Tag Archives: WAN-IFRA

#su2011: iPad creates new demand for evening news

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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.

However, the next four positions are occupied by newcomers:  content aggregator Flipboard, customisable news reader Pulse, Instapaper, and RSS app Reeder for iPad.

Other news apps that Teyssou thinks will grow in popularity include personalised magazine Zite, News.me and news aggregator Ongo.

Related content:

FT looks to bypass Apple charges with new web-based iPad app

Economist reveals download numbers for iPhone and iPad apps

Sky News launches free iPad app but commits to adding monthly fee

#su2011: New online open newsroom a hit for Swedish newspaper

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A pioneering Swedish newspaper that involves its readers in the daily editorial decision-making process says the new approach has been a massive hit with users and advertisers.

Norran, a large regional daily in the north of Sweden, has opened up its newsroom with a tool called eEditor, a live chat powered by CoverItLive where readers can discuss story ideas with journalists in real time.

The blog is monitored by a senior journalist throughout the day. The newslist and minutes from conferences are published online and readers suggest possible angles and ask questions.

Editor-in-chief Anette Novak said Norran had completely overhauled its image by involving readers and being more transparent.

Speaking at the WAN-IFRA summer university in Paris today, she said: “I realised that if anybody asks: ‘do we need Norran?’ they would decide: no we don’t. We had to stop it before the question even occurs in their heads.”

She said web traffic and Facebook referrals were up – and key motoring and property advertisers who deserted during the recession had come back. The experiment has also allowed the paper to broaden its coverage.

“We believe that we have strengthened our brand,” Novak said.

“Transparency is the new objectivity. We post the job list – the stories we are working on today.

“The instant feedback and the personal reply is extremely important. It’s the feeling that there’s somebody there live now.

“You have to answer in a good way, a polite way and a knowledgeable way, or you can lose trust.”

Novak said some news organisations were so focused on getting a return on investment from digital projects that they lost sight of their readers’ needs.

“If we follow the money… that will make us go for projects that we know will make money and we will keep doing the same thing over and over again. We have to experiment.

“Get readers involved with your brand, engage them with their hearts and minds and the money will follow.”

Related content:

‘Readers may have the last say in what is and is not journalism’

ScribbleLive: Four ways to make money from liveblogging

paidContent: Which news sites post the most stories and do they get more hits?

BBC calls on journalists to mark World Press Freedom Day

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Today is World Press Freedom Day. It comes at a time when news organisations and freelance journalists working to report on uprisings in the Arab world have battled, and are still battling, restrictions on their ability to do their job.

In Egypt we heard of news bureaux being shut down during the protests in the country, in Libya foreign journalists told of ‘days of brutality’ in detention while two Western journalists were killed while trying to cover the conflict. And beyond the uprisings, across the world, there are daily reports of journalists, both local and foreign, being prevented from carrying out their work to report on the events around them, through legal action, technological blackouts or violence and intimidation.

Journalists killed in 2010

Journalists killed around the world in 2010. Infographic supplied by World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers

So today has been marked as a day to show support for the journalists fighting for a free press and to remember those who died doing so. The BBC reports that “hundreds, if not thousands” of events are being held across the world today. For its part director of BBC Global News Peter Horrocks has called for a minute’s silence at 11am “to mark the sacrifices made by journalists in the name of press freedom, and to honour those who have been killed”.

Some might see this as just a gesture, which will surely not be observed by all. But the turmoil, anguish and the death toll from the Arab Spring revolts and revolutions have brought home as rarely before how critical the role of journalists is, in not just doing a job, but reporting on events which decide the fate of nations.

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is providing a range of material including interviews, infographics and cartoons, for news outlets to use to highlight the meaning of the day.

WAN-IFRA launches initiative to promote investment in newspapers

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The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is calling on investors for help in its efforts to increase investment in newspapers in developing markets, according to a report by the editorsweblog.

Lack of investment is one of the major problems newspapers face in developing markets. Expanding operations, developing new products, and investing in new staff and printing facilities are the areas where capital is needed the most.

The new Social Investment in Media initiative has been launched by WAN-IFRA in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF). The initiative aims to promote “innovative investing mechanisms in media in developing countries and emerging markets” the report adds.

#WEFHamburg: WaPo mulling its own paywall plus all the news from the World Editors Forum

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Yesterday at the World Editors Forum in Hamburg, Raju Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post, told Journalism.co.uk that the Post was not ruling out its own paid-content model.

The quality of the content we produce needs to be well funded, and one of the ways could be to make users pay for it, not all of it. I am not a big believer of putting everything behind a paywall. I am a big believer in saying we should monetise.

More power to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in figuring out and if they do we would be happy to look at that. We may find our own way.

You can read the full interview with Narisetti at this link and below are all the stories from the WEF meeting on Journalism.co.uk:



For a digested round-up of the conference subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes.

#WEFHamburg: WAN-IFRA calls on Iran to improve press freedom standards

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The World Association of Newspapers and IFRA (WAN-IFRA) used the opening ceremony of the Word Editors Forum (WEF) in Hamburg to call upon Iranian authorities to adhere to international standards of press freedom.

Presenting the annual Golden Pen of Freedom Award to Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, Xavier Vidal-Folch, president of WEF, said Iranian journalists are “essentially trapped in a prison within a prison. A hellish place, where, in Ahmad Zeid-Abadi’s own words, ‘the desperation they create in prison is so bad you think it’s the end of the world’.

“Though we honour Mr Zeid-Abadi here today, it is also important to remember the other jailed journalists, the ones who don’t win awards but nevertheless suffer under despotic regimes, We should never forget them and we in the international newspaper community should do our utmost to win their release.”

Zeid-Abadi, who has worked for a range of daily and weekly newspapers in the country, is currently in prison in Iran. He was jailed, not for the first time in June 2009, after calling for Iranians to boycott the country’s election. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment and has previously been jailed and banned from practising journalism, because of his work.

According to WEF, 22 Iranian journalists are currently in prison in the country, accounting for around a fifth of all journalists imprisoned worldwide.

Accepting the award on his behalf, fellow Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji made an emotional speech in which he said treatment in prison had driven Zeid-Abadi to the “edge of suicide”. Ganji, who has himself spent time in jail because of his work as a journalist, said the family members of press freedom fighters and activists are often overlooked.

I have no doubt that if Ahmad Zeid-Abadi was here with us, he would have shared the honor of this prestigious award with other political prisoners.

One must interpret these awards as a kind of ethical and moral endorsement of democratic activists who are committed to liberty and human rights.

Today members of the world community of journalists have selected Ahmad Zeid-Abadi as the courageous journalist of 2010 fighting for democracy, and have honored him with the Golden Pen Award. This is a judicious and fair choice worthy of Ahmad Zeid-Abadi. He uses the might of his pen not just to tell the truth and expose political corruption.

In addition he also tries responsibly to use his pen and his ideas to make the world more ethical, reduce people’s pain and suffering. Without a doubt this pen will bring its responsibilities to fruition, for what that pen writes gushes forth from the soul of the person holding that pen and is the bright and shining mirror of his noble heart and his humane ideas.

Last month, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who has dual citizenship in Iran and Canada, was jailed for 19 years after being convicted of “collaborating with hostile governments, committing blasphemy and propaganda against the Islamic Republic, and managing an obscene website”, according to an Al Jazeera report.

Read Xavier Vidal-Folch’s speech in full at this link…

Read Akbar Ganji’s speech in full at this link…

More from Journalism.co.uk:

Half the world’s jailed journalists were working online, says CPJ

Human rights lawyer arrested in Iran

International survey of newspapers’ business strategy calls for executives

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Newspaper executives are being asked to complete a survey to provide a better understanding of how newspapers are reacting and changing their businesses to respond to ongoing changes to traditional news operations.

This is the second such survey carried out by The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the UK’s University of Central Lancashire and the Norwegian School of Management. The short World Newspaper Future & Change Study 2010 should take no more than 15 minutes to complete and will address how newspapers are adapting their businesses for digital and in response to ongoing international and localised financial pressures.

Last year, despite extremely challenging financial circumstances for many newspapers around the world during the financial downturn, the majority of the 657 respondents indicated that their companies were in innovation mode, creating new print and digital products and new businesses, such as insourced printing, training and events.

Respondents’ identities will remain confidential.

Anna Kirah: Every news org CEO needs a mentor aged 18-22 (audio)

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Last week at the WAN-IFRA ‘Managing the Crisis’ conference, Anna Kirah, design anthropologist and vice-president of CPH Design, argued that reader/user habit surveys were useless (unsurprisingly, she advocated an ethnographic approach) and suggested that every newspaper exec get themselves a young mentor, aged 18-22…

Here she is talking to Journalism.co.uk:

“I think we are living in a revolution gap; it’s not a generation gap. We’ve always had generation gaps where the older people think differently from the younger people and there are all sorts of tensions there.

“This is a revolution gap: it’s between the industrial revolution way of thinking, and a new way of thinking that has developed through interconnectivity.

“Whether we call them the net generation, or digital natives, or Gen Y, it doesn’t matter. But these people think differently, act differently, behave differently, experience the world in completely different ways and newspapers have taken far too long to realise the potential there.

“I think the best way to do that as a CEO is hiring a mentor who is between the ages of 18 and 22, who sits with them and explains what they are doing.

“It will require the CEO to be humble and not put value judgement on it. But learn what the excitement is about; what it gives to these people. What it gives them has filtered into other generations now.”

MTC09: Moritz Wuttke – Don’t rely on Google and develop your own AdSense

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Publishers shouldn’t automatically give over everything to Google, said Moritz Wuttke, founder of NextMediaInitiatives, based in Switzerland and China, at a WAN-IFRA industry gathering today.

Wuttke, who advises media and advertising companies how to earn revenue online, suggested that newspaper publishers make advertisers work far too hard when it comes to buying adverts. It should be possible within three clicks, he said.

The New York Times’ self-service advertising model was a good development, but much more needed to be done by organisations, he said.

Who has tried to develop their own AdSense? Wuttke didn’t suggest that newspapers develop their own technology, but look to services outside of Google, he said. “Google is not bad – use them but don’t be abused,” he said. If Google offers to host everything for free, think twice, he advised.

“Work with Ad Clicks,” he said. “Start your own contextual advertising.”

Using evidence from Asia, he showed where profits were being made: the Chinese instant messaging service for example: QQ IM with its 70 per cent profit margin.

Newspaper site advertising needs to be more flexible, he said. Understand that 15 seconds might be too long for a user to watch a advertising video – five seconds might even be too long, he added. “The best thing is to meet user groups and find out what is annoying,” he said.

Finally, he said: “Don’t fire the young guys. Hire the young guys – who will even work for free. Suck their brains. Empower them.”

Calling newspaper executives – participate in WAN-IFRA’s annual survey

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The newly-merged World Association of Newspapers-IFRA is joining forces with the University of Central Lancashire and the Norwegian School of Management to conduct a survey for 2009 on ‘World Newspaper Future & Change’.

Newspaper newsroom executives (both commercial and editorial) are being asked to take the 21-question survey – available at this link.

Identities of respondents will remain confidential and participants can register to receive the results when they are published as part of WAN-IFRA’s annual ‘Shaping the Future of the Newspaper’ report in December this year.