IFRA

Horst Pirker and his colleagues must be congratulated on their thesis on the future of press, not only because it highlights an important potential future direction for our industry but, in Horst’s case, that he continues to find the time to engage in serious academic study, while running a large newspaper organisation and being president of IFRA!

The key message is about diversity and the drive for alternative approaches to the business, either through product diversification or through different routes to market. The examples that this thesis explores, although they show different levels of success, each offer hints as to how newspaper companies can grow in the future. It is also right to focus on the continuity of print alongside the emergence of digital and other services.

At the Telegraph Media Group, we have rapidly grown our digital offering on the internet and mobile. But we have also widened our range of printed products and developed a healthy profit stream in terms of secondary products and retailing.

This has not been without its challenges. It’s one thing revising and diversifying the strategy of the business. It’s quite another making it happen. And this requires a radical review of how we redirect our people and resources. There is a lot of talk about the cultural aversion to change within the newspaper industry.

Our staff is fully justified in demanding we retain our traditional values, as news reporters and interpreters, but that should not be confused with a suggestion that we cannot change direction in how we deliver that to the consumer and in terms of products, marketing and technology.

Our experience at the Telegraph is that given the opportunity, resources and training, people rise to the challenge, and now is our most challenging time.

In the current financial climate, when most newspaper companies are under pressure to maintain profits in extremely difficult economic conditions, it is vital that we do not become introverted and closed minded. The economy will recover, and with it new opportunities will emerge. Now is the time to be preparing for the future and Horst’s articles point to where that future lies – in offering more customers more reasons to be doing business with us, and empowering our people to move forward.