Peston joins 11th Forum panel to review 'The Bottom Line' of business journalism

Update 23/01/2009: Liverpool Daily Post's dynamic deputy editor Alison Gow will also join the panel.

The stakes have never been higher.

Choices made this year will undoubtably shape the world's economy "perhaps for generations," says the academic and columnist Martin Wolf.

Arguably, that's true for all those who control all the levers of power. That means business and government leaders, certainly. It also means citizens whose collective choices are the source of that power.

What does it mean for the Fourth Estate, itself severely battered by the economic storm?

To help further unpack the issues - and to consider the implications - BBC Business Editor Robert Peston (left), FT.com Interactive Editor Kate Mackenzie, Crain's Manchester Business Publisher Arthur Porter and TheBusinessDesk.com Northwest Editor Chris Barry will join the 11th Journalism Leaders Forum panel at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston on the 3rd of February.

The Guardian's Blogs Editor Kevin Anderson will chair the discussion, "The Bottom Line: Is the business of journalism affecting the journalism of business?"

To attend this free programme at 6pm in Greenbank Lecture Theatre - 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 participate in the live Webcast by logging in here as a "guest". Online participants will be able to post questions to panelists and each each other in a text chat room.

The Forum is scheduled as part of the Journalism Leaders Programme's Winter seminar, "Multimedia Content: making it, managing it, monetising it," which runs from February 2nd to 6th. Also in Preston earlier the same day is the Winter meeting of the Digital Editors Network.

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

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).