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Innovation on Web
and Paper Key to Guardian's Future
Paris, 16
March 2006--The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom drew
a lot of attention when it converted to Berliner format last September,
but the success of the smaller version is only half the story.
While developing
the smaller format, the Guardian was also focusing on its online
version -- and the combination of innovations in print and on
the web is at the heart of its strategy.
Guardian Unlimited
was named the world's best newspaper on the internet last year
at the Webby Awards, which some call the "online Oscars."
The print move now means "we will have the most modern newspaper
in the world," says Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive of Guardian
Newspapers, who says innovation is a "core value and a brand
attribute." She will present the group's approach at the
World Newspaper Congress, to be held in Moscow, Russia, from 4
to 7 June next.
Ms McCall,
who titles her Congress presentation, "Innovation: How Guardian
Newspapers Changed Everything Except Our Values in Just 12 Months,"
believes that "no other newspaper is so well placed to address
the print and internet needs of both readers and advertisers."
At least 1,500
newspaper publishers, CEOs, managing directors, chief editors,
and other senior executives and their guests, from all over the
world, are expected to attend the World Newspaper Congress, World
Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2006, the global meetings
of the world's press.
Full details
about the conferences, organized by the World Association of Newspapers,
are available at http://www.moscow2006.com
Other Congress
speakers include:
- Mathias
Döpfner, CEO and Chairman of Axel Springer, Germany's biggest
newspaper publishing company, who says that traditional media
are threatened by the aging of society and the loss of young readers
to digital media. In a presentation entitled, "Future of
Newspapers - Newspapers of the Future," he will suggest two
ways out of the "assumed newspaper crisis" -- a "tight
interlocking of online with print", and "good old newspaper
start-ups" such as his group's Welt Kompakt in Germany and
Fakt in Poland.
- Pelle Tornberg,
Executive Director of Metro International, the free daily giant,
who contends that free dailies will one day replace paid-for newspapers
on weekdays, with 95 percent of the paid-fors surviving as niche
products that readers will buy only at weekends.
- Les Hinton,
Executive Chairman of News International, which is leading a spending
spree by the UK's national newspapers of well over one and a half
billion dollars on new printing plants. This act of faith in print
products and their future does not imply that News International
is neglecting digital media -- it owns some of the most popular
websites in the market.
- Karen Ferguson
Crotchfeld, Vice President of Marketing & Business Development
for The Arizona Republic, which has launched 20 new products,
both in print and on the web, in the last three years. Ms Crotchfeld
calls it an "audience aggregation strategy" that focuses
on providing "multiple products across multiple mediums with
an insane focus on serving specific target audiences."
- Sanjay Gupta,
Editor and CEO of Dainak Jagran, which is the daily newspaper
with the highest number of readers in the world -- more than 21
million, according to the latest Indian readership survey. He
will present the newspaper's strategies in circulation, marketing,
branding, revenue models and competition.
- Katie Vanneck,
Group Marketing Director, and Annelies van den Belt, New Media
Director, of the Telegraph Group in the United Kingdom, which
believes that the integration of print and online is going to
be a key success factor in the future of the newspaper business.
The group is managing its transition to the digital media age
within a traditional media context, in the belief that the effective
combination of print and digital is far stronger than either part
alone.
- And many
more. Full details, including programme information, a list of
participants and online registration information, can be found
at http://www.moscow2006.com
The Paris-based
WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents
18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 73 national newspaper
associations, newspapers and newspaper executives in 102 countries,
11 news agencies and nine regional and world-wide press groups.
Inquiries
to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy
St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33
1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr
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