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.