US publisher to speak at World Newspaper Congress

Horne, whose newspaper is the third largest in California, believes that newspapers must diversify because of internet growth and changing readership patterns. "The Register has to become a 21st century business," he has said. "We can¹t have the same model that worked 10 years ago."

Horne¹s approach is to offer premium content in the subscription-based Register, for a mainly older audience, to offer a hyper-local focus through free community weeklies, and to attract a younger audience with free content on the www.Ocregister.com.

But this strategy requires a re-engineering of the business, and Horne¹s presentation will focus on how the Orange County Register went about it.

Horne is one of dozens of industry speakers who will examine new business and editorial strategies at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress, 16th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo, the global meetings of the world¹s press. More than 1,500 publishers, chief editors, managing directors, CEOs and other senior newspaper executives are expected to attend.

Registration is still open. Special measures have been taken by Indian authorities to facilitate the processing of visas for congress and forum participants and Hyderabad is linked by direct flights to major cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

With more than 30-years in newspaper publishing, Horne has refined his strategy before becoming publisher of the Orange County in September 2007.

How such change is implemented is a key factor in the success of any strategy, and Horne¹s presentation will focus on the management and communication issues he faced.

"It¹s a little easier to create change when people are clearly aware that a lot of bad things are going on," he told Smart Business magazine recently.

"It¹s harder to do change when a business is pretty successful and you¹re anticipating difficult times so you¹re trying to pre-empt it. It takes really strong communication and transparency to create urgency in people, because change happens from urgency."

Among other things, Horne established eight 'transformation teams' to oversee the process, identified 'change leaders' who were respected by their colleagues, and trained the teams to determine what to change, and how to do it. He kept employees updated through a series of 'town hall-style' meetings every month or two.

Other congress and forum speakers include:

- Les Hinton, chief executive officer, Dow Jones & Co., USA;
- Andreas Wiele, member of the board / president BILD Division and Magazines, Axel Springer AG, Germany;
- Olivier Fleurot, CEO, Public Relations, Corporate and Financial Communications, Events Management for Publicis Groupe;
- Ravi Dhariwal, CEO Publishing, Bennett, Coleman & Co. (Times Group), India;
- Mahendra Mohan Gupta, chairman/managing director and managing editor, Jagran Prakashan, India;
- Martim Figueiredo, publisher and editor-in-chief, 'i' daily newspaper, Portugal;
- Jaideep Bose, editor-in-chief, Times of India, India;
- James Orr, online news editor, The Christian Science Monitor, USA;
- Paul Johnson, deputy editor-in-chief, The Guardian, UK;
- Rafat Ali, CEO and founder, paidcontent.org, USA;
- Walter de Mattos, editor-in-chief, Lance, Brazil;
- Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft India;

Full details can be found at www.wanindia2009.com.