The 9th edition of WAN Ifra conference took place in Dubai’s Downtown Address Hotel during March 12 and13. All the keynote speakers during first day of the conference including Princess Rym Ali of Jordan and WAN-IFRA chief executive officer for France Vincent Peyrègne underscored the importance of free press for the intellectual and cultural development of societies. Dhaen Shaeen, CEO of Publishing Sector, Dubai Media Incorporated, also highlighted people’s right to free speech and said that online news media and social media networks are ideal platforms for expressing opinions.
As it was expected the two day conference was filled with intensive and interesting presentations from top notch journalists and newspaper publishers from around the world. Judging by the presentations newspapers around the world are rushing to integrate digital media to their print products. Not surprisingly digital media is helping newspaper publisher to find new revenue streams.
In his presentation Matt Kelly former publisher of Mirror Digital and publishing consultant talked about monetization in Mobile and tablet. Mobile and tablets are now preferred devices to read news. Kelly argues that publishers must build tablet products that reflect customer’s behavior not publishing behavior of print.
On the other hand Manfred Werfel WAN Ifra’s Deputy CEO talked about industrial Inkjet technology for newspapers. According to Werfel newspaper industry is changing and today it makes perfect sense to combine digital printing with newspaper printing. Top newspaper press manufacturers such as KBA and manroland are now offering digital solutions for newspaper industry. Hybrid production environment where you combine high productivity with individualization creates many opportunities for newspaper publishers.
Puthenpurail Kawmos Philip, from Malayala Manorama which publishes a highly successful regional newspaper in India shared their experience from switching from single width to double width printing.
There were a string of other presentations including Digital news in the age of the platform, Growing print with segmentation and right targeting and more.
