(Michael P. Smith)

For a few days in South Africa, the newspaper world gave itself a big hug, patted itself on the back and said “there, there,” and found good things to say to each other.

It was hard to find bad things to say about newspapers when the World Association of Newspapers met in Cape Town for the annual meetings of their Congress and Editors Forum.

Nelson Mandela set the tone with his words of encouragement: “Not a day goes by when I don’t read every newspaper I can lay my hands on. Sometimes my staff will try to hide a paper from me if they think there is something in it that will upset me. But I have always said, newspapers allow us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and we must be brave enough to look squarely at the reflection. My friends, let your watchwords be: truth and freedom.”

Here are notes and ideas and observations from the meetings.

• I GOT BLOGGED: During my presentation of our analysis of the Yahoo alliance with American newspapers (we like the idea), I noticed that IM window on the laptop of the moderator – Mathew Buckland – kept popping up. When I was done, I sat next to him on the dais and asked if he was blogging live. I noticed his blog on the screen. “No, he said,” my colleague in the audience is. His colleague is Vincent Maher. I recommend both of their blogs. They are caught up in the excitement of media transformation globally, and in South Africa. One side note: Vincent refers to a joke I made at Google’s expense. It was not a joke but an honest mistake. I meant to say Yahoo but Google came out of my mouth. As soon as I realized that I mis-spoke, I corrected it. The audience laughed thinking I had just bashed Google. If only I were that funny.

• PAID AND FREE MODEL: I heard GMG Regional Media CEO Mark Dodson speak twice in the last two months about a new pricing model that coincides with the digital transformation of the Manchester Evening News in the United Kingdom. MEN hands out free copies in the city’s center, where young professionals live and work while charging outlying customers for home deliver. The model has paid off in higher readership and higher advertising revenues.

• REIMAGINING IN CANADA: Toronto Globe and Mail editor-in-Chief Ed Greenspon presented on the transformation process he led recently. Ed undertook a long-term and deep cultural change process that involved dozens of people throughout the company. What struck people in the audience were the dramatic front pages Ed showed. He recommended that transformation is the result of a culture of experimentation: “You¹ve got to be willing to experiment: That’s a culture you’ve got to create. You must be confident to take risks.”

• NEWS CONSUMERS MOVING TO ONLINE? Here is the summary graph from a global Harris Poll: Online news and information will replace television network news as the leading news source over the next five years, but newspapers will remain a vital source on their own, and can become dominant if they successfully integrate online delivery as a part of what they offer the public. The poll suggests that newspapers can significantly upgrade their traditional print product by providing greater objectivity, more in depth reporting and analysis, more information that is directly relevant to their readers' lives, better and more visual design, and more compelling writing. The online poll was conducted among 8,749 adults in seven countries: The United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Australia. I think my research friends will shoot holes in the questions, conclusions and methodology, so if you would like to know more, you can find that all here, here and here.

• OHMYCANADA: For five years now I have championed OhMyNews in Korea while right next door in Canada the world’s largest citizen journalism company has sprung up. Leonard Brody, chief executive officer of NowPublic.com in Canada, says NowPublic.com is the world’s largest citizen news network with 95,000 contributors in 140 countries. Technology, particularly mobile devices, have de-centralized news gathering. Brody said: The net effect is that with the growth in mobile devices, one can project dramatic growth in user-provided content. He predicted that in the next four years, the major of breaking news photography will come from citizen journalists. Organizations like NowPublic.com, YouTube, and OhMyNews are emerging to collate and distribute this raw feedback. Brody said companies should focus on young people. He said teen-agers have Continuous Partial Attention (CPA). They consume multiple media and carry on conversations constantly. If they stop using their mobile device to focus, they will not comprehend the conversation. Brody’s advice for newspapers: “Stop justifying the existence of newspapers. Nobody cares. What matters are the news brands. There is massive demographic change coming. The newspaper business is grotesquely behind.”

• THE TRANSITION AT SCRIPPS: Mark Contreras, senior VP of the newspaper division of Scripps, said three words have led his company to success -- fragmentation, interactivity and accountability. Ten years ago the newspapers in the Scripps company contributed 60 percent of the revenues. The company wisely identified gaps in the cable TV landscape and today it is synonymous with home and shelter television. As a result, newspapers contribute only 30 percent of the total revenues. Scripps is keeping focused on Internet vertical, television and print opportunities. In a manner of speaking, the cable success has created a culture of innovation within Scripps. That innovation is paying off. Contreras said that the newspaper Web sites generated $34 million in revenue in 2006, or about 8 percent of the newspaper division’s profits.

(Michael P. Smith)
From South Africa, which is booming with new technology and a hopeful attitude as it prepares for the opportunity to showcase itself by hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup, to China and India, digital technology is transforming the media.

The World Association of Newspapers is attempting to create regular reports on digital trends. WAN project director Martha Stone, who is working with Media Management Center protégés, offers some interesting metrics below. They show digitalization as a global phenomenon, the expected growth in media and forecasted ad growth for American media.

Stone compiles a report on Digital Media Trends.

(Michael P. Smith)

Not sounding defensive at all, World Association of Newspapers President Gavin O’Reilly dismisses the doomsayers predicting the death of newspapers. He says the industry had seldom been in a better position globally.

With that as the setup, WAN CEO Timothy Balding presented the annual report on newspaper circulation and advertising around the world.

The headlines: Newspaper circulations world-wide rose 2.3 percent in 2006 while newspaper advertising revenues showed substantial gains. Globally newspapers are second in advertising only to television.

The reality of the numbers is that in mature countries, circulation of paid dailies is flat or falling. But factor in the free dailies and the boom in countries like India and China, and the picture looks pretty good.

We are the laggards. Newspaper sales increased year-on-year in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, with North America the sole continent to register a decline.

The WAN report:

• When free dailies are added to the paid newspaper circulation, global circulation increased 4.61 percent last year, and 14.76 percent over the past five years. Free dailies now account for nearly 8 percent of all global newspaper circulation and 31.94 percent in Europe alone.

• Advertising revenues in paid dailies were up 3.77 percent last year from a year earlier, and up 15.77 percent over five years.

• More than 515 million people buy a newspaper every day, up from 488 million in 2002.

• Average readership is estimated to be more than 1.4 billion people each day.

• Seven of 10 of the world's 100 best selling dailies are now published in Asia. China, Japan and India account for 60 of them.

• The five largest markets for newspapers are: China, with 98.7 million copies sold daily; India, with 88.9 million copies daily; Japan, with 69.1 million copies daily; the United States, with 52.3 million; and Germany, 21.1 million.

For more information, go to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) website.

(Michael P. Smith)

I am not stalking Anne Kirah, the dean of 180-degrees Academy in Denmark. She and I have crossed paths four times in 12 months – from Moscow to Paris – sometimes sitting on the same dais.

Kirah is a cultural anthropologist who worked for Microsoft before engaging in innovation training with the academy in Copenhagen. She brings a different perspective the media and a high level of energy. Her message has been consistent over the last year – in order for traditional media companies to be successful in the future, they must break through barriers that inhibit engagement with customers. These barriers include communication, culture, emotion and location. Her experience at Microsoft establishes one of her core principles – innovation and new product development come from teamwork, not individuals. I could quibble or debate some of her conclusions or, more specifically, her generalizations about newspapers, but I won’t dwell on them. Her heart is in the right place, and I like any perspective that shows hope for newspapers.

Here are some key points from Anne’s presentation to the International Newspaper Marketing Association’s meeting in Paris:

• Innovation begins when we take off our blinders in our business and think of aspirations and motivations of people in their daily lives
• We must speak the same language and culture of the people we are innovating for
• Stop thinking newspapers for a moment

She also said innovation comes from:

• Chaos and discomfort, being out of your comfort zone
• Learning to see things through new lenses
• Observing ordinary people and their everyday lives
• A willingness to build with these people
• Being humble and practicing humility
• Taking risks

She said her experiences points to a set of things that prevent companies from innovating:

• We are blinded by our education and our company culture
• Company cultures are toxic
• We have difficulties adapting to the rapidly paced world
• We ask the wrong questions

She says newspapers are not dying, they are changing – something we have been preaching at MMC for quite a while. She predicts that they can be more successful if they pay attention to the typical person's "pain points" – the dead time during the day in a person's life when they could really use a newspaper. She described a two-hour train ride in which she needed something to read as a personal pain point. She actually goes beyond that. The way she explains it makes it sound very similar to the NewspaperNext and Clayton M. Christensen approach using the phrase "jobs to be done." Both Kirah and N2 are very customer-focused in their approaches.

Like I said, I could argue her conclusions or points. I give her a lot of leeway because it is hard making a presentation for 300 people from different countries with the newspapers in all different stages of maturity.

I appreciate her customer-centric approach. She has said many times, that newspapers (and all businesses) need to let the customer create the product.

While our research may lead us to slightly different conclusions, my biggest point of departure is her use of the term "toxic culture." My academic friends refer to a body of literature that includes the toxic culture affect on parenting, education, marriage and other institutions. I am not that brainy. I react to the phrase as a defensive journalist. Kirah does not say it but the inference is that newsrooms are poison. I don't agree. I hate it when people blame newsrooms for the lack of growth or change. Newsrooms are resistant, they are perfectionist and they are skeptical, but not poison.

Those familiar with the volumes of research from the Readership Institute on newspaper cultures will find support for my point on newspaper culture. I would never call it toxic. Our years of research shows that it clearly is resistant – but newspapers made it that way. And now they have to remake it. On that point (and on many others) Kirah and I agree.