The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has today announced that the World Editors Forum will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 2 to 5 June next year.
The invitation was issued at this year’s conference in Kiev, Ukraine.
More than 1,000 newspaper publishers, chief editors and other senior newspaper executives attended the Kiev meetings, WAN-IFRA said in a release, which explains that it is the first time Thailand and Southeast Asia is hosting the event, which runs along side the World Newspaper Congress.
Chavarong Limpattamapanee, president of the Thai Journalists Association said in a statement:
Thailand has so many vibrant newspapers. Journalists here enjoy their freedom and are very excited with the opportunity to exchange views on the future of journalists and newspapers with guests in this upcoming historic World Newspapers Congress in Bangkok.
The report calls on the government to “take urgent action to guarantee the safety of journalists and media professionals”.
Receiving her award yesterday, Hernandez urged the international community to not “just stand and watch”.
“I do not want to be another number on the list,” she said. “I do not want to be another dead journalist, I want to be one of those who fought to live and who survives.”
I dedicate and symbolically award this prize to all the Mexican journalists whose voices have been silenced by death, forced disappearance or censorship.
I also dedicate it to all those Mexican journalists who daily continue to set an example in their duty to inform and denounce at whatever cost.
At the World Editors Forum in Vienna today there was a session which asked the question: what content should print newspapers focus on in order to survive and thrive?
Members of the panel shared a number of examples of the content which has worked for them, including special editions, building platforms for discussion and greater use of visualisation to explain complicated images.
But the overriding message was for newspapers to know what makes them unique and invest in this content, as outlined in detail by Han Fook Kwang, editor of the Straits Times in Singapore.
While other news outlets are cutting foreign correspondents, the Straits Times did the opposite.
We decided to invest heavily in our foreign correspondents and our ambition is to be the best English-language newspaper covering Asia. We believe we’re uniquely placed to do that.
You need to be clear about your focus and invest resources in it.
He also reiterated the point that in keeping this focus journalists must also make sure they fulfil their basic duty to make sense of the news.
You need to write stories in way readers understand and how it impacts their lives. We struggle with this every day when we report stories out of Europe.
Some papers do this very well. The Financial Times does a terrific job, not just in reporting but commentating, analysing and explaining to readers the complexity of issues.
There is a great opportunity. The world is a much more complex place. There are many issues that affect readers and newspapers should try to capitalise on it but they have to do it well.
In an age when there is instant communication, when everyone wants to be the first, preferably in 140 characters or less, newspapers also need to go back to core skills, to what they do well.
I don’t think newspapers are best are putting out news the minute it happens but we’re great storytellers and the reason why is because we have the tradition and resources to do this. In summary we should focus on good journalism, that hasn’t changed, but to do this you have to invest in good journalists. This starts from knowing your readers well and knowing what you mean to your users and what you represent to them.
During the building communities session at the World Editors Forum in Vienna today, editor-in-chief of the Journal Register Company Jim Brady discussed a number of ways in which you can build communities and importantly, greater engagement with your audience.
One of the ways is through opening up the newsroom, referring to the Register Citizen in Torrington, which opened up a newsroom cafe open to the public at the end of last year.
Members of the community are welcome to get involved either virtually, such as by attending news meetings via Skype or physcially by coming into the newsroom to talk to reporters over a coffee.
I spoke to Jim at the end of the session to find out more about the project, and how it has developed in its first year.
Another member of the panel, Anette Novak, editor-in-chief of Norran in Sweden, also discussed a similar project they run online, called eEditor, which you can find more on here. There will be more tips on building communities from the World Editors Forum session on Journalism.co.uk tomorrow.
German journalist and co-founder of OpenLeaks Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who set up the whistleblowing platform after leaving WikiLeaks, called on journalists at the World Editors Forum in Vienna to become “more aggressive” in publishing public interest information.
Speaking on a panel titled ‘After WikiLeaks: The next step for newspapers’, Domscheit-Berg highlighted the importance of the role of journalists in extracting the stories from leaked material while WikiLeaks offers whistleblowers an ease of digital data-dumping not available through news organisations.
WikiLeaks offers part of the aggression that the civilians expect from you people but you don’t give it back to them.
The only new thing I think about the whole WikiLeaks story is that it offered people a means to submit large amounts of information that was easier than contacting you, by just a few clicks online. In the digital society this is what you as an industry needs.
The OpenLeaks model, which is not currently live, works on the premise that its role is to provide the technology for whistleblowers to pass on material to specific organisations, news outlets and NGOs, based on the needs of the source.
Domscheit-Berg said the platform was set live for five days in August which proved to be “quite successful”.
We want to be facilitators. We don’t ever want to get in situation of having information and then deciding who to give it to.
At WikiLeaks we had this big cache of documents and we wanted to collaborate with a few newspapers. So if you are an outfit that enables whistleblowers then you will have the trouble of not being political in who you work with.
A source of OpenLeaks can pick the organisation they think is good, and we pass it on. They decide how to go along with making this public. This will enable a more robust process.
Near the end of the session he also called on journalists to share information more freely.
I believe that we’re living in an information age, developing into an information age and in that age information is the currency so it’s very important that because of this world being so complex that we share this information.
It wouldn’t be right to offer a mechanism to make sure journalists get more papers and then put them in a drawer and the public will not know.
You need to be more aggressive in the way you’re publishing, being transparent and showing that you’ve done a good job. This will not only be better for everybody it will also make sure you get more credibility.
This is part of what the future needs, that we give out more information.
He added that OpenLeaks has mechanisms in place to ensure that, with the source’s permission, even if information is given to one organisation, it will be shared with others.
This is so the media do not depend on copying stories from each other but use source material from each other. This sharing is what the future needs.
He added that in the future the platform will also look to bringing in the wider community to help in the investigative process of working through larger batches of material.
Newspapers are “in a vortex of a fast changing world”, the new president of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers Jacob Mathew, who was elected in April, said today (Thursday, 13 October) as he opened the World Editors Forum in Vienna.
His speech focused on calling for greater press freedom and new business ideas. “Soaring costs are a challenge that we should meet with innovation”, he said.
He also touched on the issue of ethics in relation to the UK phone-hacking scandal, calling for self-regulation of the press to be maintained. The print media enjoys the highest credibility, he said, and while there have been calls for new legislation it was important to note that “increased government regulation is not the answer”.
The media would be better governed by a self regulatory mechanism which holds its journalists to account, he added.
Mathew also called on print publishers to join together in the battle to protect intellectual property rights.
It is time that the print publishers get together to strategize to prevent others from freeloading on their content. We need to monetise and not lose out.
Our industry is in the vortex of a fast changing world. The challenges and the opportunities are greater than ever before.
Follow the #wef11 hashtag on Twitter and @journalism_live for updates from the World Editors Forum in Vienna over the next few days.
Opening the World Editors Forum in Vienna today, Dr Hans Gasser, president of Austrian Newspaper Association, paid tribute to the country’s newspaper market, calling on journalists to meet industry challenges with innovation.
This global summit meeting of publishers, CEOs and editors-in-chief in dialogue with distinguished experts of our industry is embedded in highly exciting times.
The agenda of the three days is characterised by the power of innovation, by the energy with which our industry faces up to the challenges, using the opportunities to transfer its core competances to use cross media offerings … to accomodate media users in their changed consumption behaviours.
He added that following the crisis on financial markets the journalists’ democratic function “is as important as ever”.
We need to increasingly focus on our quality-based strengths, using quality journalism on all platforms to offer people visible added value because only then will they be prepared to invest their time and money.
Closing with reference to Austria’s own market, Dr Gasser defined it as “extremely competitive” and despite its relatively small size “very innovative”.
By international standards we have high reaches and circulation numbers continue to be stable due to a high amount of subscriptions with a very strong regional focus and boasting a print market share of 55.6 per cent in advertisng and this depsite the ever increasing competition.
This is why the small country of Autria is one of the big newspaper and magazine countries of this world.
For the rest of this week I will be reporting from the World Editors Forum in Vienna, covering the panel sessions, report presentations and debates which kick off today. This year’s conference will look at “the multiple facets of an editor’s job”, from businessman to community manager, and the ways to perform best in each role while maintaining good content.
The digital world of news is rapidly changing and the opportunities for newspapers, as well as the challenges that accompany them, are undergoing constant evolution. How can newspapers continue to fulfill their core mission of producing high quality journalism, and even improve on it, despite the myriad of new responsibilities of their editors?
Coverage of the event will be posted on Journalism.co.uk and the Editors’ Blog, and you can also follow my tweets on some of the sessions from @journalism_live.
A new era of online publishing where readers are served ‘hyperpersonal’ news directly linked to their interests is taking shape, according to a consultant for world publishing body WAN-IFRA.
Stephan Minard told the organisation’s summer university in Paris, that personalisation would be the key element that will make modern news websites successful in the coming years.
Publishers needed to learn more about their readers, build up data on them and then serve an experience that is unique to them. Algorithms, not editors, were the new gatekeepers, he said.
Minard said news organisations could learn a lot from the world of marketing and e-commerce: “Personalisation is not science-fiction. It’s everywhere on the web – Google, Facebook, Amazon.”
Combining subscriber data, behavioural research and other data on a reader’s interests and habits, sites should be able to build a reliable picture of a user and serve content that is personalised to them.
Minard gave the example of the Washington Post, which launched personalised social news site Trove in April, which relies on a user’s Facebook interests to define their profile.
However, he issued a warning about offering content that was too personalised. There was a risk of isolating users in a “web of one” by only serving them material about a very tightly defined subject and cutting them off from the wider world.
Apple’s iPad has created a new appetite among readers for fresh news content in the evening, according to AFP’s head of editorial research and development.
Speaking at the WAN-IFRA summer university in Paris, Denis Teyssou quoted research from comScore which found the iPad was changing the game regarding news consumption towards the end of the day.
While computers are the dominant device for news during the working day, and smartphone use is relatively constant throughout the day, tablets overtook both of them to become the number one device in the evening.
However, Teyssou said some existing news products tailored for the iPad – notably Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily – did not necessarily cater for this evening boost in audience.
Teyssou is the head of editorial for AFP’s research and development division, Medialab, which is responsible for developing iPhone and iPad apps, user-generated content, data tools and mash-ups.
He presented an overview of how the tablet publishing market is developing, one year after Apple launched its iPad.
Before the launch, analysts were cautious about how many units would ship. ABI Research had estimated four million sales in 2010. The actual figure was four times the size.
The figure is now expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. Infinite Research expects that 147.2 million tablet computers will ship in 2015.
Analysis from Gartner, also for 2015, estimates Apple will have achieved total cumulative tablet sales of 138 million worldwide by then. Another 113 million tablets will have shipped that use Android as the operating system.
Out of the apps in Apple’s iPad Hall of Fame, news apps are the second biggest category, behind games. Traditional players dominate, with CNN, NPR and the Wall Street Journal occupying the top three positions.
