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Regional editors to take part in day-long debate

Leading regional newspaper executives are among those taking part in a day-long debate on the industry’s future at this month’s Society of Editors conference.

The year’s biggest industry gathering opens in Berkshire on Sunday week and the full programme has now been finalised.

As presviouly announced, the conference will kick off with the annual Society of Editors’ lecturer, to be delivered this year by BBC chairman Lord Patten.

But the customary morning and afternoon sessions on the Monday have been scrapped and replaced by a day-long debate about where the industry goes from here in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal and this summer’s controveries over super-injunctions.

Regional press figures taking part in the discussion will include Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror Regionals, Ian Murray, editor-in-chief of the Southern Daily Echo, Simon O’Neill, editor of the Oxford Mail, and Gerry Keighley, editor of the South Wales Argus,

The all-day debate will be chaired by Steve Hewlett of BBC Radio Four’s The Media Show and will look at what needs fixing, issues of privacy, libel and regulation, and the way forward for the industry.

The final day of the conference will see the publication of an industry-wide survey recently featured on HTFP.

And Northcliffe managing director Steve Auckland will be among the panellists for the final session, looking ahead to what the media landscape will look like in 2020.

5 comments

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  • November 3, 2011 at 9:59 am
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    Must be nice to have the time to spend a full day lolling about discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

    And “looking ahead to what the media landscape will look like in 2020″ ?

    Give us a break – regional newspaper executives failed to notice the internet until it steamrollered right over them – and I doubt they can even see what’s going on right now.

    So their predictions of what the “media landscape” will look like in the next decade should be amusing.

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  • November 3, 2011 at 10:27 am
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    The newspaper company i worked for a couple of years ago made a big song and dance about using social media to promote the paper and website and how everyone should do this in a meeting with staff.

    The week after we got an email saying that “to encourage productivity” some websites would not be able to be accessed via work machines.

    These included Facebook, Twitter and Myspace (this was a couple of years ago).

    It only took them a month to unblock these after both editors and the Union pointed out the idiocy.

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  • November 3, 2011 at 1:40 pm
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    The problem I have always encountered with editors – and indeed most members of senior editorial teams – is their need for relentless positivity in connection with their own title and the industry in general.

    While you wouldn’t expect the chief of a small daily title to come out and say ‘we’re sh@gged, let’s go weekly’ or ‘yes, of course axing all the subs will knacker the product’, it is very frustrating to hear them spout positives when you know in their heart they cannot believe it.

    This conference will no doubt be full of similar rhetoric. How about including a recently-retired boss for a more honest perspective?

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  • November 4, 2011 at 10:36 am
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    Seems a lot of hot air will be expelled by editors of regional daily papers whose circulations are dropping like stones. Will this make any difference ? I sadly doubt it. In my experience, the best editors have always been those who plough their own furrows and avoid back-slapping/hand-wringing industry events like the plague.

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  • November 4, 2011 at 2:52 pm
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    What has changed for the better since their last day-long conference?

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