Recently by Matilda Andersson Nwachukwu

At the 15th World Editors Forum, Luc Petitfrère, deputy Editor-in-Chief for Edipresse in Switzerland, told the audience why they have chose to use Methode - a multiple-channel publishing platform - for all their magazines.
 
The Edipresse Group, whose activity was limited to Switzerland for a long time, began its international expansion at the beginning of the 1990s. It is now present in 15 countries and publishes over 200 titles and websites. In all its magazines Edipresse has chose to use Méthode Portal Server.
It´s a Web content delivery platform specifically developed to address the needs of news and media organisations serving large and differentiated online audiences.
The advantages with Méthode are many, according to Luc Petitfrère.
Maximal throughput - the advanced notifying and querying technologies incorporated in Méthode allow highly intelligent newsflow management - particularly in the area of caching. Very large audiences can be served with constantly updated, customised news content, without requiring huge investments in server horsepower.
- The database is used as if you´re using Windows Explorer. Its really flexible, says Luc Petitfrère. 

The Innovations International Media Consulting Group presented its annual survey at a joint session of the 61st World Newspaper Congress and 15th World Editors Forum. The general conclusions of the session were that newspapers need to dare to be innovative and commit their papers to profound change. During the presentation the audience got to know which papers are innovating and doing so successfully.

Soliciting ideas from readers

The Spokesman Review, a daily newspaper in Spokane, Washington state was highlighted at the presentation because of its transparency. Not only does the newsroom staff attend the morning meeting, but citizens from the community join in as well. Everyone is welcome, in person or online. The Spokesman Review wants to listen to its readers and receive their comments as part of their daily work. Every day an average of 40 to 50 people do so online and two or three individuals per week show up in person as well as many school classes.

Saturday is the new Sunday

ES, a supplement of Barcelona's La Vanguardia is one of the best examples of innovative journalism, according to Innovations. It is a magazine with about 60-64 pages divided into three broad macro sections: In Shape, The family and At Home. ES is an all-color magazine in which design and pictures are key elements. One of the most significant characteristics of the new supplement is the originality of its contents. The editor Alex Rodriguez wants ES to be "elegant and of broad interest without being low brow". ES attracts new advertiser and helps sell newspapers.    

Juan Antonio Giner, one of the editors of Innovation's report, presented some ways of how to kill a newspaper:  

1. Print badly
2. Don´t interact with your audience
3. Print poor color
4. Write long articles
5. Don´t bother with design
6. Pay poor salaries
7. Dont innovate
8. Expect miracles

Juan Antonio said he does not worry about the future of journalism because he is too concerned with the present, and points out that life is too short to read bad newspapers. At the presentation he tried to inspire the audience to be more innovative; "If others can do it, why can't you?" Here are some of his best tips to reinvent newspapers:

1. Be different
2. Shake things up
3. Raise hell and sell newspapers
4. Make readers smile, not depressed
5. Great stories
6. Be hyper-local
7. Integrate or die
8. Graphics, graphics, graphics
9. Try wild ideas

The newsroom of tomorrow

The 2008 Global Report  on Innovations in Newspapers recommend:
1. a "Superdesk" at which the chiefs are accessible, visible and open.
2. a "Community desk" at which a team is in charge of integrating audience comments, pictures, videos, tips and opinions
3. an "Assignment desk" at which reporters, photographers, etc sit.
4. Integrated mini TV and radio studio
5. Digital walls on which the newsroom staff can see the online edition displayed at all times. 

"We have to make sure our journalists have the right skills." Thats how the idea of a training program started at the Daily Telegraph. Speaking at the 15th World Editors Forum, Chris Lloyd, Assistant Managing Editor, discussed the one-week training program that the Telegraph implemented to help its newsroom adapt to multimedia.

During the program, 20 people from different sections of the newspaper were taken from their daily jobs for one week, and divided into working groups. Under the leadership of consultants and the paper's editors, the participants learned how to produce audio and video as well as how to write for the Web.

"The training was especially a challenge, since many of our journalists haven´t been in a class room for 20 years," said Lloyd. Some journalists were at first reluctant to undergo the training, but were very happy they did so after the week was over. Many had never met each other before and the classes worked as a means of socializing and creating bonds within the newsroom where there were none before. One element that  contributed to the success of the program was the presence of newsroom execs. "Good leadership from our editors was very important," said Lloyd.

The project took much management, editorial and planning time. But the courses are an important part of Daily Telegraph's swift from a traditional media organisation to a modern one. "Training is an investment for the future," said Lloyd.

The worlds largest international multimedia news agency, Reuters, equipped its journalists with a small mobile journalism toolkit. This could be the beginning of the future journalism according to Ilicco Elia, Product Manager of mobile and emerging media at Reuters. He told the audience at the third session of the 15th World Editors Forum about a new way to tell stories through mobiles.
 
Mobile phones allow journalists to change their old, heavy camera equipment to a smaller device. The tool Reuters uses is the Nokia N95/N82 which includes a bluetooth keyboard, a digital microphone and a phone adapted tripod. Over the next few years, Nokia will come out with mobile phones boasting the same quality as the cameras photographers use today, said Elia. This will open huge possibilities for journalists.

The primary aim of Reuters' experiments with mobile was to get their stories out faster. They have run into problems such as teaching journalists the proper techniques in using the phones; it's harder than it looks to capture quality journalism on small devices. Still, Reuters' journalists are excited about the the new technology which has already been tested at the New York Fashion week and on the US preseidential campaign trail.

Reuters also plans to expand this opportunity to experts, peers and citizens by handing out the mobile devices to "citizen journalists". With mobile devices being so ubiquitous, Reuters will be able to capture news anywhere, anytime.   

A new digital profile inviting readers to join is one of the important things behind El Pais' success, said Javier Moreno, Editor-in-Chief of the Spanish daily newspaper, at the second session of the 15th World Editors Forum

El Pais has chosen to work with the print and online newsrooms separated from each other. A reason for this is different cooperation partners between the news rooms. But El Pais, web and print, have same owner, which allows them to work closely together.
Some of the headlines on elpais.com always come directly from the printed edition.  
Now El Pais is making money from the web edition. Javier Moreno points out that El Pais knows their web readers, which means they know exactly how the readers navigate on the web page and which articles are most clicked. This helps the web edition team to laborate among the articles on the website.
El Pais has changed a lot the last few years, adding a new digital profile and changing the journalism in both of the newsrooms. This has generated more traffic on the web edition. Since 2005 El Pais has steadily increased their number of readers both on the web and the printed edition.
- We have find our own rhythm, says Javier Moreno.  

Young people want news with depth, something they aren´t getting now. This is an eye-opener for newspapers, said Jim Kennedy, director of strategic planning at the AP, who presented a new consumer study, conducted with the anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff, at the opening session of the 15th World Editors Forum.  

18 young people, between the ages of 18 and 34 from all over the world, were studied intensively in the survey which established the fact that young people use different platforms in their media consumption. They start their day with e-mail news, later get an update on their mobile phone and then search for background details on the internet. Television tells of spin-off effects, how a story is going to develop, said Blinkoff.

A big problem media faces today is that young news consumers experience news fatigue, because they have hundreds of channels to choose between. Constantly checking for updates cn be linked to boredom, claimed Blinkoff.

The survey shows that facts and updates are over-represented in media today and are not what young consumers are after.

Kennedy and Blinkoff pointed out that we already have a media landscape with different publishing channels such as internet, mobile phones, newspapers, radio etc. News must be presented on each channel, as the survey showed that young consumers use different media platforms.

Blinkoff said that media companies have to find the answers to two challenging questions:
- How should we connect different platforms? 
- How do we differentiate the story to suit each platform?

As a part of the 15th World editors forum, press freedom round table representatives from magazines and newspapers from Europe and northern Africa discussed how media reacted to the publication of the controversial Mohammed cartoons. 

Philippe Val, a columnist and managing director of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, chose to publish the controversial Mohammed cartoons as a statement of free expression. This caused the biggest reactions in the magazine's history. This surprised him since his magazine is known in France to be anti-racial. After the publication Val lived under threat and needed protection by the police. Later, the Paris Grand Mosque and the union of Islamic organisations of France, took Philippe Val to court for printing the cartoons. The Paris court acquitted him in late March.

Also the renowned Algerian cartoonist Ali Dilem has repeatedly received death threats from Islamic groups. During the years of working as a cartoonist in Algeria he has faced multiple court cases and prison sentences. For him there is only one topic that is more difficult to handle than others: Islam. Mohammed is a thing he is trying to avoid on his cartoon pages.  

Ali Amar is co-founder and publisher of Moroccan weekly news magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire. His magazine is famous for writing about taboo political topics but when it comes to the Mohammed cartoons the magazine didn't publish. In Algeria there were mass demonstrations, and Danish flags were burned during the most critical period. Le Journal instead tried to figure out who were behind these mass protests. They found it was their own government. Many of the demonstrators and the message from the demonstrations came from the state.