Top 5 insights from the World Newspaper Congress

The World Newspaper Congress of WAN IFRA and NAA was held in Washington this year. Compared to last year’s edition in Torino, there seems to be a more positive vibe in the newspaper industry. Last year’s main theme was ‘Disruption’. This year was much more about ‘Embracing Change’ and capitalising on the opportunities of Digital Transformation.

We summarise for you our top 5 insights of the conference:

1. Circulation revenues now more important than advertising revenues on a global scale. This is largely the result of a further decline of the advertising revenues and a slight increase in subscription revenue.
2. Print is (still) doing fine for most of the publishers. For most newspapers, revenues from digital business is still lower than 10% of the total. Even for the New York Times, print still represents over 70% of their revenues.
3. Experiment and learn fast. If you don’t fail, you probably haven’t tried hard enough,’ said Arthur Sulzburger, President of The New York Times.
4. ‘You have to be where your readers are.’ Newspapers are now putting their content on the various important platforms where the readers are. This explains why newspaper work together with Facebook on its Instant Articles initiative.
5. Mobile is the dominant platform. Video is the dominant mode. The internet is increasingly becoming mobile and visual.

Our favorite quote:

“We are now a digital company, running a legacy print operation.”

 

Christian Hendricks, Corporate Vice President, Interactive Media, The McClatchy Company, USA.

Read more about the event on the WAN IFRA blog.