Newspaper & Mailroom
Newsroom Summit: Are you optimizing your news resources?
Tuesday 15. September 2015 - The 14th International Newsroom Summit, to be held in Hamburg, Germany, on 5 October during the World Publishing Expo, will bring together chief editors from some of the world's most respected mid-sized, small and regional newsrooms to share strategies for producing great journalism for the tumultuous multi-platform news world.
And they’re doing it with modest resources.
“Powerful forces are affecting the health of newsrooms,” said Cherilyn Ireton, Executive Director of the World Editors Forum, which is organizing the event.
“On the positive side, there is a growing number of smart, digital minded journalists, comfortable with rapidly changing newsroom technology. They are changing the rules as they experiment for an audience that is increasingly mobile-focused. On the negative side, the pressure on costs is unabated, and competition is fierce and disruptive.”
This has resulted in strategies that shrink and integrate newsrooms and brands and encourage collaboration. “If successful, this frees up journalists to produce good content. If unsuccessful, it can lead to a credibility and brand collapse,” Ms Ireton said.
The one-day Newsroom Summit, one of several conferences, workshops and tours to be held during the World Publishing Expo, will feature editors and media experts who are thriving in this environment, primarily at mid-size, small and regional newspapers, a sector that faces its own particular challenges. They include:
— Wolfgang Krach, Editor-in-chief of Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Doug Wilks, News Division Managing Editor of the Deseret News and KSL in the United States, Uwe Dulias, Managing Director of RND in Germany, and Thierry Meyer, Editor-in-chief of 24heures in Switzerland, who will participate in a session dedicated to “The New News Hub: how to be live, deep and collaborative.”
— Alison Gow, Editor for Digital Innovation at Trinity Mirror Regionals in the United Kingdom, and Anders Refnov, Digital Chief Editor for Ekstra Bladet in Denmark, who will participate in a session on “How to work with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp” and other news distributors without surrendering audience.
— Lisa MacLeod, Head of Digital at Times Media in South Africa, who will share her ideas on “The little steps of change” that are needed to transform newsrooms.
— René van Zanten, General Director of the Dutch Journalism Fund, which fosters innovation and start-ups in journalism in the Netherlands, who will present the results of the fund’s latest scenario planning study, “Thinking about the future: 2025 Scenarios for journalism.”
The Newsroom Summit is designed to help editors measure and balance the demand for live and deep coverage; identify and set areas of editorial emphasis; and build sustainable, integrated and multi-brand newsrooms.
The Newsroom Summit is just one of myriad conferences, workshops and study tours occurring in Hamburg from 5 to 7 October around the World Publishing Expo, the largest global trade exhibition for news publishers organized by the world Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Nearly 7,000 visitors from 100 countries attend last year’s event.
Among the other events are the Mobile News Summit on 6 October and the World Printers Forum conference on 7 October.