Trends in Newsrooms 2005: a preview of the 12th World Editors Forum

It will be my second conference at the World Editors Forum and I begin to receive answers from speakers. Here is my introduction to this event to be held in Seoul, South Korea from 29 May to 1 June 2005:

"The newspaper industry in 2003 could be seen as a British year with the launching of compact editions for The Independent and The Times. A smart answer for young readers and commuters and the first real positive action to counterbalance the circulation crisis in mature markets.

By the same measure, 2004 was a German year due to the new initiatives of Axel Springer and Georg von Holzbrinck groups. Welt Kompakt, News and several other new titles now compete with free papers and also attract young readers. What is fascinating in this experience is that media groups have initiated collaborative and exchange processes between different newsrooms.

What will be the symbol of the year 2005? It could emerge at the 12th World Editors Forum to be held in Seoul.

Perhaps 2005 will be an American year. For four reasons:

- we have invited as keynote speaker Dan Gillmor, the well-known blogger and ex-columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, the pioneering Californian newspaper. He will tell us more about his wish to create citizen journalism based on his book We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Call it participatory journalism or public journalism or open source journalism, it is a major issue to involve more and more readers in the news gathering and debating process

- RSS (Real Simple Syndications) and news aggregators - as Google News and Google Alerts - are rather unknown outside the US. But editors need to know how it could reshape the way readers are informed. Personalized news is no longer a slogan, it is developing and very few newspapers are ready to this revolution. Google executives will explain their views on this issue, Rich Skrenta, Topix.net CEO too.

- more and more American newspapers are considering charging subscription fees for the online version of their flagship newspaper. As New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr said: "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling." Indeed!

- There have also been major innovations in the design of many American newspapers. Mario Garcia from Garcia Media will help us to discover their main innovations."

In other words, the 12th World Editors Forum is very promising with cutting edge information provided to cutting edge editors!

Source: 12th World Editors Forum