There was a more peaceful air on stage at yesterday’s closing debate of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, entitled What do we do about Google?

David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal counsel of Google, suggested the search giant hadn’t done enough to ‘engage with newspapers’.

According to WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly, Google is missing the point: this is an issue of copyright (‘a deceptively simple legal principle’) and a lack of control options for publishers when it comes to search engines and aggregators indexing there content.

Vested interest on both sides, here’s the full audio of Drummond’s speech:

And O’Reilly’s thoughts:

WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly on Google and newspapers

What did the crowd want? Calls for evidence, from both parties, of what conversations are going on between newspaper groups, representative bodies and Google; and progress, so the debate might be different next year…

• Eric Schmidt – Google resistance to ACAP based on technology
• Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum
• Editors Weblog: French government considering ‘Google tax’
• @SOE: (Audio) WAN president Gavin O’Reilly slams UK media commentators
• WAN 2008: The imminent demise of print is “sheer nonsense’

The Independent has tried its hand at an interactive map plotting the challenges currently being faced, and those looming in the future, by the newspaper industry:

(Apologies if some of the argument bubbles are out of the frame – just drag on the arrows to bring them into view)

Good summary of the key issues using DebateGraph – the map draws on arguments from Jeff Jarvis, Roy Greenslade and Gavin O’Reilly amongst others. Some links to some prominent reports/blog posts/comment pieces expressing these arguments would be a great addition.

You can rate the arguments made and add new points after registering. As users rank ideas, the strongest and weakest arguments will be shown by the size of the arrows connecting them.

Full map at this link…

• MediaGuardian: BBC faces inquiry calls after BNP comments on Radio 1 Newsbeat
• Mapping: BBC reports live event with map tools; WaPo plots Travis Fox
• Business Insider lets readers ‘embed’ posts
• The Australian: The Punch – an opinion site for a mainstream audience
• Gawker to pay bloggers based on page views they generate

“Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the chief executive of the Independent’s owner Independent News & Media, has announced he will retire in May, with his son Gavin O’Reilly replacing him with immediate effect,” reports MediaGuardian.

Full story at this link…

• Times Online: Independent owners look to sell
• MediaGuardian: Anthony Salz appointed to Scott Trust
• MediaGuardian: Some Independent technical staff to move to Associated Newspapers
• MediaGuardian: O’Brien calls for sale or closure of Independent and IoS
• @SOE: (Audio) WAN president Gavin O’Reilly slams UK media commentators

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum have written to the Chinese government about international standards of press freedom in the country.

Laws in China restricting foreign journalists were temporarily relaxed during the Olympic Games in Beijing and have recently been extended by authorities.

In a letter dated October 21, WAN wrote to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in an attempt to change the laws permanently:

Your Excellency,

We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 102 countries, to welcome the extension of the relaxation in media regulations, but also to call on you to take further steps to uphold international standards of press freedom.

In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, your government introduced new rules that allowed foreign journalists greater freedom to travel in the country without prior government permission and to talk to anyone who was willing to be interviewed. Those regulations were set to expire on 17 October, however, shortly before they expired new regulations were introduced that recognise these rights.

While welcoming the extension of the more relaxed regulations for foreign journalists, we are concerned that they do not extend to domestic journalists and that many fundamental rights necessary for the proper functioning of a free press are not observed. For example, there is no protection of news sources, it is not possible to report freely on Tibet and hotels are obliged to report the arrival of a foreign journalist to police. Furthermore, with more than 30 journalists and at least 50 cyber reporters imprisoned, China jails more journalists than any other.

We respectfully call on you to extend the relaxed regulations to domestic journalists, to introduce further reforms so that your country might fully respect international standards of press freedom, and to ensure that all
those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression are immediately released from prison.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin O’Reilly
President
World Association of Newspapers

Xavier Vidal-Folch
President
World Editors Forum

• BBC calls on journalists to mark World Press Freedom Day
• Media Release: Six sports newspapers come together in new association
• WAN 2008: Publish everything you have in Chinese for press freedom, urges persecuted journalist
• #wef11: ‘News industry is in the vortex of a fast changing world’
• CNN.com: Zimbabwe demands registration fees from foreign journalists

Gavin O’Reilly, chief operating officer of Indepenent News and Media (INM) and president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), has responded to criticism of the publisher’s digital strategy by media commentator Roy Greenslade.

INM has adopted a ‘platform agnostic’ policy for growing its media, O’Reilly wrote in a comment responding to Greenslade, and is not investing in print at the expense of online.

“[T]he O’Brien saga is a distraction from the stark reality facing a company that has put its faith in the longevity of newsprint and averted its gaze from the digital future. It has invested online, of course, but it is way behind many other newspaper companies,” Greenslade wrote, likening INM to a ‘digital ostrich’.

According to O’Reilly, the facts speak for themselves:

INM online revenues grew by 111.5% last year and its 100 websites attract 12 million monthly unique users.

Reports of a ‘volatile’ advertising situation, he added, are not a result of print vs online or structural shifts within INM, but a result of the wider economic downturn.

• Trinity Mirror reports 10 per cent drop in advertising revenue
• #ftmedia12: FT content revenues could overtake advertising in 2012
• @SOE: (Audio) WAN president Gavin O’Reilly slams UK media commentators
• AOP: ‘This is no time for vanity publishing’ – full audio of Sly Bailey’s speech
• MediaGuardian: Sir Anthony O’Reilly leaves Independent News&Media

The newspaper industry should not be fixated with young audiences, Gavin O’Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), said at the organisation’s annual conference today.

The chief information officer of Independent News and Media said publishers should be looking to serve all generations with their print and online products.

The focus on youth is largely driven by the advertising industry, which is ‘transfixed’ by the youth market, he said.

“There’s always been an unnecessary fixation on youth. We need to capture them first.

“We need to market the newspaper for all generations and we also need to explain to the young that while the net is overwhelming in content it is pretty underwhelming in reliability.”

• links for 2008-07-16
• #Outlook2010: Lauren Rich Fine on media’s future – ‘Is there too much news?’
• MediaGuardian: DMGT records second highest ever profit
• McDonald’s serves up youth journalism
• MTC09: Moritz Wuttke – Don’t rely on Google and develop your own AdSense

Gavin O’Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers, nailed his colours firmly to the print mast in his speech at the opening ceremony of the 61st World Newspaper Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden:

• WAN 2008: Sweden claims highest share of advertising spend online
• #WANIndia2009: Audio – Google’s David Drummond on working with publishers
• Independent News and Media is no ‘digital ostrich’ says O’Reilly
• WAN 2008: Stop fixating on young readers, O’Reilly tells newspaper industry
• Guardian.co.uk: WAN 2008: The struggle to secure freedom of the press

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has denied that Google’s resistance to using ACAP is based on ‘wanting to control’ publishers information, insisting that it is strictly a technology issues.

Speaking to iTWire, Schmidt said: “ACAP is a standard proposed by a set of people who are trying to solve the problem [of communicating content access permissions]. We have some people working with them to see if the proposal can be modified to work in the way our search engines work. At present it does not fit with the way our systems operate.”

According to iTWire, Schmidt went on to deny that Google’s reluctance so far to use the rights and permissions technology was because Google wanted as few barriers as possible between online content and its search engines. “It is not that we don’t want them to be able to control their information.”

Schmidt made his comments after a tit-for-tat exchange last week in which Gavin O’Reilly, chairman of World Association of Newspaper and ACAP CEO, reacted strongly to claims made by a senior Google executive that the search engine believed ACAP was an unnecessary system and that its function could be fulfilled by existing web standards.

• ACAP answers its critics
• OJR: Using Google Trends to fine-tune your news website
• Editors Weblog: Google CEO on telling people what to do
• Early problems with ACAP
• Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum

The WAN president doesn’t seem smitten with the idea of multi-tasking journalists given this response to a question about converged journalism posed to him by Paul Horrocks, president of the SoE, during the Q&A on the opening night of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.

“I don’t think that’s the core competency of writers… we are wordsmiths, not video and cameramen…”

Full Extract:

• #soe10: Live coverage of the Society of Editors conference
• #soe09: Following the Society of Editors conference 2009
• Accidental Tweet announces senior BBC appointments (but are now official)
• Poll: Is Paul Dacre right to criticise Justice Eady’s use of the privacy law?
• Viewmagazine hosts ‘vlog butterfly’ for BBC head interview

The WAN president and COO of Independent News and Media crunches the numbers of internet advertising while talking about how a fragmented mix of media may be the key to capturing the necessary market for newspapers prosper.

Global online advertising market worth 21 billion (pounds or dollars?) he says. 65 per cent in the hands of three companies, all the rest are scrabbling over a much smaller (admittedly) growing online share.

Full Extract:

• BBC: Google and Yahoo to share ad space online
• Ad Age: Internet media employment at peak since 2001 despite falls elsewhere
• Online advertising spend tops £4bn after 12.8% rise
• WAN Amsterdam: Digital will account for 43 per cent of newspaper advertising growth by 2012 according to PricewaterhouseCoopers
• #mobilemedia11: Ten facts on mobile media – phones and tablets

Gavin O’Reilly, chief operating officer of Independent News and Media and president of WAN, launched a stinging attack on senior media commentators in the UK while speaking at the Society of Editors meeting in Manchester.

Listen here to some of his concerns and other points of his speech:

Failings of media commentators: too much rhetoric, overly simplistic digital vs print approach…

Failures of US print papers, threat of reader apathy biggest threat not internet, real reasons for state of UK market – freesheets and enticements, search engines and ACAP…

• Eric Schmidt – Google resistance to ACAP based on technology
• ACAP answers its critics
• Early problems with ACAP
• UK national newspapers neglecting sitemaps for better search indexing
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – 30 specialist search engines