Speakers from three digital pure players share lessons at WAN-Ifra's Digital Media Asia event next month.

Joey Chung, cofounder and chief executive of The News Lens and Henrik Eklund, who established Swedish news site Newstag, Sweden, join regional Google business solutions partner Jeremy Butteriss at the conference in Hong Kong from November 17-19.

The message is that traditional news publishers need to get ready for a digital future while 90 per cent of their revenues (on a global basis) is still coming from print. Young news start-ups with Asian operations such as The News Lens, News Republic and Newstag have a positive answers to the question, and share secrets on reaching out to millenials and monetising content.

Launched in 2013, The News Lens is one of the fastest growing new digital news sites in Asia. Prior to the start-up, Chung was with the Japanese multinational media company Sanrio in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then as president of its China operations in Shanghai.

Eklund was AP's EMEA/Asia director of digital partnerships and distribution and previously headed mobile and online distributors Kamera and game publisher PAN Interactive.

Other speakers at the Hong Kong event include Suzy Hay (The Guardian, UK), Yumiko Ono (Dow Jones, HK), John Pullman (Reuters, UK), Tien Siong Keu (MCIL Digital, Malaysia), Paul Alexander (The Economist, UK), Ben Shaw (WAN-Ifra, Germany), Anjali Kapoor (Bloomberg, HK), Iain Martin (Storyful, HK), Eugene Leow (the Straits Times, Singapore), Peter Lamb (Lamb Consulting, USA), Pedro Monteiro (Impresa, Portugal), Robb Montgomery (Montgomery Multimedia, USA) and Peter Zollman (AIM, USA).