Snapchat isn't just a chat app or a social media app. It is a tool specifically designed for storytelling! To understand Snapchat and its potential, journalists need to understand the technology powering it. Snap, the company behind the app, has products that span searchable Live Stories and shows, wearables (Spectacles), and augmented reality (Snapchat’s face filters called Lenses and AR emojis)...

What sets Snapchat apart from other social networks that have adopted this format is Live Stories, a curation feature based on users' locations that enables Snapchat to aggregate views and opinions around a breaking news event faster than traditional media organisations can deploy a camera crew.

This half day workshop will explain the great storytelling potential of Snapchat Live Stories and Facebook Live and give concrete publishing tips for making the most out of these platforms.

A lot of people were surprised when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013. In the course of a few years, Bezos however completely changed the outlook of the 140-year-old newspaper.Its readership has exploded, its content has become more suitable for the digital world, and the WaPo is now looked upon as one of the most innovative news media companies in the world. 

Two years after Bezos, Amazon's stronger competitor, the Alibaba Group, bought in a surprise move another venerable news media institution: the 113-year-old Grey Lady of Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Headed by Gary Liu (former CEO of Digg), SCMP is currently undergoing an in-depth transformation which started by taking down the publication's paywall. 

Charging for online content doesn’t mean to simply erect a pay-wall around your existing content and expect readers to start paying for what they used to get for free. It actually implies to gain an in-depth knowledge of readers and content performance on digital platforms through the implementation of a relevant data strategy.

This session will highlight the vital importance of Big Data and AI in today’s newsrooms. 

News publishers’ global audience revenues overtook their advertising revenues in 2014. Since then, this trend has constantly increased. Media companies are now aware that digital journalism can only become a financially successful business with paid models. And the good news is that, even in Asia, more and more publishers are now putting this awareness into action, thus increasing reader acceptance for paid models on the Internet.

This session will present several case studies of Asian news publishing companies that have implemented different ways of charging for their digital content. It will argue that the real question is not anymore to charge or not to charge but rather when and how to start charging…

In addition to traditional digital subscriptions, new models for monetizing digital content are emerging.  Sachin Doshi, a former Spotify Executive has co-founded Scroll (with Tony Haile, the former CEO of Chartbeat), a start-up that wants to roll up a selection of stories from a wide variety of publishers and sell monthly subscriptions on a platform with little or no ads.  Scroll is backed by Axel Springer, News Corp and the New York Times.

Panel discussion: Is it time for Asian publishers to start charging for their digital content?

While advertising budgets inexorably migrate from legacy to digital platforms, the share of programmatic advertising on this already competitive market keeps growing.

In this challenging context, can co-operative market places play a decisive role and allow premium publishers to claim higher yields matching their content and audience quality?

While in Europe large ad networks such as La Place Media have gained a significant scale, news-centric publisher networks  - such as Project Juno or Pangaea - still struggle for traction. How are Asian ad networks faring so far? 

This sesssion will discuss the promises and challenges of initiatives such as CltrShift in Malaysia, OPPA in Thailand, Apex in Australia, Kpex in New Zealand, in Japan or the recently launched SMX in Singapore.

This session will look at the latest developments in storytelling formats on mobile platforms, from longform text to bite-sized information to data viz and interactives. It will provide in depth case studies of what innovative leading media brands such as HT Media (The Hindustan Times) and CNN, or newsmedia start-up such as Hkcnews.com are currently producing and what their achievements imply in terms of talents, resources, tools and training.

The session will also provide insights on the latest methods for surfacing the best ideas from across the newsroom and bring them into action plans? Should every news company build an in-house 'Media lab'? What is the best way to use Design Thinking for developing editorial projects and products?