Forget the myth of the good old days. To Mark Little, we’re living in a golden age.

Little was once a foreign correspondent tied to a satellite dish. He says what he’s seeing now from Syria, from people on the ground, is “much more authentic.”

Little embraces social media. He has a three-pronged approach: discover, validate and deliver.

But it’s not enough to rely on technology and algorithms. Little says journalists are needed to sort through the noise.

“We don’t want to replace journalists, we want to help them and empower them,” Little says.

With Storyful, Little has worked with a number of media companies, including The Economist and The New York Times. His company helps them harness the power of social media.

The key, he says, is to ensure they have content they can trust.

Little says it’s not necessary to have a technical background. But it does require a big shift in what journalists do and how they approach it.

“We’re going to have to become far more humble,” he says.

Journalists need to engage with their audience and realize they don’t own the content, he says.

Mark Little spoke at the 19th World Editors Forum in Kiev, Ukraine. For more reports from the event visit the Kiev 2012 blog.

Relations with the local community are just as important as subscriptions, Arne Bore continues. Dialogue with readers is one of the most important tasks of the paper.

A lot of the paper’s most valuable content comes from its relationship with its readers, he says, such as:

1. Updates on community news: what’s going on, births, deaths and marriages
2. Unique stories contributed by readers as part of crowd-sourcing efforts
3. Enriched stories that have a "longer tail" as reader contributions allow for updates, and are higher quality when readers supply corrections

What is essential, however, when you open up a channel of communication, is to both listen and respond to readers. “If you are not responding to criticism, it will stand there unanswered,” Arne Bore warns.

It is also necessary to prevent the publication of offensive reader comments, Arne Bore says. “At the start we didn’t have the tools and resources to monitor reader participation,” he says, “and the good stuff wasn’t able to shine through.” Now, Drammens Tidende has introduced a two-tiered commenting system, whereby users must identify themselves, or their comments will be pre-moderated.

There is a fine line to be drawn, however, between filtering out the offensive and setting the bar too high, Arne Bore believes. “We don’t want to become an elitist media platform,” he stresses.

Former CEO of PPF Media and founder of the Nase Adresa project Roman Gallo told the World Editors Forum the hyperlocal news project covering four regions in the Czech Republic, which, before its recent closure, had been intended to expand to cover the whole country.

Nase Adresa, or 'our address,' consisted of three main directions of development including weekly newspapers, websites and coffeeshop-newsrooms, where journalists were entirely accessible to their audience. Community content collected there was a "basic building block" of the project, Gallo said.

According to Gallo's speech, there were three main motivations behind the news cafes: a place for the creation for community content, a marketing tool and a financial contribution to the project. "We planned 30 percent of content to be created by various communities or in cooperation with communities."

"After the unexpected closure of the project, of course I don't feel very positive, but I've learned a lot," Gallo noted. He emphasized the fact that some expectations, such as the idea that only local content will work, were proven right. "Our mistake was underestimating the complexity," he said, and they only partially reached their goal of having one local team with no walls between them.

World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers CEO Christoph Riess discussed the future of newspapers and challenges for advertising in a keynote speech of the morning at the World Editor's Forum in Hamburg. "Whatever form the newspaper takes, it will remain the dominant media force in the world," Riess assured the audience.

Although the future tendency of the audience often seems to be towards the Internet and online publications, Riess pointed out that 61% of countries surveyed reported increased or stable print circulation over the past year, according to World Press Trends, the annual worldwide industry survey collecting data 2010. He stated that based on this information, "newspapers reach more audience than the Internet".

In the digital realm, however, paid content is a necessity, Riess said. "Will paid content generate revenue? It's not a question of yes or no. It's question of how. In order to survive, we have to do it," he emphasised.

The business model must be tailored to the situation and needs of each newspaper, Riess said. He added that the situation is different for each country, but "clearly, daily titles grow". Asian countries, including India, boast 67 of the top 100 paid daily newspaper titles of the report. In terms of free daily newspapers, Russia has 41 free newspapers, the biggest number. He said that the stress should be on the print, as "the contribution of our paid content model is and will be much more important".