10th Forum: replay, reconsider, respond

Missed Steve Yelvington, Stephen Gray, Kevin Anderson, Simon Reynolds, Jane Singer and François Nel discussing what hard times are teaching media decision-makers about the way forward?

Read Laura Oliver's summary , replay our recording or Joanna Geary's Bambuser videostream - and, if any of the points raised have got you thinking, feel free to post a note here (or a link to your site).

Amongst the many points that has got us thinking is this: The challenge, as Simon Reynolds pointed out, is not only what we - news executives, editors, journalists and educators - should do going forward, but also what we should stop doing. What's on the top of your list?

Diary date: The 11th Forum, scheduled for 3rd February 2009, will be presented in conjunction with the North West chapter of the UK Society of Editors. For more information or to be added to the mailing list, send a note to leaders [at] ukjournalism.org .

Also: For a report on the day's [excellent] Digital Editors Network meeting, check out Sarah Hartley's [very useful] blog.

API's Newspaper Next head joins 10th Forum panel

The American Press Institute launched the Newspaper Next project in 2005 to research and test viable new business models for the newspaper industry.

With an initial budget of $2 million, the API hired Stephen T Gray, former managing publisher of the Christian Science Monitor, and he linked up with Innosight, the consulting company built by Harvard Business School’s innovation guru Christian Clayton. They pulled together a task force of 25 industry leaders (including Jennifer Carroll of Gannett and Jonathan Landman of the The New York Times) to advise.

The first report was released in 2006. The second (2.0) early this year.

At the 10th Journalism Leaders Forum on 7th October, Gray will have a chance to reflect on all this activity as part of a panel on the theme, “Hard Lessons: What are the tough times teaching media decision-makers about the way forward?”

Joining him on the panel are:

• Steve Yelvington, now Vice President of Content and Strategy at Morris Digital Works


• Juan Señor, UK director of the Innovation International Media Consulting Group


• Kevin Anderson, The Guardian blogs editor who is currently travelling across the US covering the presidential election race armed with a laptop, a mobile phone with built-in GPS and a photo camera.


• François Nel, the founding director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at UCLan, will chair the discussion.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, 7th October in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the networking reception from 5pm - please RSVP to leaders [at]ukjournalism [dot] org.

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Online participants will be able to post questions to panelists in a text chat room.

Acclaimed digital media innovator Steve Yelvington at 10th Forum on 7th October

There’s lots of talk about the urgent need to update the journalistic paradigm to suit the realities of the Networked Age. Cries for the practice of journalism to be conceived as a conversation, not a lecture has arguably become something of a mantra in progressive media circles.

One person who hasn’t just talked about it, but showed how it could work in practice - and perhaps even profit - is Steve Yelvington, now Vice President of Content and Strategy at Morris Digital Works, the consulting arm of US media giant Morris Communications.

Yelvington will join the international panel of digital media experts at the 10th Journalism Leaders Forum on 7th October. The theme: “Hard Lessons: What are the tough times teaching media decision-makers about the way forward?”

Other confirmed panellists include Juan Señor, UK director of the Innovation International Media Consulting Group, and Kevin Anderson, blogs editor for The Guardian. François Nel, the founding director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at UCLan, will chair the debate.

A longtime newspaper journalist, Steve Yelvington was founding editor of Star Tribune Online (later rebranded startribune.com) in Minneapolis in 1994 and built it into one of the top-ranked newspaper sites in the world.

As executive editor and network content director for Cox Interactive Media, he supervised a nationwide network of city sites.

At Morris Communications, he led site design and development operations that yielded more Digital Edge and EPpy awards than those of any other newspaper company. Amongst the most-discussed projects has been turning the small town newspaper Bluffton Today into a pioneering multimedia newspaper focused on and actively participated in by its community.

Editor and Publisher magazine presented him with the 2001 EPpy Award for Individual Achievement and the Newspaper Association of America presented him with the 2007 Online Innovator Award.

He now concentrates on longterm vision, strategy, and innovation for Morris Digital Works. He now concentrates on longterm vision, strategy, and innovation for Morris Digital Works. And, of course, he blogs, too.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, 7th October in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the networking reception from 5pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism[do]ac[dot]uk.

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Online participants will be able to post questions to panelists in a text chat room.


For more information about this and other activities of the University of Central Lancashire's Journalism Leaders Programme, which partners with media companies to develop leadership talent and strategic solutions for the Networked Age, contact François Nel, by email (FPNel@uclan . ac . uk) or Skype (francoisnel).

Gurus Wanted: Constituting the panel for 10th Forum on 7th October

It was Jay Rosen who, at a previous Journalism Leaders Forum (the 7th, actually), suggested that, in aspects of the digital revolution, UK newsrooms were "about two years behind" the US.

If that is true, the recent trade news headlines of pending job losses at regional press giants Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror suggests that the waves of down-sizing and right- sizing and re-sizing that have been buffeting our colleagues across the Atlantic, are starting to crash onto our shores as well.

But, perhaps, there is a silver lining: Doesn’t our position as so-called laggards also open up to the possibly that we can benefit from the many hard lessons our colleagues in the US - and elsewhere - are learning through experience?

With that in mind, I've proposed the following theme for the 10th Journalism Leaders Forum on 7th October:

“Hard Lessons: What are the tough times teaching media decision-makers about the way forward?”

The key of course is who we get on the panel: for really smart - and useful - answers, we need really smart and insightful people. Or rather, smart and insightful people who are willing to share what they know. (Of course, modern technologies means we can link with folks almost anywhere.)

I know some of those - as is evident from the list of panellists in the previous Forums - but I sure don't know all of them. If you have any recommendations for the panel, it would be great to hear from you. Just post your comments here, or email me at FPNel @ uclan. ac. uk .

We're hoping to finalise the arrangement by 22nd September and look forward to your participation in the discussion, online or in person at the Forum in Preston, which is open and will, again, be Webcast live (log in as a guest).

Note:

- The next Digitial Editors' Network meeting and workshop is also scheduled in the afternoon before the Forum. More details on the DEN blog.

- This Forum is also part of the autumn residential seminar of the Journalism Leaders Programme. The application deadline for the next seminar, 'Newsroom Leadership in the Digital Age', is 12th September. Download this flyer for more details or contact me.

Play it again - the 9th Forum on Making Money

This much is clear from the 9th Journalism Leaders Forum: great minds shouldn’t be thinking alike.

The mainstream media companies who have struggled to take advantage of the expanding – and profitable - media landscape will need to do things differently. Or do more things differently. Or do more of the different things faster. Ultimately, of course, success will come to those who do the right amount of the right things at the right pace. And step one is to think differently.

Perspectives on the question, ‘If the media landscape is changing, why aren’t [many mainstream] media companies?’ from Silicon Valley (Chris Anderson), an internnational digital market intelligence company (Anton Grutzmacher), a UK media industry analyst (Peter Kirwan), a digital news entrepreneur (Rick Waghorn) were chaired by online journalism author and academic (Mike Ward). Add to that an audience of Trinity Mirror editors involved in the Journalism Leaders Programme, Digital Editors Network and others in the room and online, and you’ve got a dynamic and, potentially, very useful discussion.

If you missed it, you can see an unedited recording here.

Diary note: the 10th Forum & Digital Editors Network workshop is on 14th October & the full calendar for 2008-9 is here. Applications for the next Leaders course is also now being accepted.

Also see comments from: Oliver Luft , Andy Dickinson & Joanna Geary in text or vid.

Additional links, comments and suggestions for the next Forums – themes and panellists – would be much appreciated.

9th Forum: Why isn't more media translating into more money for mainstream media companies?

Update (17/04) : Confirmed panellists are: Chris Anderson of 'The Long Tail', Anton Grutzmacher of Hitwise, Peter Kirwan of the Press Gazette's Media Money and Rick Waghorn of www.myfootballwriter.com.


For mainstream media companies, the new Holy Grail or Holy Grail 2.0, if you will, is finding a sustainable business model for the Digital Age. While few now still argue that the old scarcity-economy model is broke, a look at the declining share prices of major media houses makes it clear that, despite much talk and even some action, still fewer are thought to have discovered how to fix it.

Last month, no less than Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape & Ning) inaugurated “the New York Times Deathwatch” — and, as Dan Gilmore (would-be citizen journalism entrepreneur-turned-academic) in a blog post entitled, New York Times Needs to Wake Up: “the data he cites should be giving the Times-folk nightmares”.

This month, Chris Anderson (the Wired magazine editor who gave us The Long Tail ) asserted that “everything that becomes digital eventually becomes free” – and, I suspect, the data he cites will be giving everyone in the mainstream media nightmares.

Given that more people are consuming more media than ever before, a stark question arises: ‘If the media landscape is booming, why aren’t media companies?”

This is theme for the 9th Journalism Leaders Forum at Preston on 29 April 2008.

Amongst the confirmed panellists are Paul Bradshaw, author of the Online Journalism Blog and convenor of the recent Journalism Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Camp; Karen Swan, marketing head for Trinity Mirror Regionals; and Anton Grutzmacher, head of client services at the market intelligence company, Hitwise.

Joining the conversation from the audience will be participants in the Trinity Mirror Editorial Leaders Programme and Digital Editors Network members. Taking us through the issues will be Mike Ward, author of Journalism Online and head of journalism at UCLan.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, 29th April in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the networking reception from 5pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism[do]ac[dot]uk.

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Online participants will be able to post questions to panelists in a text chat room.

For more information about this and other activities of the Journalism Leaders Programme, which partners with media companies to develop leadership talent and strategic solutions for the Digital Age, visit the programme website or contact me, François Nel, by email (FPNel@uclan . ac . uk) or Skype (francoisnel).

WAN-IFRA's Martha Stone joins 13th Forum panel for paywall debate

Paywalls: build them, or break them - or look beyond them?

That's the theme for the next Journalism Leaders Forum in Preston on 29th October 2009. Kicking off that discussion will be Martha Stone, director of the World Association of Newspapers-IFRA's Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project. Charting the panel will be the director of UCLan Journalism Leaders Programme, François Nel, whose paper on innovations in online business models featured at the recent Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Thursday, 29^th October in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the networking reception from 5pm - please register at here.

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest. Online participants will be able to post questions to panelists in a text chat room.

Sports journalists must safeguard their freedom against large sporting bodies if objective coverage of sporting events is to be maintained

That's what was claimed at the recent 8th Journalism Leaders Forum hosted at the University of Central Lancashire on 29th January 08.

In a year which has seen large sporting organisations increasingly clash with journalists the debate was always going to be provocative and the audience was not disappointed. The panel consisted of renowned figures from the sports journalism world- Mihir Bose, BBC Sports Editor (right), Phil Townsend, Director of Communications for Manchester United Football Club, Andrew Moger, leader of the Newspaper Publishers Association’s digital rights campaign, Kadambari Murali, Sports Editor for the Hindustan Times (left) and Robert Hardie, Content Strategy Director for Associated Northcliffe Digital. The forum was chaired by Charlie Lambert, a veteran BBC North West sports presenter and commentator, who now runs the highly-regarded sports journalism programme at UCLan.

The opposing views put forward by Mihir Bose and Phil Townsend were particularly lively and served to illustrate the polarization of views between large, powerful sports organisations and journalists.

Andrew Moger said "As journalists we are letting ourselves down, we are letting a great industry down if we don't man the barricades against restrictive measures. We have been sleeping on this issue far too long. That includes publishers, owners and sports editors. We have tried to maintain relationships in the face of competition and control and we need to be much more robust on our own account."

If you missed the forum you can view the online recording at http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/p88174755/

Join the live Forum Webcast tonight

The 8th Journalism Leaders forum, entitled “Spoiled Sports: Will the digital media finish off sports reporting as a credible form of journalism?” will take place at 6pm GMT on 29th January with an all-star panel chaired by Charlie Lambert.

Join us at http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum and log in as a guest. Look forward to seeing you there.

8th Forum asks to explore the impact of digital on sports journalism

[An unedited recording of this Forum & Webinar is now available here.]

The 8th Journalism Leaders Forum on 29 January will bring top sports media managers and journalists from around the globe together to discuss the impact of new technologies on sports reporting today.

Entitled, “Spoiled Sports: Will the digital media finish off sports reporting as a credible form of journalism?”, the panel will be chaired by Charlie Lambert (right) a veteran BBC North West sports presenter and commentator who now runs the highly-regarded sports journalism programme at UCLan. Says Charlie:

"Journalists who cover top-level sport are facing a real challenge. Teams and organisations are so powerful and so wealthy that they want to control everything that is said or written about them.

"And while there has always been that element of friction between the reporter and the reported, sports organisations now have their own media platforms from which to reach their public without involving the traditional journalist at all. How sports journalists deal with this phenomenon is a key issue which will impact on the credibility of their profession.

Never have so many people around the globe wanted to watch, listen and read about sport. Yet never has it been so difficult for sports journalists to get to the heart of the story. "

Panelists include:

Mihir Bose, BBC Sports Editor
Mihir Bose is the recently appointed Sports Editor for the BBC who worked for the Sunday Times for 20 years before moving to the Daily Telegraph to specialise in investigative sports reporting. He has also presented on radio and television, including BBC Radio 4's Financial World Tonight, South Asia Report on BBC World Service and What the Papers Say for Channel 4. A respected journalist in India and the UK he has won several awards for his newspaper writing including Business Columnist of the Year, Sports Reporter of the Year and Sports Story of the Year. A respected author he has written 22 books on a range of subjects, including A History of Indian Cricket and Manchester Disunited.

Phil Townsend, Director of Communications for Manchester United Phil has been Director of Communications at Man Utd since 2004. Since that time, the Club has been taken over in controversial circumstances, de-listed from the Stock Exchange and endured negative headlines as it lost its shirt sponsor and team captain within weeks of failing to qualify from the Group Stages of the Champions League for the first time in 11 years. In the same period, the Club has won all three domestic honours, appeared in two unsuccessful FA Cup Finals and lost to the eventual winners of the UEFA Champions League in last year’s semi final. Prior to working at Old Trafford, Phil was the Press Secretary to the Minister for Sport for five years, serving three Sports Ministers (the late Tony Banks, Kate Hoey and Richard Caborn) and two Secretaries of State (Chris Smith and Tessa Jowell).


Kadambari Murali, Sports Editor for the Hindustan Times in New Delhi
Kadambari Murali is Sports Editor for the Hindustan Times and is one of the most respected journalists in her field. She has won several awards including best news story and cricket writer at the Indian Sports Journalism Awards for excellence in sports writing.

Robert Hardie, Content Strategy Director for Northcliffe Media
After a reporting career that took in both the regional and national press, Robert became Chief Sub Editor at the Derby Telegraph in 1997 and was appointed Head of Electronic Publishing at the title in 1998.

As Northcliffe Media's digital strategy developed he assumed Content responsibility for of all the group's operations in the Midlands. He then assumed Content control for the whole company in 2002. When Associated Northcliffe Digital was formed in 2006 he was appointed Managing Editor and moved to take up the same role in Northcliffe in October 2007. He was recently appointed Content Strategy Director with the company.

Andrew Moger, an independent consultant specialising in news media rights
Andy Moger is an independent consultant specialising in news media rights and events. He has had many years experience working as a reporter, news editor, picture editor and newspaper executive in the highly competitive London media environment. This has put him at the forefront of numerous and recent negotiations between the media, governing bodies and ‘rights holders’ in many countries. He is also enthusiastic about sport participation (including his own) and the role of sport in society.

The event, which is free and open to the public, starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building and the 90-minute panel discussion kicks off at 6pm . To attend, please RSVP to DJWilliams1@uclan.ac.uk . If you can't be there in person, you can view the live Webcast online and join others in the chat room [Log in as a guest] .

The Journalism Leaders Forum is presented by the Journalism Leaders Programme, which will also be hosting an afternoon of workshops and discussions for the Digital Editors Network. For details about that event, please visit the DEN blog or link with the group on Facebook, where you'll also find the 'Journalism at Preston since 1962' group for alumni of England's oldest journalism course.

Queries about custom training, services and management development programs for your news organization should be directed to the Director of the Journalism Leaders Programme François Nel at F P Nel @ uclan . ac . uk .