(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.