WAN Amsterdam: Print should be an ‘island in the chaos’

Journalism.co.uk is back in Brighton but still keenly following progress at WAN Amsterdam. The Digital Publishing Conference finished Thursday morning, and the event moved onto the WAN/ World Editors Forum 11th Readership Conference under the name ‘Building New Audiences in Print and on Digital Channels’.

The first two days gave ideas on how to build a Digital Revenue Goldmine: it was then time to ask how exactly can delegates build new audiences in print and on digital channels to support the revenue making methods?

William Powers, media columnnist for the Nation, said in his keynote speech on Thursday afternoon that print can be an ‘island in the chaos’:

“When you’re reading an article on a screen, your mind is conscious of all the other information that’s just a click away – from your inbox to the latest headlines to your bank account to a billion You Tube videos. Thus, instead of escaping other demands on your attention as you read, you are mentally fending off those demands every moment you’re at the screen.”

In a session today, as reported over at Forum4editors, Mario Garcia, president of Garcia Media in the US, said that newspaper has to be understood as something you do in a separate domain from web. Garcia said in his speech:

“Newspapers are something you read. The web is something you do. Once you learn this distinction, your job and the management of the newsroom will be different. The newspaper, you read. The web, you must have some kind of activity. Online allows you to get involved.”

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