Recently by Sara Taylor

"In an age of scrappy messages and information saturation - people want editorial criteria. We need to go from journalist to journANALYST," said Juan Senor, vice president of the International Media Consulting Group. He discussed the 2009 Global Report on Innovations in Newspapers. He then answered three main questions: What do people want from a newspaper in the 21st century, where is the money, and how do we get there?

Senor predicted that paper will always be around.  Although it will never die, the business models and the content propositions have changed. "Complacency is the biggest threat to newspapers," said Senor. "What we're putting in these front pages is not relevant." Publications are repeating the same headlines on front pages and it is redundant. We need to have different ideas, he said.

Creating a good brand is done through leadership, Ravi Dhariwal, CEO of Bennet, Coleman & Co., which publishes The Times of India told this afternoon's session of the World Newspaper Congress in Hyderabad. Speakers discussed how their businesses make money, while remaining credible and effective and still incredibly popular - through print.

Dhariwal and his company have made The Times of India a brand rather than just a newspaper through extensive marketing and interactivity. Establishing The Times as a cheerleader for the country was a key part of this branding strategy, along with keeping it "virtually free" for everyone. 

Snowballing multimedia trends are being harnessed by different companies in different ways to grow new revenue streams and better serve audiences, speakers told the third session of the World Newspaper Congress today.

Bharat Gupta, chairman, managing director and managing editor of Jagran Prakashan in India told the congress about "the making of the world's highest read newspaper." Sandy Prieto-Romualdez, president and CEO of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, told about her newspaper's mobile-centric publishing strategy that capitaizes on the fact that Filipinos are among the most prolific phone texters in the world.

John Paton, impreMedia Chairman and CEO, spoke about re-inventing newspaper companies for the new news ecology at the Newspapers: A Multi-Media, Growth Business session this morning at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress in Hyderabad.

The Spanish-language newspaper audience in the United States is booming - it is the country's fastest growing demographic and would be the world's third largest Spanish speaking country if it stood alone.

John Paton, impreMedia Chairman and CEO. Photo: Brian Powers, Western Integrated Media

More than a dozen reports from 2008-2009 were presented and analyzed by Indian freelance journalist Sridala Swami from WAN-IFRA's Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project.

She detailed the relationship between growing technologies and monetization. Editorial content management systems can enhance quality, reduce costs, ease the use of blogging, social networking, and sharing. Newspapers by their nature already have print, and they also have access to online, so the real opportunity is to intergrate and "get a lot more bang for your buck."

François Nel, director of Journalism Leadership Programmes at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom. Photo: Brian Powers, Western Integrated Media