Process improvement can be as simple as knowing where the keys to the toolkit are, but News UK’s George Donaldson had a lot more to share in Bangalore today.
And safety precautions built on painting a white line: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t know why you have white lines on your roads,” says Donaldson, right, who joined News as group continuous improvement manager a year after the opening of its giant Broxbourne print site, north of London.
Lessons from abroad were complemented by those from local sites in a Publish Asia session chaired by Times of India technical production director Sanat Hazra, and including contributions from TOI engineering and production managers.
Meanwhile, some of the 600 delegates from 25 countries who are at the Bangalore event, focussed on crossmedia and newsroom trends.
The importance of what goes on in newsrooms was high on the agenda for WAN-Ifra president Thomas Brunegard, who is chairman of Sweden’s Stampen newspaper group.
“Like the economy, newspapers have suffered a bumpy ride lately, and we are still at the stage of looking for answers, and that calls for a lot of leadership,” he says.
On a visit to a Swiss business school recently, he challenged the assertion that newspapers had “vanished”, and says it is important to counter such negativity.
But, says Brunegard, “that doesn’t take away the challenges”.
“We also have an attitude issue in an industry which is suddenly, extremely dynamic… and that too, takes leadership.”
Focussing on the challenges to journalism and press freedom – some in unlikely countries such as Switzerland and the UK, coming from “well-meaning officials who have overstepped in the name of security” – he stressed the “personal responsibility” placed on newspaper publishers.
Brunegard called for WAN-Ifra to increase its involvement in research, cover a broader media spectrum and “stay together”.
“We have to make a difference, and we can. What we do is important.”
Some of the role newspapers and media could play was in the mind of Julia Hudman of not-for-profit website Indiaspend.org
A group of eight specialists scan the “ton of data” produced by the Indian government, looking for the under story. And we’re talking big issues here, including education, poverty and malnutrition.
“Were not journalists, but we look at the data on the most important issues and produce typically, between four and eight stories a week,” she says. Journalists and media were a “huge” part of their audience.
With India’s healthy print market contrasting that in many other parts of the world, Financial Times managing editor James Lamont had advice for delegates he hoped they might not need for as much as 20 years.
Or not: Back in the UK after four years in India, he spoke of the virility, diversity and language of the country in which he had worked for the UK daily. “But ours is a very different market,” he says.
“These days my job is almost entirely digital,” he says. “The market and how we respond is changing really fast, with cutthroat competition for subscriptions globally.”
The FT had cut print editions back – from five in the UK, three in the US and two in Europe – to a single sustainable product, and was making a profit from print “for the first time”.
Meanwhile, digital subscriptions for the 150-year-old title were up 14 per cent to 343,000 with revenue from content exceeding advertising. “Last year we had 100,000 more digital subscribers than print ones, and the gap is widening,” he says.
And – like other speakers before him – he stressed the importance of valuable, relevant content: “You can’t sell old rope,” he says. Other key elements were easy navigation, attractive pricing packages, “brand-enhancing” customer service, and the constant redeployment of resources.
One innovation is a FastFT online element in which a team of eight people provide an “FT take” on breaking news… in just three paragraphs. “It’s something we were never in before,” he says.
Publish Asia and the colocated IfraIndia Expo continue tomorrow and Friday, with the programme including the gala Asia Media Awards dinner tonight.
On our home page: WAN-Ifra officers and directors light a lamp to open the conference.