NAA mediaXchange is the largest annual gathering of newspaper and news media industry executives in North America, and this year the conference, in Washington DC, is all about the importance of local---the importance of newspapers in providing localized knowledge and information, engaging and improving the lives of their local communities.
My own participation is in an afternoon panel to discuss the subject of "Designing a paper that serves audience and advertisers," with a view toward better presentation across platforms.
Key points of my formal presentation before the panel opens up to a Q&A session:
Changing our notions of frequency: designing for the media quintet.
--It's all about a 24/7 of news, uninterrupted and across platforms.
Two tempos in the news—-lean forward, lean back.
--Good editors are aware of the habits of their audience, and how we all keep leaning forward to get quick snipets of news and information through the day, but also lean back at certain times of the day to do a longer read, to get more analysis and interpretation of the news of which we already know.
The journalism of interruptions and of everywhereness
We never have an idea of where our readers are reading our stories, or how often they interrupt to get email messages, check on social media, or simply turn their attention to another task. That is why the editor and designer must work together to find solutions that allow for quick moments of picking up where we left off in the reading of a story.
Innovation and advertising.
--Advertising is one of the areas where we are seeing some major innovations, from sponsorship ads to different and interesting positioning of ads. We will talk about wrap around ads, ads for mobile and how more publishers are investing in creating their own "ad creation studios" inside their operations.
For more information
http://www.naa.org/mediaXchange.aspx