dirk Figge, Vice President of Product Development
for Bertelsmann Broadband Group.
For
newspapers to succeed in the multiple media world, the content
they produce has to be very special indeed.
"Entertaining
and serious information does not have to be a contradiction
in terms. You can present serious information and it doesn't
have to be boring," said Christoph Dernbach, Editor-in-Chief
of the German news agency DPA, which has been supplying
newspaper clients with information-rich animated news graphics
for their web sites.
Adi
Surpin of the Swiss-based Fantastic Corporation, put
it another way: "If you don't have attractive and appealing
content, then the game is over."
And
Tom Stevenson, Managing Director of New Media at
Eastern County Newspapers in the UK, who co-chaired the
conference, put it still another way: "The quality of content
in the years ahead will make or break many businesses. Over
the next five years, we are going to have to work very hard
to establish reader and advertiser trust, based on our content."
Nearly
500 participants from more than 40 nations attended Beyond
the Printed Word, organised by the newspaper technology
association Ifra and the World Association of Newspapers.
The
event, which is emerging as the premier conference and exhibition
for the new media branch of the publishing industry, covered
a wide range of topics, from mobile internet strategies
to the future of digital television to forming alliances
to protecting classified advertisements.
Multiple-media
strategies and the need for good content were not the only
themes that emerged during the conference.
"There
is an increasing need for journalists — it is still
evident that the strength we have as an industry will get
called on more and more in this multi-media, multi-task
newsroom," said Howard Finberg, former Vice President
of CNI Ventures in the US and the other chairman of the
conference.
The
need for successful alliances is also important, said Tony
Lee, General Manager of Wall Street Journal Interactive.
"The primary goals of alliances are to build traffic to
your site, to attract clients, and the ultimate goal is
to build revenue," he said.
Note:
Summaries of all presentations, and more quotes from the
conference, are available on the WAN web site at www.wan-press.org.
The
Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper
industry, represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes
66 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper
executives in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and seven regional
and world-wide press groups.
Ifra,
headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, is the world's leading
association for newspaper and media technology. More than
1300 newspaper companies and 440 suppliers to the newspaper
industry are Ifra members.
Inquiries
to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 25 rue
d'Astorg, 75008 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
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