Newspaper & Mailroom

USA Today Takes Mobile World by Storm

Tuesday 10. February 2015 - USA Today, the largest newspaper in the United States and one that has had a tremendous impact on American journalism, has taken its success into the mobile world.

Editor-in-chief David Callaway will share USA Today’s award-winning mobile strategy at the 67th World News Media Congress, 22nd World Editors Forum and 25th World Advertising Forum, to be held in Washington, D.C. from 1 to 3 June next.
USA Today’s mobile app is the fastest growing piece of its business, and Mr Callaway will discuss it in a World Editors Forum session on “re-focusing resources for multi-platform journalism.” The session will also feature Poul Madsen, Executive Editor-in Chief of Denmark’s leading online media, Ekstra Bladet, Marta Gleich, Executive Editor of Zero Hora in Brazil, and other speakers to be announced.
More than 1,000 publishers, CEOs, managing directors, chief editors and other senior newspaper and news media executives from 80 nations are expected in Washington for the World News Media Congress, the World Editors Forum and the World Advertising Forum, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in cooperation with the Newspaper Association of America. Full details can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/DC2015
USA Today was recently named Mobile Publisher of the Year and Mobile Web Site of the Year by Mobile Marketer. In an interview with the World Editors Forum, Mr Callaway said: “Mobile is the fastest growing piece of business. … We’re seeing for the last 18 months readers flocking to the mobile from desktop and other digital operations but advertising is really starting to move in the last five or six months. We’re very heavily concentrated on how we can adapt our editorial to a mobile environment.”
The Editors Forum session on multi-platform journalism is just one of many sessions on all issues of critical importance for news media available at the Congress, Editors Forum and Advertising Forum, the annual global summit meetings of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. Other speakers include:
– Torry Pedersen, the CEO and Editor-in-chief of Verdens Gang, the leading news site/newspaper in Norway that is among the most profitable news organisations in Europe;
– Vivian Schiller, who has held senior management positions at some of the leading media companies in the United States: NBC News, National Public Radio, The New York Times and, most recently, as Global Chair of News at Twitter;
– Troy Young, President of Hearst Magazines Digital Media, who oversees the digital content, technology, operations, product and business development strategies for 18 brand websites such as Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar and Seventeen, which attract more than 100 million unique visitors and 740 million page views monthly;
– Paul Smurl, General Manager for Core Digital Products at The News York Times, who has spent the past decade at the Times in digital product development, paid content, advertising sales, strategic planning and business development roles.
– Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, whose speech to the Reuters Institute last year was nothing less than the year’s most definitive statement on the future of journalism;
– Robert Picard, Director of Research at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, a world-leading specialist on media economics and government media policies;
– Eric Harris, Executive Vice President for Business Operations of Buzzfeed, who has been a key figure in developing its business model, new ventures, and growing the site’s relationships with publishers and brands;
– Plus many more!
As always, the events are accompanied by an array of social events, gala dinners and lunches — including an opening cocktail at the Newseum, hosted by the Newspaper Association of America and the Knight Foundation. These events are considered to be the premier opportunity to meet colleagues from around the world.