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The 'Secret Weapon' of Newspapers in the Digital Age? Paper!
William Powers, Media Columnist, The Nation, USA

Paper is an island of peace in the digital 'chaos' and an 'emerging strength' for media which demands much more examination, William Powers said in his keynote address to the annual Readership Conference.

"The world needs - desperately needs - what newspapers do," said Mr Powers, the media columnist for The Nation magazine in the United States and author of "Hamlet's Blackberry," an essay on the enduring power of paper.

Online video platform Brightcove Inc. announces a deal with OMS, Germany's Web-based sales and marketing network for regional newspaper titles, which will permit the latter to establish an online video network for member titles. Video content would be taken from international and national media outlets as well as from which is produced by local newspapers.

Part 1 discussed how the planned changes at The New York Times and International Herald Tribune will help the NYT's continuous news offerings, and how these changes could affect the organization and interaction between both newsrooms.

Part 2 examines how The New York Times intends to:
- Further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal internationally, and ways in which newspapers can reinforce their international reach.
- Use the strength of its online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

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.

How newspapers can become international brands, the NYT joins the race

Until now, the Times hasn't specifically catered to overseas advertisers and readers.

"We need to be agile," said IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, "to compete much more aggressively, nose to nose, with The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and anybody else who is competing for our readers and advertisers."

No doubt that the Times actually borrowed the continuous news outpost idea from the aforementioned competitors, which have been relying on their foreign bureaus to provide round the clock coverage.

The staff memo reaffirmed the NYT's "ambitious plans to expand in the region (Asia), particularly in India." In June, the IHT announced a partnership with the India-based Deccan Chronicle to print the Tribune's world business section in the Financial Chronicle.

With the rise of digital publishing, many news organizations are seeking to grow a previously inaccessible international readership by:

- launching a print edition abroad: several papers have rolled out editions away from home this past year, such as the FT's recently launched Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, WSJ's partnership with business paper Mint in India, the Daily Mail's partnership with India Today to publish the Mail Today, or The Times of London's Polish edition.

- investing in an online international section: In Germany, referential weekly Der Spiegel launched an English-language International edition on its website in 2004. Five fulltime staffers are dedicated to translating Der Spiegel's content and rewriting it with an international perspective, as well as doing their own international-minded original reporting (the full case study is featured in Trends in Newsrooms 2008). The Guardian adopted a different approach, by launching a separate, foreign-based, US website, Guardian America. The Guardian is reportedly considering similar ventures in other regions.

- simply reinforcing their focus on international news in their regular coverage: the Daily Telegraph's website in the UK, which was neck to neck with the Guardian in terms of traffic in April, claims nearly two thirds of its visitors are from overseas. A well-indexed website helps to brings in a significant number of 'light' international users through search engines.

Merging "co-branded" websites but not print: a branding issue

The NYT's approach is a combination of the first two strategies: the print IHT now serves as The Times' 'global edition' (see picture), while maintaining its trademark brand name. With the proposed online merger, the NYT could also follow the second route, by hosting an international edition online, without having to extensively change its workflows (see Part 1).

The rationale to merge the websites is clearly explained in the memo: according to WebTrends, NYT's website boasts a strong international audience and 58 million global users, compared to iht.com's seven million.

"The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said the memo.

However, the memo doesn't explicitly say why this won't be the case in print:

"The IHT should become the international print edition of the NYT, whether it is formally branded that way or not."

The main issue at stake is one of branding. "In print, there have been at least a couple of studies that show that among Tribune newspaper readers there is a great identification with the brand, that the brand means something to readers," said Gottlieb.

"More than the name, what accompanies the name, an international perspective, a sense of calling the best stories from The Times and augmenting them with unique reporting," was a combination that many readers liked.

As news organizations seek to grow their international reach, this consideration probably holds true for many that have established a reputable brand name on a local or national scale. However strong the brand name, its association with a particular place or country can potentially play against that news outlet on the international scene.

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

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"


- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times - Dan Bogler (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)

For its relaunch, the Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews with some top editors at leading newspapers around the world about the future of journalism. We kick off the series with Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief of the Globe & Mail in Canada.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)


"News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We no longer define our company as a newspaper or print company. We define ourselves as a news organization. I would say we began to do so about two years ago. In fact, I can almost pin it down to the day.

We had what in Canada was a major exclusive on a deal that would end the lockout of professional hockey. We were able to confirm the story at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We decided to put it up on the web rather than wait for the next day's paper, even though we would be tipping off our competitors.

While this wasn't the first time we had ever done this, it was a pretty major story and "giving it away" generated some internal debate. Two things happened:

    1. Over a hundred other media around the world cited globeandmail.com as the source of the story in their own reports.

    2. The scoop held in the Canadian newspapers. Even though we had posted it in the afternoon, nobody was able to match it. They also had to cite us in the next day's papers.

The moment presented a good opportunity to truly define what we knew we were becoming - a news organization with a strong base and history in print and a strong presence and future in digital.

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Not a whole lot. Printed material has been around for centuries and newspapers have encountered many incursions. The web and mobile have impressive technological and story-telling strengths. They extend our creative and physical reach.

But the newspaper also boasts unique attributes.  It is a thing of beauty that you can touch and take with you.  It is filled with information you didn't know you wanted to know.  It is an entity with which a reader can enjoy an intimate, emotional relationship.   It is a daily one-stop validation of the world around you.

Some forms of newspapers may not continue to exist, but in one form or another, newspapers will survive the internet age as they have survived other ages.

In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

I see it more as part of the continuity. I like to say that the platform isn't print or the web or mobile but that the platform is the journalism. That's the distinguishing factor and the competitive advantage of most news organizations.

The role of story telling goes back centuries and isn't going away. The craft of journalism, the skill of finding out and communicating important information and sorting the wheat from the chaff for your readers, will be in even higher demand as stories become more complex. Digital provides extra-ordinary new ways to tell stories in our world and for readers to take control of distribution and share with one another. So new opportunities abound.

It's only a break if we aren't clever enough to earn the money from the web necessary to finance our journalistic undertakings. I don't see that as an impossible challenge.

Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

First off, the closer a journalist can be to his or her audience the better. Users do not replace journalists, they supplement them. We have to stop being afraid to tap into the intelligence of our readers. We also have to understand that we play a unique role as full-time and fully-trained fact finders and story tellers. We now have a new tool at our disposal: the relationship we can build with readers.

Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I think, for news organizations that are confident enough to invest in their journalistic resources, this should be a great age for investigative journalism. In the clutter and clatter of a 500-million channel universe, it is a great differentiator and in an age in which a non-deferential public demands greater public transparency, the place for investigative journalism should be secure.

The fact that it is not speaks to how fear and fragmentation overwhelm many in the industry. It is great that a non-profit, philanthropic entity in the United States is being established to pursue investigative journalism. But I believe there is also a commercial case to be made. The fact that so many news organizations are cutting resources actually creates even more room in the marketplace for those willing to pursue this kind of journalistic-intensive, public-interest approach.


Stay tuned for upcoming interviews about the future of journalism.

Source: Ed Greespon, editor Globe & Mail

Since the Financial Times integrated its newsroom in 2006 and moved into a new one in 2007, it has been among the few British newspapers to increase its circulation, ad revenue and profits. Changes in the editorial process resulting from integration included “storybuilding,” new work shifts and lunch-hour training sessions.

According to a poll conducted for the BBC World Service, 56% of the 11,344 people interviewed in 14 countries thought that freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society. But 40% said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.

There’s no question that video is one of this year’s biggest priorities for newspapers, whether national or local. In this Q&A, the Editors Weblog interviewed Alexander Houben, editor of volksfreund.tv, an online local TV channel launched by the German local paper Volksfreund. Houben describes video’s costs, its effects on journalists and how the editorial content fits the paper's strategy.

Recently, The Financial Times and other internationally well-known papers such The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Spanish newspaper El Pais, and Germany’s Mitteldeutsche Zeitung displayed digital full-color samples produced by Océ at Poing, near Munich, Germany, Europe’s largest annual digital printing exhibition. 

The 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town was full of great speakers and events. Below you'll find your one-stop-shop to the best the Forum had to offer: all of the blog postings and videos produced by our student teams from the University of Stellenbosch and Wits University. Just find the session and speaker that interest you and click on the link to find a summary of his or her presentation or the videos we posted on YouTube.

According to a recent Harris Poll of five European nations, the United States, and Australia, 39% of American adults read the newspaper on a daily basis, down from 54% in 2000.  The ease and convenience of online information are the main reasons cited for the drop in daily readership.

This year the Editors Weblog is rewarding the loyalty of its readers with an exceptional offer for the annual Editors Forum (see below). But the condition is: you need to register before March 31!