WAN releases strategic reports

The reports, from the WAN Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, focus on how publishers can benefit from the opportunities provided by these developments.

The reports, and the SFN project, are an exclusive service to WAN members, who will receive the reports in the coming days and can now download electronic versions and more from the SFN website at www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

WAN has published 37 SFN Strategy Reports in the past six years. The reports released today, Tuesday, 5 June 2007, are:

• Benchmarking New Digital Revenues, which includes the WAN benchmarking study, conducted in partnership with US research firm Borrell Associates, which tracks digital revenue growth across key categories, and forecasts trends for coming years.

• Advertising Best Practices, which focuses on three strategies that will move newspaper advertising departments towards better profitability and sales effectiveness -- managing yield and pricing management, focusing on ad effectiveness, and developing the digital sales department.

• The Power of Local Focus, which examines how changing market forces have propelled the local newspaper market into a new strategy focused on the “Four ‘Ns' -- Newspapers, Neighbours, Niches and Networks.

• Reorganising the Newspaper Company, which examines how the rapidly changing media landscape is pushing companies worldwide to transform themselves to reach wider audiences, increase advertising revenues and make processes more efficient.

• Innovative Management Systems, which looks at how large and small newspaper companies around the world are implementing technology systems to create workflow efficiencies, save money and improve customer service while, at the same time, considering present and future return on investment.

Additional reports

In addition, WAN members have received two other reports in the 2007 SFN series that were published earlier this year:

• World Digital Media Trends, a companion to WAN's annual World Press Trends. Digital Media Trends explores global and regional trends in usage patterns and revenue generation in digital media, and compares them with other media. (World Digital Media Trends is also available to non-members: go to www.wan-press.org/worlddigitalmediatrends for more information).

• New Print Products, which examines the proliferation of new genres of newspapers, the surge of new free titles, the trend of the shrinking newspaper format, and more.

WAN is a leading provider of industry research and analysis through its SFN project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world. In addition to the annual strategy reports, SFN provides WAN members with a library of case studies and business ideas, and a wealth of other vital information for all those who need to follow press industry trends.

WAN conducts the SFN project with support from four international partners: PubliGroupe, the Swiss-based international advertising and promotion group; MAN Roland, a leading company for newspaper production systems; UPM, one of the world's leading printing paper producers; and Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecommunications, IT and media group.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18 000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.