People at the New York Times first and foremost storytellers. Print is a very profittable pillar of the company and they will support it. They are not retreating from printing newspapers, and will print newspapers for a long time.

Media companies must be in perpetual beta in serving audiences while maintaining quality content on all platforms. They must learn from their readers, listen to their opinion and make them interact.

Free access to a limited number of articles before being asked to pay, and letting casual users visit through search and social media channels will preserve both traffic and inventory. After some time they will be asked to pay. NYTimes will anounce details of paid content model in late 2010 (prices and other details). They will continue to find new ways of presenting paid content on the digital platforms.

They are not pioneers. First was Times Select – it proved paid-for model worthy, more and more users showed the willingness to pay. It went down because of growing role of search in the internet and growing number of free content. The decision to create paid-content site adds an additional revenue source to sustain journalism

If people are willing to pay for apps, they should be willing to pay for the content. People will pay for news they trust, and are getting comfortable buying apps so will soon be ok to buy news and information. NYT has 43 million users online, the world largest online newspaper. Janet Robinson says it is all about the quality At the NYT they are more and more adapt with community driven content.

Business paradox, the so-called competitors are not competitors anymore. The are no more in the information business but in the making-content-relevant business. Reader engagement is essential to success of paid-content strategy. Interactive maps, sliding timelines, getting skilled with crowd-sourcing, all working better and better at New York Times.

Understanding the art of journalism and storytelling, and the emotional side of online engagement, will be core to New York Times success in future. Storytelling is key and online platforms can do much better than what we see now.

Facebook works well because of users’ identity. It’s important to publishers, because they now can identify the readers, as knowledgeble participants of the social discussion. No more anonymous comments. This will help build a special bond between readers and publishers. Knowing more about the readers will greatly advance readers’ loyalty.

Janet Robinson finished her speech with a statement that no matter what the future holds, people will always need and want to be informed. New York Times will be there for them.

Read this interesting interview with Janet Robinson at the New Media Age

John Yemma, Editor-in-Chief, Christian Science Monitor, USA

Christian Science Monitor has 3 primary channels (instead of 5/7 print as before)

• website
• daily news briefing email
• weekly in print (paid-for)

Reasons behind CSM’s move from daily print to online:

• Daily print was losing money.
• It was tying up human resources (80% of staff’s time was moved to web)

The effects of moving from print to online:

• web traffic has tripled
• retention has doubled
• email signups: from 0 to 50.000
• weekly subscriptions rose to 70.000

How Christian Science Monitor plans to survive:

• build loyalty of the audience
• want to stay strong and relevant
• aggregation of information, not acquisition
• they want to grow the network not the staff

Christian Science Monitor thinks about the paywall, but not in the way New York Times does. Sponsorships are another source of income.

They are looking for Kindle, and iPAd application, so CSM despite moving totally to online 2 years ago, thinks about online expansion. CSM is a business not relying on one source of income only.

Olav Bergo, Editorial advisor, A-pressen, Norway
How and where do we find the money to pay journalists to find news in the future?

Money has always been the power in media. Advertising has become more and more important for the newspaper business. The growing ad income made the income from readers relatively less important. New media plantforms are still sat early stage.  Local newspaper is still a superior reading experience. This is why readers and advertisers still pay more for news and ads on paper than for the same content in the digital format.

Global media revolution moves forcefully, kills quickly and rebuilds slowly. Just as in the past, readers will have to pay for the content. Paid-for model is a matter of time.

Norwegian media policy

• all newspapers have a 0% rate
• 138 newspaper titles (out of 225) get government grants based on the competitive position and the circulation
• journalism needs the daily challenge from a competing editorial staff to be challenged to do their best
• as many newspapers and as few newspaper monopolies as possible

David Cohn, Founder, Spot.us:

Why should we experiment? Rule of the internet: it is easier and cheaper to do something than to debate about it.
On Spot.us, reporters can post story pitches and ask for pledges to pay some part of the cost. It is a community funded reporting: art of distributing the cost of reporting across many people. Transparency and participation in the process of journalism are required for the community funded reporting.

Principle of spot.us is not throwing money over a wall, but knowing where you spend your money on. It is a community focused sponsorships. The community decides where the money should go. The reporters write for the public and they see the public. There is no writing for the editor on spot.us.

Fabrice Dekerf

Forum4Editors: What is the future of advertising in print and online?

Fabrice Dekerf: It’s my conviction that the object of all communication should be a social object: something to interact with and/or something to facebook, twitter, (water cooler) talk about. The future of advertising (in print and online) lies thus inevitably in telling the same story through different channels by optimising the message and the interaction with the customer. All communication must serve one purpose in order to get the target group into some kind of action.
Print advertising that doesn’t have a clear action outcome is wasted money. Interaction between the message in print and online is for me a no-brainer: focus on the target group and give them via different channels the opportunity to interact. Print as an old fashioned way of doing image-campaigns may still be working to a certain degree (retail brands, luxury goods, older audience target) but only when you build in an interactive platform, you stay relevant to the customer (see the example of Axa, I will show in Krakow).

Is the drop in newspaper circulations a real threat to advertising? There is still online, which cannot exist without print?

Fabrice Dekerf: The main challenge for editors is to focus on being selective on a certain qualitative target group: it’s not only the numbers (reach) that counts, but also the ability to reach a certain volume of people that have a common, interesting profile.
The newspaper multimedia brand should focus on servicing these readers on the different platforms with a part of their total information chain. So online is important, but only if it’s unique, and a logical part of the ‘brand & content promise’ that the print-brand has. The print just as iPad or magazine ‘editions’ should focus on providing an extra and unique content, in order to build the total connection with the newspaper brand. At that moment, readers have a strong relation with the newspaper brand, and therefore it will stay relevant to advertisers, or become even more relevant, because of its ability to interact with the reader through the different channels. The big challenge is to have a clear and attractive crossmedia advertising offer.

Print and online are not all – there are new platforms arising, such as iPads or the coming soon tablet from Google. How are those platforms going to change the advertising game?

Fabrice Dekerf: There are two contrary answers to that question:
A. drastically: advertisers are looking to engage customers and see that integrated platforms offer opportunities to directly interact with customers and to get profile data on which they can really convert into sales.
This also means that a lot of advertisers are developing applications or that are really useful to their (potential) clients, because the best way to convince them is through acts, not talks.
So a lot of advertisers are considering their own apps / iPad-applications, instead of building it into advertising.
B. not so fast: the main objective for advertisers is to reach as many of the target group through effective media: the well established media brands will always stay relevant (see the answer to your second question), certainly if they are open to share profile data, and offer a complimentary package based on qualitative reach.

Do you believe in Wired’s Chris Anderson recent statement, claiming the traditional World Wide Web is dead – long live the apps? What is your view on that thesis?

Fabrice Dekerf: I follow that, because the main point is that the only real commercial breakthrough off the internet (paying through the internet, using tools etc) is when users/consumers don’t feel a barrier of technology while using computers or applications. It is true that people still refrain from the (perceived) technical complexity of computers. Tablets, mobiles etc., like magazines, interact on a focussed ‘half a meter’ perimeter, so customers are really absorbed in to the content. Usablility and guidance are crucial in the success of commercial applications, and it is true that you are much more able to guide the users of apps and interact with them. Also very important: you can learn from the user feedback (explicit) and the actual (implicit) use of the apps, which is the best way to improve the ease of use and thus the repeated use of those apps.

My only remark is that consumers (others than the ‘geeks’) are very single minded, so they only use one application for one thing. The openness and interaction (API) between different applications is a big challenge, recently proven by the awkward reactions of users on the Ping application within iTunes.

Thank you very much and see you in Kraków!

Fabrice Dekerf is managing partner of advertising agency GERMAINE, graduated as a consumer psychologist and is a newspaper / media freak.

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