Newspaper Future is Bright: WAN President

Newspapers are well-placed to succeed in the modern media environment, and forecasters who predict the industry's decline are making a "profound mistake", the President of the World Association of Newspapers said today (Tuesday), making the case for a vibrant future for the newspaper industry.

"Virtually every brokerage report from the investment banks appears to support a new conventional wisdom that newspapers are soon to be some relic of the past, and that newspaper companies are not up for the challenge - or indeed, the many opportunities - that the digital world offers. What a profound mistake these commentators are making," said WAN President Gavin O'Reilly, speaking during the World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden.

"All of us in the industry know the big strategic issues and challenges at play in the fast evolving digital world - and, the really successful publishers are those who recognise and capitalise on the newspaper's relative position in the busy media matrix. Happily, that is the majority of publishers today," he said.

"The fact is that newspapers are winning well in a world of heightened digital fragmentation," he said. "In properly assessing the performance of newspapers, one needs to calmly analyze the underlying audience trends for our industry - the quantum of our readership and the quality demographic that we deliver, coupled with the incremental and growing audience that we garner from online - and the conclusion is that our industry is extremely well-positioned at weathering the storm that is media fragmentation, guaranteeing as we do sizeable, reliable and relatively stable audiences. "

Newspapers are a US$190 billion dollar industry globally, reaching 1.7 billion readers daily, said Mr O'Reilly during a Congress session dedicated to Shaping the Future of the Newspaper.

The industry is expected to grow its advertising by 17% over the next 5 years, or at a faster rate than the preceding 5 years, said Mr O'Reilly, the Group Chief Operating Officer of Independent News & Media plc.

"Newspapers are a vibrant, relevant and commercial proposition for readers and advertisers alike. For investors, the investment in new technology and the delivery of new audiences produces an unrivalled cocktail of success: strong, definable demographics coupled with strong margins delivering consistent returns."

The Congress, along with the World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2008, has drawn 1,800 newspaper publishers, editors and other senior executives to Göteborg, Sweden. The conferences continue through Wednesday.

WAN is a leading provider of industry research and analysis through its Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world. SFN provides WAN members with Strategy Reports on these developments, 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. More on the project can be found at http://www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

WAN conducts the SFN project with support from four international partners -- PubliGroupe, the Swiss-based international advertising and promotion group; manroland, a leading company for newspaper production systems; Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecommunications, IT and media group; and Atex, the leading supplier of solutions and services for advertising, content management, circulation and online applications.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr