Results matching “digital publishing conference how”

16-17 February 2012, Room IV, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France

The conference "The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World" aims to gather leading media representatives, professional and "citizen" journalists and media law experts to exchange views on these issues and to discuss good practices in traditional professional journalism and citizen journalism in the digital era.

With a stunning 2 billion persons estimated to be using the Internet and producing 156 million public blogs in 2011, there has been a surge of social networks, user-generated content and micro-blogging that has enabled all Internet users to become public communicators. Along with the spread of the Internet, WikiLeaks' release of a massive number of classified government documents and its initial collaboration with traditional news media has modified the media landscape and raised crucial questions for journalism.

Some Italian newspapers could be at risk due to the cuts in state subsidies that the new technocrat government is planning to implement.

The Financial Times reported last week that about 100 titles are facing closure as Mario Monti's administration confirmed cuts in public subsidies for the press from €170m to €53m budgeted for next year. These had already been proposed by the previous government led by Silvio Berlusconi.

At risk are wellknown papers such the leftwing Liberazione, Il Manifesto and L'Unità, the former communist party daily founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 and the Catholic daily Avvenire. 

The Digital Media Asia Conference and Asian Digital Media Awards will be held in Hong Kong from 23 - 25 November 2011 and will reward the best in online, mobile and tablet publishing. 

As WAN-IFRA Deputy CEO Larry Kilman writes, the conference is Asia's largest conference on new media and is designed to recognize the achievements and discuss the future of the news and digital media firms from the Middle East to the Asian Pacific. Read the full list of speakers here. 

The role of new digital media in the Asian news industry is still in the process of evolution; print circulation remains stronger in younger, vibrant Eastern markets than in mature Western markets where print is encountering difficulties. As Christoph Riess, WAN-IFRA CEO, reflected: "Circulation is like the sun. It continues to rise in the East and decline in the West."  

The relationship between Apple and the publishing industry hasn't been the smoothest one, but the tech giant has taken steps towards publishers lately. For one, it is giving a more prominent place for newspapers and magazines in the upcoming iOS operating system, which was announced on Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. IOS5 will include a feature called Newsstand, which will improve newspaper apps' exposure and present the user's newspaper app subscriptions in one location.

Yesterday, the press caught on the fact that Apple had quietly made changes to its much criticised in-app subscription guidelines. The most significant change related to app pricing. Mac Rumors was one of the first sites to report that Apple has now removed any specifications regarding pricing from the terms, allowing publishers to now set their prices freely. Previously, Apple had required that app subscriptions sold in the App Store had to be the "same price or less" with subscriptions the publisher offered outside the app.

In the wake of the 9.0 earthquake that hit Japan on March 11 of this year, the Japanese news industry showed resilience and dedication to keeping their readership informed. 

Initially, newspapers in northeastern Japan had difficulties publishing, but thanks to mutual anti-disaster agreements with newspapers in neighboring prefectures, newspapers in the heavily affected Tohoku region were able to continue publishing.

Some newspapers used back-up generators to maintain power and reduced the number of pages in print, according to the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association. 

One resourceful newspaper in Ishinomaki, Japan, resorted to handwriting papers for residents and passing them out at local relief centers.

WAN-IFRA is hosting its third international conference on newspaper and magazine design next Thursday, 19 May, in Paris.

Whether in print, on the web or any other digital platform, newspaper design can give added value to editorial content. The objective of this conference is to show to participants "best practices" in creativity, originality, but also efficiency.

Topics include:
- Digital design
- Combining high-quality design with interesting content
- Show more than tell
- Best practices in Iberian newspapers design

Please see here for more details and here for registration.

3 May is World Press Freedom Day, established as such by the UN General Assembly in 1993.

The day is celebrated worldwide by different international organizations such the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and here, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

"Every year, May 3rd is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession", announces UNESCO's website.

The Online News Association launched a new fellowship for digital journalists, aged between 23 and 30, Journalism.co.uk reported. The MJ Bear Fellowships will connect three promising digital journalists with mentors, in addition to providing a trip to the Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet in Boston.

Gawker ran a story of a small-town newspaper owner whose bizarre relationship with his employees included spying on them. The article highlights the owner's paranoia concerning what his reporters thought of him, which eventually culminated in a revolt by his staff.

Last week, the New Yorker released a short story by Jonathan Franzen for those ready to "like" the magazine on Facebook. Bloggasm has counted that the move brought the New Yorker 16,000 more fans, as the number went from 202,000 to 218,000, but speculates that its success was partly because of its novelty value.

Editor & Publisher published profiles of 25 publishing leaders under the age of 35, whose brand of journalism is something notably different from that of their older counterparts. The young leaders also discuss the challenges journalism faces today.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service

When a speaker at a media conference refers to the traditional desktop-based internet as "the old-fashioned internet," you know that the media world is evolving faster than ever.

In language that was once reserved for newspapers, the PC-based internet took a back seat to mobile and tablets at the just-completed Digital Media Europe conference, which drew nearly 250 participants from 38 countries to London this week.

The reach of the new mobile web was evident in the room itself. Those 250 participants had 309 devices connected to the conference Wi-Fi.

Ken Doctor on Nieman analyses the 'newsonomics' of Sunday paper/tablet subscriptions, in light of The New York Times' paid online content launch. "You don't see the Sunday newspaper/tablet subscription called out in any of the Times' announcements, or on its pricing page, and there's a fair amount of subterranean speculation as to the Times' intent -- but more on that below", he wrote. "I talked to a number of people in the days after the Times' announcement who had quickly done the math in their heads, and figured out that the Sunday print subscription, giving them all-access to Times' digital delivery, was the best deal that they could cobble together".
 
Meanwhile, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the New York Times Co's chairman and publisher, in an interview with CEO Janet Robinson at the Paley Center, said that the rise of tablets and apps has helped pave the way for The New York Times and potentially many other newspapers to charge for content, paidcontent reported.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported that the UK advertising market boasts 6.9% increase. According to an Advertising Association/Warc expenditure report, released today, that rise meant that 2010 was strongest year for adspend growth since the dot.com boom of 2000. It also represented a significant bounce-back from recession, he wrote.

NewsGrange reported that Google has just launched its own online publication based in the UK. Think Quarterly, which calls itself a "a breathing space in a busy world" is, as the name implies, a quarterly online magazine, the article says. It will have a very small distribution initially as it is a "short book about data", sent to a small number of Google's UK partners and advertisers.

But paidcontent noted that Google is not about to become a magazine publisher. "Think Quarterly, with an emphasis on science-, business- and technology-related features, is not a consumer product, it's a branding exercise, just a typical corporate contract publishing title, designed to ally Google and its people with smart technology thinking in the minds of its audience", the article said.

Bloomberg digital head Kevin Krim told the Structure Big Data conference in New York City about how the company personalises news for its 20 million users, Gigaom reported.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service  

At WAN-IFRA's Middle East Publishing Conference underway in Dubai, one of the speakers pointed out how the ongoing demonstrations in the Middle East illustrate misconceptions about digital media.

Eamonn Byrne of the Byrne Partnership in the UK said there are only 14,000 registered Twitter users in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen combined, compared with a population of 82 million in Egypt alone. "And yet, if you look at the BBC, or Al Jazeera, you could be forgiven for thinking Twitter or Facebook are entirely responsible for the events of the last weeks."

Its founders believe that The Daily's success will depend on the quality of its journalism, Tech Crunch's Robin Wauters reported based his notes from an interview with James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert and currently Chairman and CEO of News Corporation Europe and Asia. Murdoch was interviewed on stage at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany.

"Murdoch touched on everything from its relationship with Google to paywalls for online newspapers, iPad applications and more", Wauters preannounced.

News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch has supplied observers with much food for thought in recent days. In yesterday's Q3 earnings call which reported better than expected results, the media mogul discussed plans to unveil an innovative subscription model "to deliver digital content to consumers wherever and whenever they want it," paidContent reported. As paidContent points out, this may well coincide with the launch of paid Times and Sunday Times websites.

Murdoch mentioned a press conference in three to four weeks where more details will be revealed, and the subscription mechanism will charge for entertainment as well as news, he said. PaidContent speculated that a Times subscription might be bundled with at BSkyB satellite TV subscription, for example, or even with cinema tickets. When questioned on whether the new payment system would compete with iTunes, Murdoch replied that it would.

Speaking at the Wharton School of  Business' "Future of Publishing" conference on Friday afternoon, Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president of digital operations at the New York Times, offered remarks on the future of engagement in the wake of Facebook's new web-sharing tools.

Nisenholtz emphasized engagement as an aspect of a publication's online offering for which readers might be willing to pay for access to that online content.

"The more engaged our users are with us, the more value we deliver to them, the more likely they will be to pay," he said.

The Financial Times confirmed yesterday that payment for its day and weekly passes for its online content will go through PayPal, the e-commerce business owned by eBay. The FT first announced plans of its online subscription model last August before announcing the option of a day pass last month.

Despite previous reports, the FT will not be going ahead with a "micropayment" option, a model which would allow readers to pay a small fee to access a single article online. "Micropayments simply isn't going to work if you go to an article and you spend quarter of an hour filling out forms and ticking boxes," John Ridding, CEO of the FT, told the newspaper's Digital Media & Broadcasting conference in London.

Reporting by Cecilia Campbell

With the ever increasing popularity of mobile reading devices such as mobiles phones, net-books, and e-readers, many publishers are seeing the value in producing an e-paper alongside their print editions in order to boost subscriptions and readership. Speaking at the 2nd WAN-IFRA conference on e-readers in Paris last week, Charles Lansu, Marketing Manager for NRC Handelsblad and Olivier Delteil, Business Development Manager, Digital edition, for Groupe Les Echos gave the attending publishers their insight on developing an e-paper.

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NRC Handelsblad: the first Dutch newspaper on electronic paper

Dutch financial daily NRC Handelsblad is currently the only newspaper in the country offering it's readers an e-reading edition of its publication, following its launch in early 2008. Whilst the actual editorial content is the same for both the print and digital versions, the latter also employs it's own team of designers and publishers to negotiate how the content might be presented best on the reduced screen size or devices such as e-readers and mobile phones.

Acting independently of the daily print publication is essential to the success of an e-paper, stressed  Charles Lansu, and there must be a seperate digital strategy. For NRC Handelsblad this strategy meant being available in a popular format (for example PDF, which is suited to both iRex and iLiad e-readers), offering all the content available in the print editions as well as some 'added benefits' and emphasising the 'infancy' of the product to customers, inviting them to offer feedback and help to improve the e-paper.

In a video interview with Beet.tv, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau commented on the hiring of Greg Coleman as president and chief revenue officer, who started at the news site yesterday.

With strong growth this year to around 24 million unique monthly visitors, "we firmly believe that we have the opportunity to build the brand that defines news and opinion on digital platforms" claims Hippeau. "This is a very large opportunity from a business point of view, so we are putting business infrastructure in place to allow us to be as big revenue-wise as we are traffic-wise."

Although traffic at Huffington is at an all-time high, greater than during the U.S. Presidential campaign, the site has not been regularly profitable and Hippeau announced earlier this week at the OMMA Conference that revenue from CPM advertising are nearing nil. Presumably the hiring of Coleman is to help HuffPost with just that, as he is an industry expert having headed global sales at Yahoo for seven years, which saw strong ad growth under his direction.

In the video interview (see below) Hippeau expects Coleman to help Huffington build a larger sales force, develop more sophisticated research and continue its growth in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Hippeau places emphasis on mobile apps and emerging medias, which HuffPost is investing heavily in. The interview finished with an explanation of the editorial expansions to the site, describing the forty-plus journalists and editors who write original reports and "keep the stories alive" by monitoring audience comments (one of the best benefits of publishing online) and developments in related areas.

In all, despite the news site's mediocre financial performance, Hippeau seemed enthusiastic about Coleman's appointment and confident of Huffington's new digital directions. The interview is short and sweet, at the least quite informative.

E-readers have had somewhat hesitant popularity to date. There is a clear interest in the developing technology, but steep price tags ($399 for a Sony Reader, $489 for a Kindle DX) have meant that they haven't exactly taken off.

However, increasingly there is no shortage of supply. iRex recently released its iRex DR800SG ($399), where owners can buy books and newspapers using a global wireless network (Kindle users can currently only do so within North America) - and is planning to release a colour version by 2011.

With just over a million e-readers sold worldwide in 2008, improvements in the technology are expected to increase sales: market research firm iSuppli predicts that 5.2 million e-readers will be sold this year with a greater interest outside of North America.

The next World Young Reader Conference in Prague in September will look at the "Total Youth Think" approach that is being adopted by newspapers looking to ensure a future audience of young people. The conference is one of the first to be conducted under the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA.

The "Total Youth Think" approach should aim to "create post-Internet print content combined with smart digital approaches, directly engage young people and those who influence their media loyalties, while at the same time avoid alienating older readers," according to a press release. Speakers include:

• - Anne Kari Jacobsen, Chief Analyst for A-Pressen Group in Norway, who will discuss how that group's local newspapers have used a wide array of strategies,
• - Grzegorz "Greg" Piechota, Special Projects Editor for Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, which is conducting a strategy to "link generations" in the newspaper
• - Boris Trupčević, General Manager for 24sata in Croatia, who will examine how the youth-led company became the market leader with a newly launched newspaper and website, and completed its multimedia strategy with a news TV channel.