Free paper focus for World Editors Forum

Free newspapers are everywhere, but most of them have little in common with traditional newspapers except for the paper they're printed on. Little news, few employees, no opinion.

But that is changing: the second generation of free dailies are competing on editorial quality with paid newspapers, often with relatively large staffs. As one free newspaper editor put it, “the new free newspapers will reintroduce the newspaper as a broad medium that will be able to compete with television and the net on readership.”

The World Editors Forum session on free newspapers – not only general interest dailies, but sports and economic titles – will feature two editors from Denmark, where a free daily “war” has broken out among seven titles, which are delivering copies to homes, street corners and public transport.

Catalyst for war

The catalyst for the free newspaper war was the announcement by the Icelandic group Dagsbrun last year that it would launch a quality free daily newspaper in Denmark and deliver it directly to 500 000 households. Denmark's newspaper companies responded by launching their own home delivered dailies, beating the newcomer to market. The newcomers, combined with the paid-for dailies, now provide two million daily copies for a total population of five million Danes.

Speakers in the session include Toger Seidenfaden, editor-in-chief of Politiken, will give his views from the perspective of a paid-for newspaper editor. He will be joined by David Trads, editor-in-chief of the free quality daily Nyhedavisen, and former editor of the Danish Metro. As editor of both a first generation and second generation free daily, Trads is uniquely qualified to address the evolution of the free daily phenomenon.

Also in the session is Ben Rogmans, co-founder of Dagblad De Pers in The Netherlands, one of the first quality free dailies in the world. He sees free dailies as the future of general interest newspapers, with paid-for papers becoming specialised and niche publications of high quality.

Speakers

Other speakers on the three-day WEF programme include:

• Pana Janviroj, President of Thailand's leading English-language newspaper, The Nation, and executive director of Asia News Network, a cooperative news initiative among some of Asia's leading newspapers. He will take part in a session entitled, “Sharing Best Practices: Five Examples of Newspaper Cooperation.”

• Grzegorz Piechota, special projects editor for Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest quality daily newspaper in Poland. Piechota develops and runs multimedia projects that involved editorial, marketing and research teams. He will discuss reader collaboration through print and online, helping both platforms to reach new audiences.

• Birgit Donker, editor-in-chief of NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next in The Netherlands, who worked her way up from trainee to chief editor of two newspapers that share a common newsroom. NRC Handelsblad is a traditional newspaper, while nrc.next is a new, successful, paid-for newspaper for younger readers. Donker will talk about how she manages a multi-newspaper newsroom -- a growing trend as editorial resources diminish in many markets.

• Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online and a new media journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong. MacKinnon, who worked for CNN in Northeast Asia for over a decade, including at Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chiefs, will explain the success of Global Voices, an award-winning citizen media website that “amplifies” voices from the developing world.

• Dave Panos, a pioneer in social media technologies who created BlogBurst, the media industry's first blog syndication service. Panos, now CEO and co-founder of the social media company Pluck in the US, will examine the impact of inviting users to participate in the editorial process and provide lessons from participatory media initiatives at national and metropolitan newspapers in the US.

• Don Wittekind, a journalism professor at the Poynter Institute who, as a newspaper graphics director at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel led the creation of the first newspaper-based multimedia graphic department. He will examine how internet design trends are influencing the designs of newspapers in print.

Go to www.wan-press.org/capetown2007 for full details, including the programmes, social events and the evolving participation list. Organised by the World Association of Newspapers and hosted by the Newspaper Association of South Africa, these global meetings of the world's press are expected to draw 1500 chief editors, publishers, MDs and other senior newspaper executives.

The World Editors Forum, which addresses newsroom issues, and the Congress, which addresses the strategic and business concerns of media companies, focus on exchanging knowledge and best practices. The events rely heavily on case studies of newspapers and how they perform under challenging conditions.

Sponsors of the events include Remgro, Richemont & VenFin, Mondi Shanduka Newsprint & Mondi International, the Sunday Times and Mont Blanc.