Like The Hindu's Rajiv Lochan at WAN-Ifra India, Chris Lee - who speaks at the group's Digital Media Asia event in Singapore next month is another 'outsider' looking in.
The chief executive of Deseret Media and president of Deseret Digital Media in the US, Lee (pictured) ran a company making photo books and was new business director for family history portal ancestry.com
His career on the inside at Deseret has included roles as publisher of the Deseret News and general manager of its website.
Lee is one of several high-profile speakers slated for the Singapore event (November 8-10), when the convcersation turns to digital revenues.
According to WAN-Ifra's World Press Trends, news publishers' circulation revenues exceeded their advertising revenues in 2015, and the trend is gaining strength. While ad revenues keep declining, publishers have been progressively charging users for their digital content, with The Economist reporting a 30 per cent increase in digital subscription revenues in the first half of 2016.
The question for Asian newsmedia companies is whether this trend will ever benefit general interest newspapers here. Digital Media Asia promises to launch this conversation with case studies from Europe - while French national daily Liberation is softly implementing a paywall based on the readers' attention (instead of the number of articles read), Axel Springer's highly popular German daily Bild, is launching a premium content section.
Deseret Media's story is one of exploring alternative sources of revenues, such as local mobile businesses, while Sin Chew's MCIL Multimedia in Malaysia has developed an online video platform.
From Bild comes executive assistant to the chief executive and project leader at its publisher, Axel Springer.
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