Untitled Document

IPP8 Conference New Delhi December 6-8, 2001
Review of the Newspaper Day 21Dec

LAUREL BRUNNER

At the end of a very long and fascinating day, it just remains for me to make some closing remarks. On listening to everything today it's clear that newspapers worldwide are reinventing themselves and that it's no different here. We've come a very long way this morning if you think back to our very first presentation we've looked at the future of publishing, in a very abstract world of XML and PDF and as Mr Batra said, in two to three years XML will be integrated into everything, and as extreme as it may sound, he's right. I would subscribe to that view - somewhere XML would appear in every digital press that we see because it's the only viable means that we have of adding structure to content. He was reinforced in the view of XML as a technology by a kind of review of the social changes that we're seeing, particularly in the media business, by Rajul Kulshreshtha, who said that the change goes beyond numbers. It's about the way you get people to respond to your media, and even though it seemed very futuristic, it's actually true.

People have different expectations of their media as they get different types of media. To answer the question we had earlier about whether or not people notice the improvements in print quality, I think they do and they respond to it. If a colour picture of your favourite film star, or your most hated and lowest politician is really clear, it's more compelling, it's more likely to encourage you to buy the newspaper. I like that quote made by Tariq Ansari; 'Change the people', is an endorsement not of replacing people but for training them and educating them and I think that's a key part of improving newspaper production everywhere, not just here.

As far as the morning presentations are concerned, most of them addressed factors beyond the day-to-day issues of production. They are factors affecting a newspapers evolution. But we heard from Mr Sen and Mr Roy that when it comes to actually producing newspapers you're very much on the sharp and pointed end of things when you hit the press. It has to be right; it has to compete with lots of different media for people's attention. Our attention spans are not necessarily getting smaller, but the things to which we can pay attention are getting more numerous, so we can't really spend more time with newspapers than we would necessarily be able to do five years ago. The same with TV, the same with the web, everything is competing with each other for our attention and newspapers need to be compelling. But we have to match the technology to the purpose, as was illustrated in Paul's presentation about photography. For a photographer like Mathias Cloone in the middle of nowhere a digital camera is no use, but for the news reporter or the sports photographer covering a cricket match or a horse race a digital camera is infinitely preferable, because it allows him to get that image to the newspaper very quickly.

Matching technology to purpose, I think was one the key underlying themes of Mr Valdes' presentation. Whether you agree with his disinterest in an ROI model or the choice of thermal over silver, whether you think he should have bought a Purup-Eskofot platesetter instead of a CreoScitex one, is irrelevant. He needed a technological answer to supply all of these different markets to produce very high quality colour, tabloid newspapers, and meeting lots of little localised needs. The only way he could do that was with a series of remote production sites. However, one of the key parts of that manufacturing model is how you manage the process, whether it's with colour pages, or monochrome ones. And I think it's clear that all of the technological stuff that we're doing these days is about automation and about creating an environment for manufacturing content, not faking up, not creating it out of nothing but for manufacturing the medium that carries the content in a more efficient way. The Swedish Newspaper Association are going some way towards helping people do that in Sweden and I think it's great that information is available in English if you want it.

Then we moved on to rheology and I'm afraid it's rather mystifying to me - ink. It shows that everything in the workflow, in the chain of production is relevant and can have a big effect on how effectively or how efficiently the media is produced. Therefore, it's not just ink, but ink in the context of the press, the type of production deadlines that you're working to and the budget that you have.

Mr Balaji said, the more complex the press, the more complex the mailroom has to be. And the fact that you actually look at the mailroom at the end of the day and XML at the beginning of the day shows that these two things are apparently poles apart but they are all part of newspaper production somewhere down the line. That disparity, I think, demonstrates a lot of the dilemma that we have in deciding how to move forward. The differences are there to be explored and unified and I think that many of the technologies that we need are there and available to us. It's clear from listening to the questions and presentations that we've had today that everyone is thinking about how to move forward to implement those technologies in a way that drives the industry forward.

There were several common themes actually in everyone's presentation - media has to be compelling and meaningful. As we heard from Mr Agarwal's presentation, it's about making it relevant to the readers as well, so that you build loyalty and a sense of community - something very personal -whereby the newspaper becomes a voice and interacts with the individual. How you achieve that is I think by what you're already doing. You have very compelling editorial products here. Encouraging people to read is also good for society.

It's clear that we can't consider any technology or any product in isolation, nor can we consider production processes in isolation. Everything is a holistic collection of tasks and technologies. So whether you can get to the press or to screen faster, has to be balanced against the product quality, because it's no good going to the press quicker if no one buys the product. Growth comes from an imaginative use of technology and an imaginative view of the market. It's about vision I suppose, within the practicalities of how you get all of that grease onto those dead trees.