Free and premium content in Senor’s vision for online

A premium future for newspapers as ‘haute couture rather than ready-to-wear’ is envisaged by Innovations International partner Juan Senor in an introduction to the World Newspaper Congress being held in Hyderabad, India, at the end of next month (November 30 to December 3). He says a radical transformation of newspaper editorial and business models is underway, and goes far beyond the current ‘pay wall’ debate about charging for online content. The strategies call for reorganising editorial and business departments, focussing on premium content, and above all, good storytelling, according to Senor’s Innovation International media consulting group, which will make a major presentation at the congress. But the content propositions which ‘can make you a lot of money’ do not include building ‘pay walls’ for current content. “All this talk about pay walls… we’ve been here before, we should ban the words,” says Senor. “You must create new spaces with new content propositions.” “The newspaper formula that we’re still following is the formula that was developed by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer at the turn of the century. We need to reinvent that,” he said. “You need to offer different content propositions and different structures.” The presentation, to a combined Congress and Forum audience of publishers, CEOs, chief editors, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives from around the world, will focus on actual cases of newspapers that are succeeding with a ‘freemium’ model – combining free content with premium content that people are willing to pay for. “What people want in the morning now is not the news from the day before,” says Senor. In print, newspapers should open with “really clever news summaries” followed by exceptional, compelling storytelling. Online, news and opinion will likely remain free, Senor contends, supported by advertising. But archives and other premium content can be created and exploited in new ways. For example, because newspapers remain a credible information source, customers would be willing to pay for specialised reports – street reports for house hunters, cosmetic surgery reports for people considering plastic surgery, consumer reports, school guides, and so on. But this will require a complete reorganisation of the newspaper company, what Senor calls “integration from the newsroom to the boardroom.” In the Congress and Forum presentation, Innovation will show how to transform news organisations from being product-driven to audience-driven. Even traditional newsroom titles must change – editors-in-chief become ‘chief content coordinators’, while section editors transform into ‘macro editors’ focused on specific audiences – business people, parents, etc. “The future of newspapers is premium – like haute couture rather than ready-to-wear.” The 2009 Global Report on Innovations in Newspapers is one of dozens of Congress and Forum presentations on cutting edge business and editorial strategies. Full details, including the programmes for business sessions and social events, registration and other information can be found at http://www.wanindia2009.com