Best practices for online comment moderation

2013-06-04. How to best moderate, manage and make use of online comments is one of the key challenges that news organisations are facing today. As Larry Kilman, WAN-IFRA deputy CEO, pointed out in a presentation on the need for moderation at the 20th World Editors Forum, “The news industry’s future is about how citizens engage and participate in their society.”

Have photo staffs become a luxury for newspapers?

The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its 28 staff photographers Thursday, prompting an outcry from photojournalists. But, putting aside grave proclamations about the industry (we’ll get to those later), will the newspaper be able to function without dedicated photographers? Analysts disagree.

Der Spiegel rethinks its strategy, aiming for synergy between print and digital content

German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, one of the powerhouses of international opinion journalism, is on the quest for a new medium between its paper and digital strategies, having suffered recent blows from internal conflicts, stiffening competition and the general economic crisis within the media world.

Paid versus Free: Dissent Breaks Out in the “Church of the Pay Wall”

The three little pigs guard the entrance at Guardian HQ in London, symbols of their open journalism campaign and free online news. USA Today, El Pais, La Presse, MailOnline and others also remain free, but are they the exceptions that prove the rule? Or the true visionaries?

Global advertisers discuss shift of classifieds to digital, both online and mobile

Advertisers from around the world gathered at the 23rd World Advertising Forum to discuss current trends in classified advertising, and the importance for news organisations to establish a presence on digital platforms. Classifieds have been a traditional revenue driver for print newspapers, but this model has been increasingly challenged by the advent of pure players and online competitors.

‘Reinvent or we will fail’

“At RBS, today everything is about breaking paradigms. If we don’t break paradigms, we will fail,” said Eduardo Sirotsky Melzer, CEO of RBS, a leading Brazilian regional multimedia publishing group.

Special address by Thailand’s Prime Minister

Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra opened Tuesday’s Congress encouraging the nearly 1600 media executives to dutifully fulfill their role as watchdogs but to do so responsibly.

Short-run newspaper printing: Inkjet competes with offset and vice versa

Offset and inkjet are drawing closer also in the short-run newspaper segment. The thresholds within which a production process can be used efficiently are shifting: upwards in the case of inkjet, downwards for offset. At the point where these thresholds intersect, a short-run range is emerging in which certain press categories for both processes compete.

Business disruption is the norm, says Wired UK Editor David Rowan (with video)

We need to reframe the conversation around journalism and business models for news, without just talking about ‘digital’ and ‘paywalls,’ said David Rowan, editor of Wired UK, at the World Editors Forum in Bangkok. Wired is about the future, about people who are changing the world, about startups and entrepreneurs, and Rowan said he hoped to channel some of that mindset to “explain why we need to think bigger.”

‘Change will never be this slow again’

2013-06-04. If you think the pace of change has increased in recent years, you’ll really need to brace yourself for the near future. In a stunning presentation about the outlook for 2016 and beyond, Andreas Vogiatzakis, CEO of Omnicom Media Group, Malaysia, said the changes in the next five years will be greater than those that have happened in the past 10 years.