Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr, the Chairman of The New York Times Company and Publisher of The New York Times, has joined the programme for the World News Media Congress, to be held in Washington, D.C., from 1 to 3 June.
Mr Sulzberger will discuss how The Times is implementing its Innovation Report, which identified major issues and challenges facing the newspaper in the digital world and provided recommendations to address them. The presentation comes one year after publication of the report, which drew widespread industry attention and led newspaper publishers around the world to reassess their own digital strategies.
Mr Sulzberger will be joined by Alexandra MacCallum, who last year took on the masthead role of assistant editor for audience development, charged with overseeing audience growth and engagement at The Times. "The Innovation Report has made the newsroom unbelievably open to trying new things," she recently told Mashable.
Under her leadership, The Times brought managers of social media into the newsroom, launched an Instagram account, and has taken other steps to invigorate the audience development process and increase traffic. "It's raising our profile with a different set of people than we're used to reaching, and I think that's a really important thing for the Times going forward," she said.
At a recent conference in Paris on the future of news media, Mashable's Jim Roberts, formerly of The New York Times, said The Times' digital integration had been "a bumpy road" but is now on a smoother course. "From all I see, The Times is making a lot of innovative steps," he said. "It obviously needs to protect its (print) business but it also needs to innovative and experiment as well."
More than 1,000 publishers, CEOs, chief editors, managing directors and other senior news publishing executives are expected in Washington in June for the annual global summit meeting of the world's press organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), in cooperation with the Newspaper Association of America.
Other sessions include:
-- An Evolving Profession: Global Perspectives, a conversation between Martin Baron, the Executive Editor of the Washington Post, and Maria Ressa, CEO and Executive Editor of the Philippine social news network Rappler, and former Manila and Jakarta bureau chief for CNN.
-- Can Mainstream Media Buy Its Way To Growth? featuring Raju Narisetti, Senior Vice President & Deputy Head of Strategy for News Corp, Perrine Albrieux, Director of Marketing & Digital Development at Groupe Télégramme in France, and Christian Hendricks, Corporate Vice President, Interactive Media, for The McClatchy Company in the United States.
-- A new strategy for news, a proposal for the future of news media by Jeff Jarvis, author, digital visionary, professor and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City Universiry of New York's Graduate School of Journalism.
-- Who Runs the News Agenda in a Tech Hungry World," with Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Marcelo Rech, Executive Director of Journalism at RBS Group in Brazil, Tom Rosenstiel, Executive Director of the American Press Institute, and Vivian Schiller, a former President and CEO of National Public Radio and former global chair of news at Twitter.
-- The Global Report on Innovation in Newspapers, the annual presentation of the Innovation in Newspapers World Report from the Innovation International Media Consulting Group for WAN-IFRA.
-- Digesting Programmatic and the Impact on Sales Teams, a look at automated approaches to online advertising with Alanna Gombert, CEO of Gombert Consulting and the former head of digital sales and strategy at Condé Nast, Marcel Udo, Director of Automated Trading at Telegraaf Media Groep in the Netherlands, and Robert Johansson, Head of RTB and Programmatic at Schibsted in Sweden.
-- The Multi-Platform Newsoom, which will focus on the evolution towards a mobile future and will feature David Callaway, Editor-in-chief of USA Today, Marta Gleich, Executive Editor of Zero Hora in Brazil, and Poul Madsen, Executive Editor-in-chief of Ekstra Bladet in Denmark.
The World News Media Congress also offers an array of workshops and other resources, incuding a seminar on "News publishing on wearable devices," a networking session for small-and medium-size publishers, a masterclass on video output, and much more.
As always, the events are accompanied by an array of social events, gala dinners, lunches and networking breakfasts -- including an opening cocktail at the Newseum, hosted in cooperation with NAA and the Knight Foundation -- and are considered to be the premier opportunity to meet colleagues from around the world.
www.wan-ifra.org
