SFN report: New business development/innovation, ad sales & e-business are development priorities

Posted by Erina Lin on March 1, 2010 at 4:13 PM

The first annual World Newspaper Future & Change Study is a global research study about newspaper publishers' business strategies moving forward for the next five years, with the key objective to inspire newspaper executives to invest and innovate their business units and business practices, the latest SFN's report, Charting the Course for Newspapers, reported.

The purpose of the study is to pinpoint the business and strategic challenges of the world's newspapers, and then to identify the publishers' strategies moving forward to turn the challenges into opportunities.

There is no shortage of plans for investment in training development among newspaper publishers around the world in the next three years. Where investment in training is to increase, priorities will be given to building knowledge in the areas most obviously linked to revenue growth: new business development/innovation, advertising sales and e-business development.

The areas are mostly likely to be cut are: legal and ethical knowledge (14.2 percent), technical skills for reporters (8.8 percent), and reporting skills (8.2 percent).

A closer look at where training budgets are expected to increase or stay the same highlights significant differences.

Management and leadership development are top priorities for Africans, Australasians, South Americans and Eastern Europeans, while those in the other regions were more concerned with training their advertising sales teams.

Africa: 1. Management and leadership development (90.5 percent); 2. New business development/innovation (90 percent), 3. Technical skills for reporters (87 percent)

Asia/Australasia: 1. Reporting skills (93.4 percent), 2. Management and leadership development (86.7 percent), 3. Change management (81 percent)

Eastern Europe: 1. New business development/innovation (90 percent), 2. Management and leadership development (84.6 percent), 3. Advertising sales training (84.3 percent)

Nordic Europe: 1. New business development/innovation (94.4 percent), 2. e-business development (94.4 percent) and 3. Advertising sales training (94.4 percent)

North America: 1. New business development/innovation (96.8 percent), 2. Advertising sales training (93.8 percent), 3. e-business development (87.9 percent)

South America: 1. Management and leadership development (93.9 percent), 2. Technical skills for reports (93.8 percent), joint 3rd place: New business development/ innovation and reporting skills (both at 90.9 percent)

Western Europe: 1. e-business development (93.1 percent), 2. New business development/innovation (87.8 percent), 3. Advertising sales training (84.9 percent)

Once suspicious, even hostile towards change, mainstream media groups worldwide are now actively rethinking their priorities, looking for alternative routes to growth.

Earlier studies by the European Journalism Centre, the University of Central Lancashire and others have identified that mid-career training, regarded as a normal (even essential) part of personal development in other professions, has typically been rare in news organisations. Where training does place, it has often been limited to operational matters, such as the introduction of new content management systems or law updates.

The widespread awareness amongst respondents of the need to build strategic and commercial know-how suggests a significant shift is occurring in news organisations.

The report, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, details the results of the Future & Change Study, completed in partnership with the Norwegian School of Management and the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, which shows a majority of the 653 respondents around the world are looking to businesses outside the printed newspaper in order to grow revenues and revamp structures along the value chain that are no longer functioning at full throttle.

Click here to complete the 2010 World Newspaper Future & Change Study.