TAKEAWAY: Now reporting from the PANPA Forum conference in Sydney, Australia. Follow me via Twitter@TweetsByDesign
This week in Australia: Part 4
Reporting live from PANPA Forum 2011 conference in Sydney.
Highlight from morning speakers so far:
Greg Hywood, CEO, Fairfax Media: “There is nothing to be depressed about in our industry. We must create a culture in which we take pride in what we do and move forward to do it across platforms.“
Almar Latour, Editor in Chief, WSJ Asia: “The day will come when more readers will read the WSJ in a mobile platform than in print.“
Asked when this day would be, Latour said he could not cite a specific date, but that this would happen. His presentation showed the WSJ’s efforts to expand globally, but also to try to be more local, especially in its coverage of emerging markets.
TheMarioBlog post #835
This week in Australia: Part 3
TAKEAWAY: The PANPA Future Forum 2011 conference opens here in Sydney tomorrow. Here is an overview, as I prepare my presentation. ALSO: In Dubai, the Gulf News takes a look at its front page navigation as part of its continuous efforts to upgrade the quality of its presentation.
Preparing for the PANPA Conference
It is now 24 hours before the opening of the PANPA Future Forum 2011 conference here in Sydney, Australia. This is an annual event for the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association, culminating with a gala dinner Friday in which The Newspaper of the Year Award is presented.
“THIS year’s conference is all about creating a new future – and we have to do it with passion,“ says Mark Hollands, chief executive Newspaper Publishers’ Association, who hosted a dinner for several of us speakers at the conference last night. “
Mark says that he and his colleagues have built the entire program around the theme of the Future, but with the immediate future in mind.
Newspapers must find a new way of presenting the news – we talk and talk about it but now some titles, such as The Guardian in Britain, are coming to grips with the fact that only 4 percent of their readers actually buy the paper for “news”. How we do integrate our business and editorial processes to be first with the news on any publishing platform; and how do we work with advertisers looking to embrace print, social media and other digital avenues in an integrated fashion that will be measured by business outcomes, not clicks and browser counts?
And that is the challenge that all of us presenting during the next two days will face.
The conference has a rich balance between presentations about the journalistic side of the aisle, but also the marketing/commercial. This, says Mark, is important, as he asks the question: how do we best create new commer- cial enterprises launched on the back of our trusted brands and loyal audiences?
Mark also insists that all of us in this business need to constantly update our skills. To that effect, the Conference has a series of Master Classes.
“Many of us are confronted by a need to update our skills. Newspaper journalism now demands a far greater variety of capabilities, such as creating and editing videos, pieces to camera, voiceovers and different styles of writing for various platforms,“ he says.
For example, the photographers will have a Master Classes (sponsored by Adobe), with YouTube offering video hints and tips, too. Meanwhile,
the Sales & Marketing people will also have a Master Class about building pipeline, and relationships with clents.
“It is all about working and surviving in an industry that keeps re-generating at an incredible pace,“ Mark said.
My own preparation
One of the challenges for those of us presenting is that Day 1 Plenary sessions are limited to 30 minutes, so, as you can imagine, squeezing tremendous amounts of information to that time frame can be difficult, forcing some challenging editing in the process. The title of my session is Design for the Integrated News Company and I will make the best utilization of my time to discuss the four members of the media quartet: mobile, online, print and tablets, while emphasizing storytelling in a multiplatform environment, suggesting processes to give each platform its uniqueness, introduce some basics of news tablet development and even include a couple of images on reorganization of the newsroom.
Hard? You bet. I am still editing the session with 21 hours to go.
I will be reporting from the Conference thru all day Thursday, including a Twitter reporting with highlights from the presentations. Stay tuned.
And make sure you are aware of the time change between Australia and wherever you happen to be.
Read all details of the conference here:
http://panpa.org.au/2011/08/15/2011-panpa-future-forum-and-newspaper-of-the-year-awards/
Continuous tweaking is the key
It is part of the ever evolving process of change and refinement at Dubai’s Gulf News. Although there is no major scale “redesign” taking place at the moment, the Gulf News this week made changes in how it presents its promotional navigation bar at the top of Page One. Miguel Gomez, Design Director, with whom I work closely on a variety of projects for the Gulf News, has sent me this latest approach to presenting promos. The colors are more subdued, the style more classic, and, indeed, as Miguel reminds me, we have taken a return here to how the original promos looked when the existing design was introduced less than three years ago.
I may add that for our work at the Gulf News we always count with the able interventions of Editor in Chief Abdul Hamid Ahmad, who shows great interest in visual presentation, and is usually behind the constant tweaking that takes place. A good thing, I would add.
