Each year Wan-Ifra brings to its members through its conferences and workshops lessons that are designed to make newspapers modern, nimble and digitally-enabled. The idea is to share knowledge to create and distribute news through print and cross media channels economically and effectively. This year the Wan-Ifra India 2014 Annual Conference will be held on 17 and 18 September 2014 at Hotel Le Meridien in New Delhi with three pre- conference workshops on data journalism, new media metrics and densitometry. The conference will bring together experts from newspaper organizations across the world to present their perspectives with case studies, to the attending delegates. This is usually an event that shares the experience collated from newsrooms production and advertisement centres and is an unique mix of technology and business solutions summarized under three main heads: the newsroom summit; the printing summit and; the cross media and advertising summit.
Discussing change
Print newspapers are changing both globally as well as in India. The cut-off lengths are shorter, the print runs are shorter and more varied, but the color pages have increased and so has the design component. Perhaps the content quality has not improved but the focus is increasingly a mix of global and local and so has the dissemination of news — global through the net and mobile phones and local through the print media.
While print is still the primary revenue earner, mobile viewing is increasing at a phenomenal rate pointing to a real possibility of drawing in the new reader and generating revenue through mobile monetization.
Digital media has immediacy but also a 24×7 continuity that needs to be relevant to viewers across the globe. It is an endless stream of a never ending flow of information, always updated and fresh from a world that never
sleeps. Printed paper gives refined and vetted news which has a historic relevance as published documentation over a defined time period. The digital information is a mix of vetted and unverified news much broader in scope but gelatinous and unstructured in form, always moving and expanding but not the solid vetted mass that print provides. The challenge for news publishers is to build on the strength of these two mediums and grow their audience and business, and the Wan-Ifra conferences help merge the two media platforms.
From newsroom challenges to waste management
The first day’s sessions start with an address by TN Ninan, chairman, Business Standard discussing where to draw the line between advertisement and editorial, in the newsroom summit. In the printing summit, K Balaji, director of Kasturi and Sons, will talk about managing newspaper waste and Sunil Patil and Amit Gupta of BCCL will discuss ways to reduce energy consumption. Rahul Kansal, executive president, BCCL will discuss how Times of India builds brand strategies in the cross media advertising summit.
This will be followed by a digital story telling session by Kevin Anderson, regional executive editor, Gannett Wisconsin Media, on how to develop content focussed for delivery in individual mediums, and a discourse by Rob Rose, investigative journalist, Sunday Times, South Africa on the challenges and risks to investigative journalism in the newsroom summit. The printing summit will deal with meeting the technical challenge of using high pigmentation inks with 42 gsm newsprint presented by Snehasis Roy, AVP manufacturing of ABP.
The digital insights
The post lunch session on day one would focus on digital transformation of Malayala Manorama, one of the most happening events in the newspaper industry in India, presented by Mariam Mammen Mathew, COO of Manorama Online. This would be followed by a discourse on metered paywall by Andrew Holden, editor-in-chief, The Age, Australia. The post tea sessions would have Thomas Smolders, head international rollout of Blendle, a media startup and R Sukumar, editor of Mint talking on paywalls and integrated newsrooms. The printing summit would have presentations by Kartik Taneja of Google and Florian Nehm of Alex Springer on managing search engine and social media support to propel conventional news.
The second day sessions have a very interesting spin mixing news with education and with presentations by Serene Goh, editor, The Strait Times, Singapore and Basant Rathore, brand strategy head of Dainik Jagaran in the newsroom summit. In the printing summit there will be talks on hazardous waste management by Michael Buckley of PEFC Singapore and K Srinivas of Enviro Engineers while the cross media advertising summit will see AJ Christopher of Eenadu and Nikhil Ganju of Trip Advisor speak on brand management strategies.
