Business News
Newspapers from Around the World Highlight Readership Success
Friday 01. October 2010 - Not all news coming from the newspaper industry in the United States is grim: the annual Readership Conference of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), to be held in San Francisco in November, will demonstrate what newspapers in both the US and abroad are doing to successfully increase their audiences and revenues in tough times.
The conference, to be held on 16 and 17 November at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco , will provide a rare first-hand opportunity for US newspaper executives to learn the strategies that are working overseas, while participants from other countries will see how US publishers are finding new opportunities in some of the toughest markets in the world.
For example, it is unlikely that many American publishers are familiar with Norran, a newspaper in northern Sweden that is redefining what it means to be local in the digital age. Anette Novak, Editor-in-Chief of Norran, will talk about how the newspaper connects with local readers by involving them in editorial planning.
Likewise, newspapers in India and Poland, far from San Francisco, will offer a look at what theyre doing to successfully attract younger readers, a significant achievement with implications for newspapers everywhere. Waldemar Pas, the Editor in Chief, and Joanna Parczynska, the Publisher of Metro in Poland, and Sunny Joseph, Chief Sub Editor of the Malayala Manorama in India, will speak in a session featuring 2010 World Young Reader Prize winners, which also includes Reese Chiavari, Creative Director of Teenlink, the Florida Sun-Sentinels youth edition.
And, from the United States, where the conventional wisdom holds – falsely — that newspapers are dying, the conference will present numerous cases of readership strategies that are working. A conference keynote address will be delivered by David L. Hunke, President and Publisher of USA Today, the nations largest newspaper, who will talk about strategies for creating emotional bonds with audiences.
Full details of the conference, held in cooperation with the Newspaper Association of America and the WAN-IFRA Newsplex, can be found at www.wan-ifra.org/readership-conference.
Other speakers include:
Torry Pedersen, CEO of Verdens Gang AS, the pioneering Schibsted company in Norway, who will discuss how they facilitate conversations among their readers;
Terry Horne, President & Publisher of the Orange County Register, a newspaper which has reorganised to expand its reach and quality to benefit its readership;
Jennifer Carroll, Vice President/Senior Editor of ContentOne, who will give an insight into ethnographic research being carried out among different audience groups;
Martin Jönsson, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden, a newspaper which has managed to turn itself around and win more readers and subscribers in the process;
Doug Bennett, President of the Interactive Division of US-based Freedom Communications, a company which has experimented with paid-content models across a number of titles;
Steve Cvengros, General Manager of Homepage at msn.com, will talk about how MSN targets audiences with content across their website in order to maximise traffic and expand its audience base;
Plus more speakers to be announced. Full conference details can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/readership-conference.