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#WANIndia2009: Re-inventing the newspaper – Portugal’s i

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Over on the main site we’re reporting on how a recently launched Portuguese newspaper, i, is innovating across platforms – targeting breaking news online at social networks; redesigning the traditional print format to four section; and redesigning its newsroom.

The seven-month-old title has shown circulation growth and is attracting previously non-newspaper consumers as readers, says publisher and editor Martim Figueiredo.

Read the full piece on i at this link – here are some photos of a special edition of the paper prepared for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, to give you an idea of what it looks like:

image of Portuguese newspaper i

Portuguese newspaper i

Portuguese newspaper i

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Najam Sethi’s speech on Pakistan and press freedom in full

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Pakistani editor Najam Sethi was yesterday awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom award at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

In his speech – reproduced below courtesy of WAN – Sethi, who has been imprisoned three times for carrying out his work as a journalist, said he was one of four Pakistani editors on the Taliban’s hitlist in the country – the other three have fled.

Sethi’s speech was succeeded by an update on press freedom worldwide, following news from WAN-IFRA that 88 journalists have been killed since the start of 2009.

Sitting in the audience I have never felt so lucky to be a journalist working the UK – a Sri Lankan journalist next to me asked whether journalists face the same death threats and persecution in the UK as in his country. Calls for libel reform and threats of gagging aside, I felt very fortunate in my answer.

Chris Elliott sums it up in his Guardian write-up of the event, which opened the conference:

“[D]eath is the 901st delegate sitting quietly in this vast conference room. Many of the delegates are taking a break from their daily existence of avoiding bombs, bullets and, with luck, just beatings or imprisonment. Celui orient identique au Viagra 100 mg. Un la couleur orient différente. Celui-là se trouve par-dessous deux formes: comprimé et gelée. Cela Kamagra ou bien citrate avec sildénafil est l’un sûrs produits avec celui-ci fonte, étant ce liminaire médicament oral sévère près la dysfonction érectile, dont orient aujourd’hui très populaire. For a hack working in the UK and whose legitimate worries are the libel laws it is a humbling experience.”

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Les Hinton tells newspapers – ‘Beware geeks bearing gifts’

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Unsurprisingly Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones and part of the Murdoch empire, launched an impassioned attack on free content and Google yesterday as part of his speech to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

Hinton criticised the promise of the internet (‘the false gospel of the web’) and while describing Google as an everyday wonder, said the search engine is at the heart of the crisis faced by newspapers:

“We were promised that eyeballs meant advertising, clicks meant cash. Free costs too much. News is a business and we should not be afraid to say it,” said Hinton.

“These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don’t understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts.Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable.”

Hinton was previously responsible for News International’s newspapers including the Sunday Times, which will introduce charging online next year. He said the industry itself was ‘the principal architect of its greatest difficulty’ for surrendering its content to aggregators and search engines for free – sentiments echoing Murdoch in Beijing only months ago.

Speech reproduced courtesy of WAN and Scribd.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: There’s gold in them there mobiles – don’t blow it, says Martha Stone

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“Please don’t blow it – there’s a big opportunity for mobile with newspaper companies,” was Martha Stone, director of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, opening statement to the World Editors Forum (WEF) and World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference in Hyderabad today.

But organisations must take it seriously ‘from the get go’, added Stone: “Even if you don’t see the business model immediately, just as we didn’t see a business model immediately for the internet.”

Sharing research from a new study, Stone said building iPhone apps and applications for other mobile properties was top priority across an international range of newspaper respondents.

So what should these groups be building?

Stone went on to outline the revenue opportunities for newspapers in mobile:

  • Permission databases
  • Chat and dating
  • Mobile search
  • Mobile blogging
  • ‘Advergames’
  • SMS alerts and interactions
  • MMS broadcasts

Mobile is already a key part of some newspapers’ advertising strategy, added Stone, who cited the examples of USA Today and the Sacramento Bee both using text advertising on mobile.

The Sacramento Bee in particular has used mobile advertising for previously print-only advertisers – a campaign for one plant nursery client using text advertising resulted in its largest weekend of sales.

More mature mobile markets have taken the proposition further – Scandinavian title Aftonbladet has used QR codes in both editorial and advertising.

Looking beyond traditional newspaper ground may be significant, in particular for the opportunities that lie in mobile social networking. Japanese social networking site Mobage Town, for example, which has 12 million people registered, uses advertising, affiliate sponsorships and avatar sales to generate revenues.

All #WANIndia2009 coverage from Journalism.co.uk at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Coverage of the World Association of Newspapers’ conference and World Editors Forum

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Journalism.co.uk is attending the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and World Editors Forum’s annual conferences running in Hyderabad, India, from today until Thursday 3 December.

Befitting of its surroundings in Hyderabad (or ‘Cyberabad’ as it’s nicknamed), the conference will report on press industry trends over the last year with a substantial focus on digital journalism for this year’s event.

Hot topics of debate will include how to make online journalism pay and whether Google is friend or foe. You can follow tweets from the event by using the hashtag #WANIndia2009 and following @journalism_live – or look at the CoveritLive blog below: