Future of Newspapers: Diversify

Español Français Deutsch Terry Horne, the Publisher of the Orange County Register in the USA who believes the future of newspapers lies in hyperlocal news, increased web offerings and premium content in print, has joined the programme for the World Newspaper Congress, to be held in Hyderabad, India, from 30 November to 3 December next.

Mr Horne, whose newspaper is the third largest in California, believes that newspapers must diversify because of internet growth and changing readership patterns. "The Register has to become a 21st century business,"; he has said. "We can't have the same model that worked 10 years ago.";

Mr Horne's approach is to offer premium content in the subscription-based Register, for a mainly older audience, to offer a hyper-local focus through free community weeklies, and to attract a younger audience with free content on the www.Ocregister.com [1].

But this strategy requires a re-engineering of the business, and Mr Horne's presentation will focus on how the Orange County Register went about it.

Mr Horne is one of dozens of top-rank industry speakers who will examine new business and editorial strategies at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress, 16th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo, the global meetings of the world's press. More than 1,500 publishers, chief editors, managing directors, CEOs are other senior newspaper executives are expected to attend. Full details can be found at www.wanindia2009.com [2].

There is still time to register! Special measures have been taken by Indian authorities to facilitate the processing of visas for Congress and Forum participants and Hyderabad is linked by direct flights to major cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

With more than 30-years in newspaper publishing, Mr Horne has refined his strategy before becoming Publisher of the Orange County in September 2007. How such change is implemented is a key factor in the success of any strategy, and Mr Horne's presentation will focus on the management and communication issues he faced.

"It's a little easier to create change when people are clearly aware that a lot of bad things are going on,"; he told Smart Business magazine recently. "It's harder to do change when a business is pretty successful and you're anticipating difficult times so you're trying to pre-empt it. It takes really strong communication and transparency to create urgency in people, because change happens from urgency.";

Among other things, Mr Horne established eight "transformation teams"; to oversee the process, identified "change leaders"; who were respected by their colleagues, and trained the teams to determine what to change, and how to do it. He kept employees updated through a series of "town hall";-style meetings every month or two.

Other Congress and Forum speakers include:

  Les Hinton, Chief Executive Officer, Dow Jones & Co., USA;

  Andreas Wiele, Member of the Board / President BILD Division and Magazines, Axel Springer AG, Germany;

  Olivier Fleurot, CEO, Public Relations, Corporate and Financial Communications, Events Management for Publicis Groupe;

  Ravi Dhariwal, CEO Publishing, Bennett, Coleman & Co. (Times Group), India;

  Mahendra Mohan Gupta, Chairman/Managing Director and Managing Editor, Jagran Prakashan, India;

  Martim Figueiredo, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, 'i' daily newspaper, Portugal;

  Jaideep Bose, Editor-in-chief, Times of India, India;

  James Orr, Online News Editor, The Christian Science Monitor, USA;

  Paul Johnson, Deputy Editor-in-chief, The Guardian, UK;

  Rafat Ali, CEO and Founder, paidcontent.org, USA;

  Walter de Mattos, Editor-in-chief, Lance, Brazil;

  Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India;

  Plus many more! Full details at www.wanindia2009.com [2].

WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, 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. The organisation was created by the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, the research and service organisation for the news publishing industry.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, WAN-IFRA, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: larry.kilman@wan-ifra.org [3].