Recently by Emma Lukins

Investing money in a system change does not always turn out a success. Pieter Sijpersma, Editor in Chief, Dagblad van het Noorden talked at the 15th Worl Editors Forum about how introduing CCI Newsgate actually slowed the workflow down.

When Dagblad van het Noorden decided to integrate their newsroom and getting a new content managing system they made a list of demands. They wanted a system that was robust, that was truly a multimedia system, user friendlyand flexible. After looking at the options, considering things as the cost och reliability of the supplier the choice was made to invest in CCI Newsgate.

This was nine months ago and what they're dealing with now at the Dagblad van het Noorden is a newsroom under duress. The experience sudden stops and restarts, bugs popping up that are killed but still keep reappearing. They've made no profit in efficiency and even suffer from loss of reporting capacity.

So what went wrong? Well, even though Pieter Sijpersma consider CCI Newsgate to be a trulu slick system there is a possibility that it was launched too early. At the paper they suddenly felt that everything was sluggishing. You made just a simple click and suddenly found yourself sitting and staring at an egg watch for several minutes. It could also have been the staff that really wasn't ready even though they had thoroughly discussed the upcoming change.

Pieter Sijpersma said that maybe they

Over the last couple of days the future of the printed newspaper has been discussed and debated 15th World Editors Forum. Some declare it dead, others are optimistic. Pierre Haski, Founder and Editor in Chief at Rue89.com, doesn't need to worry. He spoke at the 7th session session under the slogan "There's a life after the newspaper".

Rue89.com was launched about a year ago on the same day that Nicolas Sarkozy was elected for president. And a year later Rue89.com is doing a lot better than he is, Pierre Haski stated. The independent French news website was launched from Pierre Haskis apartment since they did not have an office at the time. Today they have 650,000 unique readers each month. The websites was founded by journalists who, just like Pierre Haski, have kept blogs in the past and really come to see the how the Internet enables journalists to connect with their readers.

Rue89.com does not have a Reuters-wire. They did a first but soon realized that it was "money for nothing", since people are overflowed with that sort of free information, and if readers came to their site it was to read something unique, and they don't feel that they've suffered from not having that kind of material.

The site belongs to the "pro-am" family, with content produced both by professionals and amateurs. Their information comes from three voices, one being the actual journalists, the other experts and the third from readers/bloggers. Approximately one third of the content is produced by non-journalists, including the experts. Already from the beginning Rue89.com decided that journalists should have the final say in what goes up on the website, since they have knowledge about ethical rules etc. The biggest challenge has been to manage the comments. In the beginning they were over-flooded by comments and they had a crisis on their hands after a few months and needed to make some changes. Now readers have to be registered to be able to make a comment. You can use a free e-mailadress which really doesn't give you a real identity, but just by introducing that they "got rid of 90% of the crap".

Pierre Haski explained how the comments really are gold-mines, even though not all of them are gold. Many of their most successful stories over this first year have come from the comments made by readers, either the comments have contained actual tips or a journalist has found a good story in the ten or so lines that the reader has written.

The national Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad managed to turn the tide and went from being close to bakruptcy to increasing its circulation by introducing new weekend editions. Editor in Chief Erik Bjerager explained how this was done at the 15th World Editors Forum.

Kristeligt Dagblad is a national Christian newspaper that is published six days a week. It was founded in 1896. In 1995 circulation reached a record low with only 13,000 copies, and about 35,000 readers a day. Today  the paper has about 100,000 readers a day and a circulation of 26,000 copies.

Back in 1995 Kristeligt Dagblad had a hard time selling six day subscribtions but needed to attract new subscribers to ensure future circulation. To solve the problem, it introduced new editions on Fridays and Saturdays and offered subscribers that wanted to give up their subscribtions the opportunity to subscirbe only to the Friday edition, or to the Friday and Saturday editions.

Bjerager talked abut how he thinks it is a mistake to look at the newspaper as a mass medium; reading the newspaper is a personal experience. He said that if you are able to establish a realtionship between the reader and  the newspaper you will have a much easier time attracting subscribers. And what Kristeligt Dagblad has done to establish that relationship is focus on the core subjects of a Christian paper: ethics, faith and existence, and highlighting them in two new sections in the weekend editions.

On Fridays they introduced a new section called "Life & Soul" where they focus on social issues and stories about relations, marriage and divorce, friendship etc. The also have a widely read column by a psychologist. On Saturdays they have a section called "Books & Culture" where they write about, well, books and culture, but from a Christian point of view.

Bjerager said that his paper has never marketed its special weekend subscription package. Instead, it gives away four week subscritions for free, and then if readers do not wish to buy a full subscription, they are offered the two-day weekend subscribtion. The free subscriptions also helped to caputure poeple who are somewhat skeptical of Christian papers.

The papers strategies have resulted in 19,000 extra copies sold on Fridays and 9,000 extra copies on Saturdays. Today Kristeligt Dagblad has about 40,000 subscribers total.

Writer, broadcaster and visiting Senior Fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the UK's University of Surrey, Kenan Malik, discussed whether freedom of speech should be restricted or not in today's pluralistic society at the Press Freedom Round Table at the 15th World Editors Forum.

In a pluralistic society, people are more likely to be offended by things that are expressed. This raises the question of whether the freedom of speech should be restricted to protect the feelings and beliefs of others, or unrestrained -- so that everyone truly is free to air their opinion.

Kenan Malik believes that in a pluralistic society freedom of speech should rule in today's pluralistic society. He brought up the example of the publication of Salman Rushdie's  Satanic Verses, 20 years ago. Back then a lot of people defended and supported Rushdie's right to express and publish anything he wanted. But now, after 9/11 and the controversy following the Mohammed-caricatures, people are saying that religious beliefs should be respected because they are so deeply felt.

Malik argues that all beliefs -- not only religous, but also atheistic beliefs should be respected and so on. And in the end no one would be able to say anything. We should instead respect freedom of speech. Censorship doesn't protected small minority groups and powerless citizens, Malik argues, but rather increases the power of those who have the power to censor.

The quote above was given by Ulf Johansson, Editor-in-Chief of Nerikes Allehanda (Sweden) at the Press Freedom Round Table at the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden. He described how his life was affected by making the decision to publish a caricature of the prophet Mohammed as a "round-about dog".

Freedom of press and freedom of religion are not each other's antithesis, but rather two sides of the same coin, Ulf Johansson said, explaining that his newspaper strongly belives in both and in giving people the opportunity to express their religious beliefs, he has to give others the right to question, debate and even ridicule those beliefs. Nerikes Allehanda is a regional newspaper and in the town, Örebro, where it is published serves as the arena that people can use to practice freedom of speech. So it must be open to all kinds of opinions even if not all agree with them.

After the publication Ulf Johansson recieved threats and after some time an alledged Al-Qaida leader put a price on his head. Today he is not sure if he would again make the decision to publish another piece that could cause as much controversy, mainly because he is worried for his own safety as well as that of his family. Although, he believes that a decision like that should not be caused by fear.