We just heard news that Ian Davies, director of business development at Archant, has died in a plane crash – as reported at the BBC, Press Gazette and in his group’s newspaper, the Norwich Evening News.

Journalism.co.uk is extremely sad to hear of this tragic accident.

On a personal note, I met Ian and some his colleagues for the first time, at the WAN conference in Amsterdam last fortnight.

Despite cornering him after a long conference session to badger him for information about Archant’s hyperlocal news plans, he was only too friendly towards me, happy to help and give suggestions for stories.

I later had opportunity to chat with him more informally and find a bit more out about his views on the media and what he does. He assured me he would always be willing to contribute to related articles.

True to his word, last week he was quick to contribute to an article I was working on at the last minute. I’m very saddened by the premature end to his life.

In an email he told me he was looking forward to working more flexibly at Archant from January, so that he could fit in more time for his passion, flying. His website shows some of his interests. That his life was cut so short, when he had so much enthusiasm for his projects, seems a particularly cruel hand of fate.

Our condolences go out to Ian’s family, friends and colleagues.

• Take our survey: ‘What do UK journalists do after losing their jobs?’ #laidoffjournalist
• Adrian Jeakings will replace John Fry at Archant
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• Norfolk blogger supports Archant journalists facing job cuts

The global leader for the entertainment and media practice, at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Hong Kong, Marcel Fenez, argued that ‘traditional media isn’t dead’ on the last day of the WAN/World Editors Forum 11th Readership Conference (information courtesy of WAN conference updates).

The latest media and entertainment industry forecast from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that global newspaper advertising will grow 2.9 per cent to 136.8 billion dollars in 2012, with digital advertising accounting for 43 per cent of the growth.

• Print advertising will grow 1.8 per cent to 123.3 billion dollars worldwide in 2012
• Digital advertising will grow 19.3 per cent to 13.4 billion dollars:
• While the growth rate for digital advertising will continue its impressive rise over the next five years, the total in 2012 will represent only 10 per cent of total print and digital newspaper advertising.

“Some people say that traditional media is dead. Well, it isn’t. For the next five years, it ain’t gonna be,” he said. “The death of traditional media is exaggerated, at least in a 5-year context.”

Fenez said the forecasts, based on consumer and industry sources, does not take into account the recent economic meltdown, which could have a negative impact on the figures.

Fenez reported:

• The generation that comes of age in 2012 will be the first that doesn’t know the pre-internet world. “We hear a lot about user generated content from the ‘net generation’. It’s very, very, very important. But premium content is still really valuable. Even the net generation values premium content. They’re tired of watching videos of a dog running up a tree.”
• Advertisers will take a ‘wait and see’ attitude and be cautious about spending in the first half of 2009. “They won’t do anything until mid-year. If they have the revenue, they’ll release their budgets.”
• Video games advertising is set to grow 17 per cent to 2012, though the revenue is still negligible. Most of the money being spent on game advertising is coming from television.
• “We’re on a journey of transition from traditional to digital: the first to probably go totally digital is the music industry. In 2011, the majority of revenues will be digital.”

• Online advertising spend tops £4bn after 12.8% rise
• UK ad spend dropped 4% in 2008, says AdAssoc
• Online publishers in ‘bullish mood’ despite economic downturn
• Reuters: UK online ads up 21 per cent despite fall in overall ad market
• Reuters: Murdoch’s online operation to miss ambitious targets

In the last session of the WAN/World Editors Forum 11th Readership Conference the speakers looked at shaping the future of the newspaper (information courtesy of WAN conference updates).

While Karen Wall, assistant managing director of Metro in the UK, focussed on good old print, arguing that the free newspaper model was growing, Christian Ortner the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper Vorarlberger Nachrichten, in Austria, took the WAN audience through his newspaper’s decision to become the ‘Yahoo for local search’ in their area.

“Today Google has taken over search,” said Ortner. “Down to the small restaurant, Google is serving the local market.”

But he believes that “what happened in search need not happen for local news, services, parties, classifieds, restaurants, videos and other content.”

Vorarlberger Nachrichten Online is now aggressively pursuing online opportunities, forecasting that half its revenue will come from its digital platforms by 2011.

Here’s what the paper is developing, as told by Ortner:

• 17 citizen forums, which connect active citizens at the community level. “Politicians and journalists are also members of the list. The citizens’ ideas are picked up by the newspaper reporters, who try to communicate and solve the problems. VN now generates thousands of new and dedicated ‘freelance journalists.’”
• ‘MyVillage’ hyperlocal websites, which deliver fresh and useful information to the users about their immediate neighbourhoods. The strategy for the online platform calls for lots of micro-sites on niche topics.
• Video, video, video, from a variety of sources – local reporters, news agencies and the users themselves. “What works for YouTube can also be successful locally.”
• A ‘mobile journalist’ team covering breaking news, with videos and photos. The ‘mojos’ focus on ordinary people and local stories.
• A multi-brand strategy that focuses on target groups: “We believe the online upside is greater than the print downside.”

• OJR: Using Google Trends to fine-tune your news website
• TechCrunch: Google to acquire Yelp – a missed opportunity for local news?
• Google launches audio search feature
• WSJ online video training for reporters
• Google launches measurement tool for YouTube videos

The 11th Readership Conference is addressing building new print, as well as digital audiences (not just stopping the old readers running away). So how exactly have newspapers across the world successfully built up new audiences? (Quotes and information courtesy of the WAN conference updates)

The Telegraaf in the Netherlands has used sport and social networking

• Using Hyves.net they used the network’s ‘send to a friend’ function and a widget for users’ home pages that allowed them to see how they were performing against their friends. The contest had 170,000 participants: 110,000 through Hyves and 60,000 through the Telegraaf’s sports site, Telesport.
• For the Olympics, the Telegraaf provided editorial content to a Hyves web section dedicated to the events which included blogs from Telegraaf reporters in Beijing and other stories from the Telegraaf sports team in Amsterdam.

Lara Ankersmit, publisher for online media, at the paper, said the partnership provided strong branding tied to popular sports events, and more than 170,000 registrations and e-mail addresses.

The Verdens Gang newspaper company in Norway has increased revenue while losing readers

• A graph of VG’s print circulation decline over the past several years looks like a ski slope – it dropped 20 percent since 2002. But, at the same time, profit increased from 270 million Norwegian krone (31 million euros) to 365 million krone (41 million euros).
• The approach is ‘continuous product diversification and improving production efficiency considerably’ through new prodcucts such as social networks, and doing more marketing: VG spends 10 million euros annually on market examination.
• It pays more attention to distribution. Ensuring good product placement at sales outlet is one important focus, as is establishing new outlets, such as coffee shops.

Torry Pederson, CEO of VG said that good journalism that attracts attention, on all platforms. “Don’t cut down on journalistic resources to cover the important stories,” he said.

The Bakersfield Californian is focusing on who isn’t reading the paper

• In five years, it went from having no weekly newspapers to having three, from no magazines to three magazines, from one website to 11 websites. It created three subsidiaries and built its own social media software.
• Alongside market research there was commitment to invest in new product development – at least 1 per cent of revenues each.
• New products recaptured six of the eight percentage points in consumer reach lost by The Californian. It increased non-core revenue from 1 per cent to 12 per cent.

Mary Lou Fulton, vice president of audience development at the paper said “Before, we focused primarily on the circulation, profitability and content of our daily newspaper (…) The essential shift in thinking was to become interested in who was not reading the newspaper or advertising in it. That was a big wake-up call.”

• paidContent:UK: Telegraaf to buy Dutch social network Hyves
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Metro International betting on newspaper growth in emerging markets
• SFN: Norway’s online newspaper revenues reach 290 million euro – up 61 per cent in two years
• ‘Individualised’ newspapers launched at Ifra Expo 2009
• Le Figaro’s new online payment plans

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.”

• Malcolm Coles: Why the Guardian’s future does look bleak
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• #wef11: Ten lessons on news app creation from Mario Garcia
• WAN Amsterdam: Little known fact?… Guardian special advisor@Digital Revenue Goldmine
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Print and online integration ‘not the key to success’

A range of mobile experts at the WAN World Digital Publishing Conference gave a more optimistic picture than at the AOP summit earlier this month, where speakers, including ITV’s head of mobile, said that we are still waiting for the year of mobile.

But in Amsterdam, just a few weeks later, that sentiment was turned on its head. That next year will be the year of mobile is what people have said each year for five years, said Ilicco Elia, head of mobile for Reuters. No, ‘it’s here’, he told the assembled range of newspaper experts at the World Digital Publishing Conference 2008.

Where as Elia once was employed in ‘emerging media’ for Reuters, he now very much part of the mainstream product: “mobile has since emerged,” he said.

Elia certainly objected to one of Martha Stone’s slides during her presentation on online media, which said ‘mobile advertising to become a real business in a few years’. ‘My boss will shoot me, if he sees that’ he said. Elia’s been telling him that is already the case for a while; it is a real business.

While Elia stressed that he did not think “you should be going into mobile to make a lot of money immediately.” He said, “you can make more and more money slowly, slowly. Integrate into the rest of your products and it will come.”

His presentation touched on examples where Reuters have successfully monetized mobile: in the IBM ‘Stop Talking, Start Doing’ campaign (a slogan that should be applied to mobile, Elia said); by using Nokia phone cameras on for fast and effective reporting, and for widgets on iGoogle.

To think about search engine optimisation (SEO) is “a complete and utter given,” he said.
“You have to do it – SEO and SE marketing – and it is a cheap way to send people to your site,” he said.

The other mobile speakers sharing the stage, Jorma Härknönen, the senior vice president at MTV Media in Finland, responsible for internet and consumer businesses said were of similar opinion and Fredrik Oscarson, the founder and VP new business director for Mobiento, a Sweden based mobile marketing agency, were of similar opinion.

“Give it five years time, and I think people will choose to surf news on the mobile, because the mobile will have functionality [e.g GPS] that the internet doesn’t,” Fredrik Oscarson told Journalism.co.uk.

A short interview with Oscarson can be listened to here. He talks about mobile content for newspapers and different ways of advertising on mobile.

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• #mobilemedia11: FT web-based iPad and iPhone app a ‘wake-up call’ to publishers
• Online video: Reuters wants to offer more raw video to clients
• Journalism’s future at the Frontline: ‘The snails attacked us!’

Caroline Little, this year’s keynote speaker at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Digital Revenue Goldmine event, used her experiences at the Washington Post and Guardian to talk about the future of the web for newspapers.

Most delegates had probably heard the sentiments of Little’s speech before, unless they’ve been living on another media planet for the past five years, but were eager to ask how she had implemented changes at her two workplaces.

What was her budget? How would she have coped without the strength of brand? How to manage economically while making the changes?

Little did not really give concrete examples and afterwards she told me it was perhaps too early in the day to talk specifics – she’s only been in the role at the Guardian since August. I’ll be sure to follow up with her in a few months time… The news report on her speech can be read here.

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