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Why newspapers in India are growing? (video)

marek.miller — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:35:12 +0000

Ravi Dhariwal, CEO Times of India, was one of the speakers at INMA European Conference in Cascais (Portugal, 19-21 October 2011). Exclusively for Forum4Editors.com he reveals the secrets behind successful newspapers in India.
Most of Indian publishers continue to grow the business every year on every platform: print, online and mobile. Ravi Dhariwal explains reasons why Indian newspapers’ circulation continue to rise and why new media does not eat traditional newspapers.
As INMA International President with professional experience in FMCG industry (Unilever, Pepsico), he gives some advice to publishers from Europe and US.

Interview recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Ravi Dhariwal was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA — consulting, training and outsourcing for media.

Edda Media: from print to multimedia

marek.miller — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:42:50 +0000

Erling Omvik, Editor in chief of Fredrikstad Blad together Geir Bakken, Editorial Head of Development of Edda Media (Norway) gave the presentation at INMA European Conference in Cascais about how a local Norwegian House went through transformation from print to multimedia.

Those are the challenges that the newspaper faced in 2009:

strong local position but under pressure
circulation falling faster and faster (-4,1% in 2009)
advertising revenues at risk
searching for total coverage – print and online
need for much more resources for development
traditional editorial organization

What was done inside the organisation:

mental revolution
new editorial organisation, 1/3 in completely new functions
community manager and front page editors
continuous of development online and print

The whole process was all about guiding the customers using strong leadership with some help of success stories.

The target of the operation was to reach as many readers online as in print and make online 25% of the business. The newspaper succeeded:

EBITDA grew from 16 million Norwegian Crowns to 27 million in 2011
The advertising digital share was raised from 6,3% in 2009 to 18,5% in 2011
The digital revenue share grew from 61% in 2009 to 87% in 2011.

The do’s suggested by the speakers:

joint projects across departments – project management group:
CEO/sales/editors/headquarters
focused and intensive management – demanding for the staff
close follow-up from Edda – task force
defining ambitious targets – simple and visible
selling the vision (make people believe in the project)

Get INMA’s latest tablet report

marek.miller — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:30:08 +0000

Are you a news publisher still having doubts whether it is worth to introduce tablets to your business strategy? Or are you an advertiser wondering how media houses are doing on this new platform? Either way, the latest INMA’s report, “Tablet Opportunities for News Publishers” is an essential and a must-have reading prepared just for you.

Just a year after the iPad was announced on the market, a special INMA report (“Tablet Opportunities for News Publishers“) has just been released. It’s a free reading for the members of INMA but there is also a possibility to acquire the publication by non-members.

This is the only publication now available, where you can learn about the latest experience of some of the leading media houses from all over the world. Inside the report, representatives of such news companies as “The New York Times”, “USA Today”, “Financial Times” and others, share their forecasts of the information market based on their tablet experience. Authors of the report represent many well known publishing brands, such as:

The New York Times
Telegraph Media Group
Financial Times
The Globe and Mail
The Sydney Morning Herald
New Zealand Herald
USA Today
Colombia’s El Tiempo
Germany’s Iconist magazine

The report’s table of content is very rich. Enough to say that the mentioned experts share their thoughtful analysis on the following topics:

Where the tablet fits into the emerging multi-media ecosystem of news companies.
What the device market looks like beyond the iPad in 2011.
How news publishers are evolving their news product for tablet apps and how innovators are re-thinking content architecture.
How much consumers versus advertisers should pay for tablet apps.
What kind of business partner Apple is and whether publishers have a choice.
What to do with emerging consumer research on tablet and app usage.
What the “curious finger” of tablet usage means for design and engagement.

This publication is recommended for every newsmedia company executive developing content, audience, subscription, and advertising strategies. Click here to learn more about it and to order it online.

Mecom will start charging for local content on the web

marek.miller — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:20:34 +0000

Read this exclusive interview with David Montgomery, CEO Mecom Group plc., done by Artur Karda and Tomasz Krawczyk from Media Regionalne – part of Mecom’s assets in Poland.

You have announced you will leave your position on January 2011, after majority of Mecom shareholders forced you to resign. Does it mean your departure from media industry or is the game not over yet?

David Montgomery: I’m working just as normal. The Mecom plc board has endorsed our strategy, and I am working to pursue that strategy.

How do you see the development of Polish publishers in terms of print and online products, comparing to Europe?

David Montgomery: I’m really impressed that Media Regionalne has successfully rolled out online products across the country. You have achieved a significant position in online and you’ve done it with the local content. I believe that the combination of print and online will be our future. That really is the essence of the future local content business.

Regarding print newspapers development – in Poland it is not similar to the other parts of Europe. Newspapers in Poland tended to be smaller in terms of circulation. But we should not give up the print side. I believe that we as Mecom group have to consider making further promotion to support the newspapers themselves. The circulation depression elsewhere in our group is relatively moderate. Among our newspapers we have an increasing tradition of continuous product development. Investment in newspapers can’t be merely to promote activities for the readers. Investment also has to be in the editorial side of the product. I suppose, we need to exam the resource process of restructuring the editorial introducing new content, new sections for readers, advertisers and promoting those reconfigured newspapers aggressively. There is also a question for you: is there a way we can acquire or launch further print title in Poland?

Aren’t you afraid that when we start constant relaunch of our newspapers, we could lose our traditional readers in our print products?

David Montgomery: My evaluation is that when you make the newspaper better and you give better value, you will keep your readers and you’ll find new readers. And I am not talking about changing layout and visual part of newspaper, but constant editorial development here. I think we should be much swifter in developing products and we should take away things that don’t work properly. We should also be courageous in trying new things in print. Maybe we should not call it relaunch. We should call it enrichment of the content. I believe that the more successful you are in online content, the more you can stimulate the sale of print if you’ve got the right newspaper.

How do you define a role of communities in local media life?

David Montgomery: Local community needs local content no matter what age group, profession or activity they are engaged with. Nothing has changed over the ages. In the past distribution was limited to the printed paper. Today we can use local content in many different forms and across many different platforms. Future times are not limited by the physical side of print. The size of internet is unlimited so we can use local content in many ways, like online.

Do you think user generated content is a part of our challenge to the professional journalism?

David Montgomery: Journalists will increasingly become managers of content rather than simply sourcing one story next to another. Managing content across many different sources: user generated content, content from public services, social organizations. It’s increasing – the individual journalist will harvest all of those different platforms. I recognize that this involves lots of different skills and responsibilities. It particularly demands judgment about quality of content, how it can be packaged and how it can be published across different platforms. That judgment is being made up at the level of ordinary journalists rather than the senior editorial level. That also changes the role of the editors in chief. I like to think about editors in chief as the people who are directors of the content, because editor in chief these days cannot operate just in the printed version. We have to rethink all of the roles and we should give to the people different job titles than the traditional ones, which inflect only the print functions. Personally, I would rather like to start my career as a journalist now, than 40 years ago, because it’s much more exiting and stimulating world for individual journalism, and more challenging. I would be very persuasive, recruiting people in industry today. It’s an exciting world, it gives for individual journalists, even on junior level, much more exciting and responsible lifestyle. But I do admit that they need to like hard work.

Mecom as an owner, and personally you, are known as very rigorous in terms of profitability of media business. That causes very high cost pressure on local publishers. How media houses might manage product development while they have to reduce the staff?

David Montgomery: I know that employees are worried about the printed circulation all over Poland. It’s huge decline: almost 10% in print circulation this year. Your people are sort of challenged how to balance this on one hand, on the other we need to develop our new products. We have to manage this double challenge.

But we’re still involving single activity way in print to many different products. You have to make constant refreshment of the portfolio and therefore we have to have a very flexible staff to be able to move from one product to another. It’s about structure and it’s about increased responsibility for individuals. The traditional newspaper business has relied far too heavily on collecting content through too many pair of hands. We simply can’t do that anymore.

You see publishers as collectors of free content and at the same time you want them to charge for content. How to make that consistent?

David Montgomery: The sources of content that I mentioned, are very often from people who want to publish something. They want professional content managers to organize content and examinate, so they offer it for free. What we want to sell is an expertise. Our expertise is to highlight content, to package it and to organize it in a way that is valuable to the readers. I don’t have the recipe yet how we will do that but I do have some thoughts. First of all, it’s necessary to educate the public, that the local content that they get not just in print and online doesn’t come just from printed form but it’s valuable whether is delivered print or online as package. When people will see that this is a package of content coming from those different sources, that they will more greatly recognized that the content is what they are paying for. The uniqueness of content is what people are paying for. We are very pleased that there is a local newspaper business because no one generally does what we do and no one likes to come along and replace local newspaper in terms of setting new newsroom. It’s most unlikely, so we need exploit that monopoly and educate readers that the content which is seen on the screen has to be paid in some form. Not all of it, but the richer elements of it. We have an innovation group in Mecom which is going to do this. One of the target is that Mecom is going to develop paid-full products. Some of them will not work, but only by experiments we will get progress in this particular area. It’s quite simple really, our industry has always depended two sources of revenue. One is for content and the other is for advertising. Those two revenue streams are necessary for the future as well. That’s what we have to get to.

I think the potential is in local content and making sure, that we secure our position as the main provider of local content in all communities what we serve. Getting loyalty from our brand audience is the number one priority. All depends on our rich experience with the audience in print an in online. When you are successful in doing that, advertising will follow, paying for content will follow.

Watch parts of David Montgomery’s speech at the INMA European Conference 2010 in Krakow:

Interview taken on September 30th, 2010, during INMA/OPA Conference in Cracow, Poland

Artur Karda and Tomasz Krawczyk are directors responsible for online content development at Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom.

Photo: Mariusz Jarzombek, NTO

Introduction to the European Conference 2011

marek.miller — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:17:31 +0000

Introduction to the European Conference 2011. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.