Results matching “french newspape”

20 Minutes, the French free daily, will undergo a makeover this November.

The newspaper will create more space for photos and change the font. It will not reduce the editorial content. Management wants to make the newspaper more visual, spacious, and clearer. These changes at the newspaper have been in the pipeline for sometime.

The Editor-in-Chief, Johan Hufnagel, of 20Minutes.fr was fired recently due to a difference of opinion with the Editor-In-Chief of the print edition, Corinne Sorin. 20 Minutes President France, Pierre-Jean Bozo, believes there cannot be two Editors-in-Chief at the publication.  This action provoked a five-day strike at the website editing department in August. Negotiations are ongoing at the newspaper.

Source: AFP via IFRA Executive News

Prominent French daily regional newspaper Sud Ouest reports that it intends to re-launch its print edition in mid-November, focusing more on reader's needs, whether they are from Bordeaux or the nearby region, says Patrick Venries, the paper's information director.

The revamp will make Sud Ouest more "coherent", "logical", well-organized", "well-sequenced" and give it a stronger anchor to the region, says assistant editor Francis Dupuy, who will be in charge of the development at Sud Ouest starting from January 1 next year.

The tabloid format will remain the same but the logo will be squeezed into two lines to form a square on the top left in order to have a more organized frontpage. The re-designed paper will also have more content dedicated to leisure activities.

The makeover is led by the Scottish Palmer Watson, who also helped re-design the Spanish daily El Pais and the French daily Le Monde.

Source: AFP

The Guardian recently spoke with John Wintherow. In his first interview in nine years, the Sunday Times editor discusses the "tactile" joy of the Sunday paper, reading every word of the paper (and other nostalgia) and impersonates the competition. Below follows an edited transcript of what appears on the Guardian's website:

Over the past year, speculation about the future of the longest-serving editor in Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper empire has mounted as his paper's sales have declined... Highly successful and very low-profile, Witherow is in some ways like his newspaper - admired and respected, but without much fanfare.
 
Declining print sales and online competition have led several newspaper groups to merge the daily and Sunday staff with their online counterparts. News International has ruled out such integration. "We will remain separate entities with separate staff" says Witherow, adding that Sunday titles suffer from integration. There will be no editorial job cuts despite an efficiency drive conducted by the Murdoch-appointed Boston Consulting Group. He is talking to his daily counterpart, James Harding, about how the Sunday can be better "represented" online - the weekly drives a third of timesonline's traffic. Witherow is boyishly enthusiastic about the "tactile" joy of a Sunday read and wonders jokily whether the environmental damage of reading his newspaper online is greater than printing all that paper. "Newsprint still has the same elemental excitement about it - don't you think that?"

He still receives a weekly call from Rupert Murdoch, typically on Saturday evenings. "It's always been the same," he says. Unlike his counterpart at the Sun, Rebekah Wade, Witherow wasn't called to give evidence in the recent House of Lords inquiry about the influence of the media titan on his titles but he has always been "open" about it, he says. Does Murdoch suggest what the paper should be covering? "No ... he just likes to know what's going on. The conversation is invariably about world economics."

...One of the biggest criticisms of recent years is that the paper breaks fewer stories than it did. Even the first two issues of the relaunched paper failed to deliver a knockout scoop. "Ideally we would have liked something bigger but you can't always organise it that way," Witherow concedes. The conservative paper has instead landed big interviews with the former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and French first lady Carla Bruni.

A former foreign and home news reporter, Witherow sounds a little nostalgic for the fiercer competition of the 1980s and accepts that "generally Sundays on the news front are not as strong as they were" then. Staff and former colleagues suggest that he is far from complacent. One calls him "absolutely relentless", regularly berating editors if he felt their sections could improve. And Witherow does admit that there's something in a rival newspaper every Sunday that he wishes he'd had.

He denies that the Sunday Times is going downmarket in a bid to beat the Associated titles or the top-selling Saturday Telegraph and instead suggests there must be something for everyone in the paper. "He knows the Sunday Times reader better than anyone else and, annoyingly, he is always right," says Will Lewis, who spent three years as Witherow's business editor before going on to edit the Telegraph.

Despite a reputation as a tough perfectionist, Witherow is relaxed, thoughtful and funny during our interview - even doing impressions of rival newspaper executives. His public image seems largely derived from his failure to grant many interviews - "are they a useful thing to do with your time?" - and from the contrast with his predecessor Andrew Neil. "Both he and Dacre are in the same mould," says Hinton. "They're old school in that way and don't hang around on TV ... You can't get him to go out for lunch after Wednesday. He is a very, very involved editor."

Witherow used to read every word of the enormous newspaper before it went to print. "I tried to do it for a few years and went cross-eyed," he laughs. "It drove me bonkers, not because of the content but just demands of time." Now he signs off every front cover and reads three main news sections before publication.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

Electronic newspapers may be the next step for French newspapers, as France Télécom tests out its electronic reading device on more than a hundred people, the New York Times (NYT) reported. The Read & Go electronic reader lets users download newspaper content through the firm's wireless network and features an important aspect of the newspaper industry: advertisements.

Paul-François Fournier, France Télécom's senior vice president for online advertising, mentioned that the company's aim is to aid newspapers in succeeding in the digital age, since newspapers seem to have difficulties doing that on their own, the NYT reported.  

Seven publications are taking part in the trial, including the dailies Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, Libération, L'Equipe (sports), Les Échos (business) and the weekly entertainment and culture magazine Télérama.

There is some anxiety over the possibility that a firm like France Télécom might take over the newspaper business, much like Google did with search advertising, the NYT reported.

However, Pascal Laroche, Libération's digital version director, said the electronic reader may be a supplement to its other editions and "will not replace the newspaper".
 
French print newspaper advertising revenue and readership is not at its best and online ad revenue and audiences haven't made up for the loss, according to the NYT.

In France, France Télécom has 24 million mobile subscribers to whom the service may be marketed. The company may even introduce Read & Go to foreign markets where it has mobile networks, like the UK.

Whether consumers or advertisers will be convinced to use the Read & Go remains to be seen. The product may be introduced next year, according to the NYT.

Source:The New York Times

See also:
New folding screen e-reader, Readius, to be released
Business Week review: The Kindle "an imperfect substitute" for the newspaper
A paperless world?
Are we headed for all-electronic papers?

French daily newspaper Le Figaro announced the launch of its iPhone site, iphone.lefigaro.fr, as Apple releases its iPhone 3G, reported TarifMedia.com.

Le Figaro is following a trend that is seen across the newspaper industry, as news organizations like The New York Times and the Associated Press release their own iPhone applications.

iPhone users will have free access to Figaro.fr content such as national and international news, politics, sport, stock market, economics and culture.

New sections and services will be available on Le Figaro's iPhone site by fall 2008, according to TarifMedia.com.

Source: TarifMedia.com through IFRA Executive News Service

See also:
US: NYT launches iPhone application
AP launches native iPhone application

French daily newspaper Le Figaro decided to celebrate its status as the premier online news source (3.173 million unique users in June) by reformatting its front page to resemble its Web version.

According to Figaro's chief editor Etienne Mougotte, the Web isn't a competitor for large papers like Le Figaro; it is an "important complement" to print editions.

The audience figures are reassuring the Figaro group, who decided to reinforce its status as an online news portal by engaging in a development scheme that focuses on the digital version of the paper over three years ago.

For the paper to remain loyal to its values, it has to enter the digital age with full force, said Mougotte.

Source: AFP

At a time when any local or national news outlet can potentially become an international online brand, and as newsrooms adapt to a 24-hour news cycle, editors can learn from The New York Times' most recent attempt to 'kill' both birds with one stone.

Last week, top execs from The Times and the International Herald Tribune announced plans to merge iht.com and nytimes.com into a co-branded international section, in order to increase both sites' reach and appeal to international advertisers.

In this two-part series, the Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

Through these moves, The Times intends to accomplish at least four ostensible goals:

Part 1:
- Build an outpost for its Continuous News Desk in Paris, and eventually Hong Kong.
- Integrate operations, streamline some resources by increasing efficiency and avoiding overlap.

Part 2:
- Reinforce its international reach and further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
- Use the strength of NYT's online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

IHT: an outpost for the Times' continuous news

Although the proposed changes are currently undergoing a consultation process with the IHT's works council, as required by French law, the process of integration of both papers began ever since the NYT acquired full control of the IHT in 2003, and has accelerated in past months.

In Feb., NYT executive editor Bill Keller had already announced plans to integrate operations and develop an "organic, global, 24-hour news operation," in order "to create a Continuous News outpost in Paris."

In May, the IHT dropped its 142-year-old logo from its nameplate to replace it with the phrase "The Global Edition of the New York Times."

"That says, we are one, and we are," although both arms are managed separately, said Jim Roberts, digital editor at The Times.

Video: Roberts talks about the 'integration' of both newspapers. Footage was collected during an interview at the 15th World Editors Forum in Sweden.


Thanks to this outpost and the six-hour time difference, the NYT is now able to upload content to its site nearly 24 hours a day (from about 6am to 1am, New York time). The paper eventually hopes to establish a similar outpost at the IHT's Asian headquarters in Hong Kong in the next six months.

The creation of these outposts does not mean that the IHT is becoming a full-blown Paris bureau for The Times. "We have a Paris bureau," said Roberts, "and the newsroom of the IHT still has a print edition and right now they still have a website."

Integration, streamlining resources: evolution, no revolution

Since all proposed changes are undergoing a consultation process, editors couldn't give any firm preview of how workflows could be affected.

In the past, there has been "very regular contact between individual desks at the Times and corresponding desks at the IHT," said Martin Gottlieb, newly appointed editor of the Global edition. Many IHT editors come from The Times, regularly do edits on NYT pieces, and this past year IHT-written articles have appeared on nytimes.com with no distinctive byline.

However, there is no formal process of exchange between both newsrooms, and "There have been a couple of occasions when we've had IHT and NYT reporters covering the same thing," said Roberts.

The appointment of Gottlieb as editor of the Global Edition - note, no mention of the IHT in his title - is significant in that respect. In addition to fulfilling the role of editor of the paper, his mission will be to ensure that staff understands both papers are "two parts of one news-gathering operation, that should work in unison as much as possible in delivering the news 24 hours a day seven days a week," said Gottlieb.

A series of new editorial appointments at the IHT will be the symbols of this top-down integration. "There will be people coordinating the work of both staffs to, pretty much, make them as much as possible act as one staff," said Gottlieb.

For example, Alison Smale, who becomes European editor of the global newsroom, will be responsible for "coordinating the work of all NYT and IHT reporters in the region from the IHT newsroom in Paris," said the memo. To oversee the process, The Times also named Alan Flippen "Editor, Newsroom Organization."

It seems too early to say whether the planned reforms will lead to radical changes in workflows or content. Evolution, not revolution, said Roberts.

Currently, an IHT reporter based in Hong Kong might build upon a Times' story about the rise of airline fuel prices by interviewing Asian carriers, whose input might not have been as relevant to the core readership of the Times in the US. Likewise, an IHT story published in the Times might be fine-tuned to be more pertinent to the American audience (see the example of Der Spiegel in Part 2, looking at different newspaper approaches towards international editions).

Future workflows will likely build upon these current processes, rather than start from scratch. "It's continuing synergies that are taking place and maximizing them and regularizing them," said Gottlieb.

The planned changes can also be seen as an attempt to streamline resources - terminology often equivocated with cost cuts and layoffs. But according to Gottlieb, there are no planned newsroom layoffs at this point (this is subject to change during the next six months). It is possible that an online merger of iht.com and nytimes.com could lead to redundancies for some technical Web production positions.


Editors couldn't comment on any upcoming changes concerning the IHT's planned print redesign.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which will examine The Times' international branding strategy, and how newspapers can grow a previously inaccessible international readership.


Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition

Pierre Bellanger, founder and CEO of the French radio station Skyrock and blog network Skyrock.com, knows something about transitioning from a traditional media model to a digital one: Skyrock.com now draws 4.2 million unique visitors daily and about 7.5 billion page views monthly, and the group makes more than half of its revenues digitally.

At a conference in early June, Bellanger listed seven pointers for brands to establish and sell themselves online:

- Integrate collective intelligence: of particular importance to newspapers (see this interview with Bellanger), this means repurposing user-generated content such as comments or blogs in an add-value package for the brand.
- To be an individual: the brand should be engaged in the conversation with online users.
- Establish a relation of trust with users: this also entails getting rid of corporate and commercial communications, which online users can see through.
- Combine conversation and advertising: a 'chief community officer' should serve both to engage the community and drive profit.
- To remain useful.
- To remain polite.

Watch the video of the presentation here.

Bellanger was also a speaker at the 15th World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden (video below).


Source: Skyrock - Mobinaute.com

The 61st World Newspaper Congress and 15th World Editor Forum opened at 10 am on Monday the 1st of June.
During the two hour opening ceremony the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra entertained the audience with delightful music. Between musical interludes came presentations about the state of the industry an account of the state of the free press, and a warm welcome by the King of Sweden. Below is a brief summary of the mornings event.

Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of WAN, opened the congress.
He pushed the importance of freedom of the press, as well as WAN and it's impact when founded 1948 in Amsterdam after the war. Sweden was, in fact, he said, one of the twelve founder countries .
This is the third time Sweden is host for the event.

His Majesty, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden held a brief speech where he invited all the participants to Sweden.
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden pointed out that the free press has a long history in Sweden.
His Majesty was pleased to talk about Swedish democracy and what it means for the press. This is something which not everybody in the world can enjoy yet. Sweden has a press-ombudsman, said his Majesty.This exists so that the press takes responsibility for its actions and sees to it that nobody gets overrun in a self-disciplinary system not based on legislation.

Gavin O'Reilly, President, World Association of Newspapers opened by saying that the conference often uses the opening ceremony to criticize the host country's press situation. In this case he didn't need to criticize, to the satisfaction of the Swedes at the ceremony. In Sweden you have a press that is as close to utopia as is possible. Since 1766, 20 years before the French Revolution, Sweden had a free press.
A film showing how journalists all around the world have been tortured, harassed, hunted down and killed, showed us the inevitable truth of how the world today still isn't a safe place to make your voice heard, to do your job - to be a journalist.
Sweden invented the free morning newspaper, said Gavin O'Reilly while counting up a few areas where sweden has been a major player on the media scene. Sweden has always been a leading country, he continued.
As Gavin O'Reilly is a big supporter of the printed paper, he urged the strengh of printed newspapers, which has a success story in Sweden. 90% of the Swedish population choose to read a morning paper.

Tomas Brunegård, chairman of the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association, discussed the importance of the WAN event, working for freedom of the press, as it is under attack in many places in the world today. The speed of change in the industry is extreme, and it needs to turn dramatic change and challenges into opportunities. Free mind and innovation walk hand in hand. Openness is also importan. Regarding sustainability, Tomas Brunegård said that we have to leave something behind that is better than when we started.

Newspaper Le Figaro and mobile phone service Orange have partnered to offer a unique feature: it is the first live daily show about politics, entitled "The Talk," to be conceived exclusively for the Web and mobile phones.
The show will launch on Monday June 2 with French Prime Minister François Fillon. Every day, at 6pm, a political or financial celebrity will be interviewed by Figaro's star political reporter Anne Fulda or by Figaro.fr managing editor Laurent Guimier.
The show will be shot in the Figaro's own video studio (see the interview about their video studio) and will be broadcast live and for free on figaro.fr and on the news portal of Orange, both on the Web and on Orange mobile phones.
Truly innovative, this service will also be interactive, as Internet users can submit questions before the show and react to it live on the blog of "The Talk."
The show's business model is entirely based on its audience, thanks to banner ads sold on the sites of both the newspaper and mobile operator, for which both partners will share revenues.
The show's time, 6pm, was also geared to fill a 'news void' for the French audience, as they  are still at work or on their way home.
"There's on one side the best of content with Le Figaro, on the other the best of distribution with Orange. It's a win-win situation," said Orange President and Director, Didier Lombard.
Source: Figaro (here and here, links in French) through IFRA Executive News Service

Unrest at Le Monde continues as one of its staffers leaked an internal document, in which Le Monde outlined its plans for reorganization, to other French daily Libération, which published a summary yesterday.

To our readers, this document can be of great interest as it maps out a major daily's strategy when forced to reduce costs.

After analyzing Le Monde's financial situation - €20 million in losses in 2007 - the management aims to cut 1,000 pages in a year, the equivalent of about three per day. The daily had previously announced it would cut 129 jobs, leading to strikes in April.

Cutting Pages

The Culture section is trimmed down to two pages, the 'And You' service section will fit in one page. Le Monde's book review supplement is sharply cut down, from 12 to eight pages - "then to 4," according to the document.

"In rethinking its content and reducing the number of pages, the newspaper must concentrate on what's essential and original," explains the management in the document.

Understandably, this phrasing is a cause of concern for readers and editors (see also the case of the St. Petersburg Times' 'redesign').

Newsroom Organization

Some desks will be merged or grouped together, more or less logically: op-ed columnists and journalists from the 'Debate' pages will be together, which makes sense, but the staffers from the 'And You' section will be merged with those of sports.

All staffers for the daily will now be requires to write for Le Monde 2, a weekly magazine published by the Le Monde group. "The stakes of Le Monde 2 are high. Its editorial success will depend both on a significant growth of Saturday circulation and advertising revenues," read the document.

Management's objective is to "offer a newspaper that's shorter and denser during the week, and toughened up during weekends." In other words, Le Monde is edging towards more of a weekly structure.

Layoffs

The 129 job cuts are detailed section by section: the Culture desk will lose six journalists and four freelancers. The merger of 'And You' and Sports will lead to seven layoffs.

Two staffers will be cut from the Business section, two journalists and an assistant from the literary supplement, and more. Foreign correspondents will also be affected.

In the newspaper's administrative positions, 40 layoffs are expected. Management expects to save €9.4 million thanks to these job cuts.

Other Changes

Management is also considering the outsourcing of its call center and to raise the daily's cover price. It also evokes the possibility of moving into cheaper premises.

What do you think of these 'solutions'?

Source: Libération.fr