There was an air of bonhomie and togetherness at the conference, which was akin to that of a college reunion than an international conference on newspaper business, with delegates coming together to discuss the latest trends in the industry, meet with machine manufactures and service providers and just meet and greet, not that there was enough ideation going on at the conference sessions themselves.      

As one participant pointed out, the conference not only offered the delegates a roadmap to the future development, it also helped see the industry insiders what their counterparts are doing for sustainable business development, to cut costs and increase revenues in today’s demanding times, where digital media has emerged as a viable competition to printed newspapers, even in India.

Thus, the two-day conference opened with a timely reminder for the need of finding sustainable business models for digital news media. For news publishers looking to find ways to increase their business in today’s fragmented media environment, the conference provided key lessons from around the globe and a direction for the future.

“Today, around 2.5 billion people around the world read newspapers in print and 800 million on digital platforms. Print and digital combined are increasing audiences for newspapers globally,” said Vincent Peyregne, chief executive officer, Wan-Ifra, in his keynote presentation on World Press Trends 2014.

“While print and digital are increasing audiences for newspapers globally, the digital revenues are not keeping pace,” Peyregne said. “Finding sustainable business models for digital news media is not only important for your business, but for the future health of debate in democratic society.”
 

The conference had three parallel programmes – a Newsroom Summit for editors and newsroom managers, a Printing Summit for newspaper production managers and a Crossmedia Advertising Summit for advertising managers and business development executives.

The event also saw the formal presentation of Wan-Ifra’s latest special report on Newsprint Waste Management, authored by K Balaji, chairman of the Wan-Ifra South Asia Committee and director of Kasturi & Sons, the publishers of The Hindu. The report was released by Jacob Mathew, immediate past president of Wan-Ifra, and was received by D D Purkayastha, chairman of the Wan-Ifra advisory council and managing director of ABP.

This was followed by lively presentations by industry experts on issues ranging from newsroom management to implementing Kaizen at workplace to the importance of energy management and print production planning and even about using a drone instead of a live photographer.

T N Ninan, chairman of Business Standard, made a presentation on how to balance advertisers’ pressures on editorial content, while Rob Rose, an investigative journalist with Sunday Times in South Africa, shared insights about the challenges of investigative journalism. Mariam Mammen Mathew, COO of Manorama Online, shared with the delegates how Malayala Manorama, the print-strong local-language daily, is gearing up to face the digital revolution.

Talking about digital, Andrew Holden, editor-in-chief of The Age, Australia, told the participants how they convinced the users to subscribe to paid content, which R Sukumar, editor, Mint, shared the company’s web-first approach.

Sunil Patil, senior manager, and Amit Gupta, deputy chief manager of Bennett, Coleman & Co talked about the energy management practices at their printing plants that helped them achieve and sustain operational excellence. Rahul Kansal, executive president, Bennett, Coleman & Co spoke on how the company built their brand for multiple media platforms.

On ad front, Shantanu Bhanja, vice-president, marketing for HT Media, talked about how they built business alliances to maximise their advertisement revenue. And, search engines, especially Google, featured prominently in the presentations on social media networks and what is the way forward for publishers, made by Florian Nehm, head of corporate sustainability and EU affairs, Axel Springer, Germany, and Kartik Taneja, head, channel sales, Google India.
 

The conference also saw a panel discussion on ‘Are young readers moving away from news? How to engage the young readers to secure the future of news media?’, led by Raj Chengappa, editor-in-chief of The Tribune, and including Jacob Mathew, executive editor, Malayala Manorama, Sanjay Gupta, editor-in-chief Jagran Prakashan, and Serene Goh, editor, Schools, for The Strait Times, Singapore.

The conference also offered the delegates an opportunity to meet the leading suppliers of the news publishing industry, who participated in the info-table exhibition in the adjoining conference halls and as sponsors. 

Wan-Ifra, based in Paris, France, and Frankfurt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore and India, is the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. Its core mission is to defend and promote press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the development of prosperous businesses.