Prominent board members of the World Editors Forum (WEF) have resigned their posts and re-grouped to form a new international network for editors from all mediums in response to the rapid acceleration of media convergence.

The Global Editors Network (GEN) will be headed by former WEF president Xavier Vidal-Folch, deputy director of the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais and former vice-president Harald Stanghelle, political editor of the Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten. Both men, who will remain on the WEF board, will hold the same positions as they previously held in the newly-formed GEN, which is to be officially launched on 23 March 2011.

Vidal-Folch and Stanghelle both resigned their posts from the WEF board on 14 February 2011, according to WEF’s website. The same page shows that Roman Gallo, the founder of now defunct hyperlocal newspaper project the Naše Adresa in the Czech Republic, resigned on the same day. And, earlier this month, WEF director Bertrand Pecquerie also stepped down.

A full list of the GEN Board members and founding members will be released on launch, according to its website.

A source told Journalism.co.uk that the aim of the new organisation is to gather editors from all platforms (print, broadcast, online, mobile and wire services) and to create an “Editors’ Lab” for new editorial services and new applications.

GEN has published its full manifesto online, reproduced in part below:

We, the editors-in-chief and senior news executives founding the Global Editors Network (GEN), are convinced that news producers and newsrooms across all platforms – print, broadcast, online, mobile and wire services – face comparable challenges.
Because digitalization and broadband access accelerate media convergence, we are members of the same community, all driven by a journalistic imperative and a common goal: Content and Engagement First!

As we are entering a new era for content across multiple platforms, we will:

• break the barriers between editors of old and new media, print and digital, general interest and specialized publications, free and paid business models, profit and non-profit organisations, international and local media outlets;
• understand the new news ecosystem based on immediacy, information overload and disintermediation: media are no longer middlemen and users blur the lines between production and consumption in a new world of prosumption;
• define a vision for the future of journalism, cross-media strategies, attention and audience analysis, newsroom management, dynamics of the news business and ethical values. Lack of vision is the worst that can happen to our community;
• welcome new players within the newsroom’s collective intelligence: engineers, developers, visual designers, app-makers, community managers, curators, aggregators, researchers and other practitioners of the link economy who enrich our vision;
• enhance the quality of journalism in its different dimensions: newsgathering, news curation, storytelling, fact and data checking, designing, moderating and sharing, regardless of the platform, browser or application used;
• continue experimentation and innovation. We consider that mobility, users’ engagement, personalisation, location-based news, data-driven journalism and rich media are key to the future of journalism;
• encourage mutualisation and co-operation between media. Among us, we are not competitors, but… potential partners. Resulting in the emergence of a new culture among senior news executives and new cross-offerings for consumers;
• convince media owners that slashes in editorial expenses are no longer a good answer for media outlets because – even for digital natives – content and engagement will make the difference, not only the technology;
• stop acting like victims of disruptive technologies or lack of citizenship. We are optimistic about the new digital tools and the new channels of distribution offered to us as news producers;
• reinforce the pillars of credibility of our profession based on context, accuracy, relevance, reliability, loyalty to the audience, effectiveness and connectedness, as citizens’ distrust is the main threat for our civil societies.

Interested parties are invited to contribute to the manifesto here. You can also follow GEN on Twitter @EditorsNet.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the parent organisation to WEF, merged with IFRA, the worldwide news research and services organisation, in June 2010.

• First web editors appointed to American Society of News Editors’ board
• #jpod – How to engage a subscriber community: Lessons from the Times and Financial Times
• #news2011: Editors urged to focus on ‘conversation’ and ‘try everything’
• WAN Amsterdam: How a regional newspaper in Austria hopes to make half its revenue from digital by 2011
• #wef11 – Panellists share advice on how to build communities

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