A one-day conference was organized on October 31 in Kuwait in the Sheraton Hotel by M. A. Kharafi Group, KnowledgeView and IFRA, under the patronage of Sheikh Faisal Khalifa Al-Malek Al-Sabah, Deputy Minister of Information, to talk about the latest publishing trends and strategies in the newspaper industry.

Media experts warned of the invasion of mobile telecommunications, internet, blogs and news websites over the traditional media outlets namely the newspaper industry. A call to modernize the future of the industry was raised during the conference through the use of modern platforms.

The conference talked about the transformation that is occurring in the media nowadays, thus creating a need to present media from multiple platforms in order to compete with rising media mediums that are different from the traditional newspaper and TV stations.

With the growing penetration of the internet, the newspapers have to resort to convergent methods in order to display its news in a modern way to appeal to new customers and readers and that's when KnowledgeView and its partner in Kuwait M. A. Kharafi Group and German-based IFRA step in.

"The launch of the Press and Publications Law has paved the way for more competition and diversity in the local media, thus allowing the private sector to enter the sector," Deputy Chairman of the Commercial Affairs Department at the Ministry of Information, Fawzi Al Tamimi, said during the conference. He hoped that this conference will help newspapers in improving their editorial standards by adapting the latest technologies presented by KnowledgeView and IFRA.

Deputy Chairman of the Industrial and Information Technology Department at M.A. Kharafi, Ibrahim Saleh, said the conference aims to develop the skills of newspaper directors and editors and introduce to them new ways in publishing newspapers.

Dr Mohamed Al-Romaihi – Editor-in-Chief of Awan newspaper, a new privately owned Kuwaiti newspaper which will be published for the first time on Nov 18 – emphasized the importance of acknowledging the nature of the media and take concrete steps to focus on public welfare instead of serving personal interests. Al-Romaihi added the media has no authority under an autocratic form of government but professional journalism usually relies on effective planning, qualified staff and the most-advanced technology.

Dr Ali Al-Assam, CEO of KnowledgeView and Mr. Reiner Mittlebach, CEO of IFRA presented their views on how modern newspapers in Kuwait should be in order to compete with the rising wave of newly established papers in the country.

Al Assam said that by using new publishing techniques like convergent newsrooms and modern software and archiving systems, newspapers and dailies can cut down on their expenses by 20% in comparison with the traditional publishing programs and increase the circulation and advertisement revenues.

Mittlebach stressed the urgency of utilizing all media platforms to approach consumers, because consumers' approach has changed and flexibility is a priority. He noted that the abundance of available data in the local media market makes it necessary to have a fast internet connection to run the media companies in an efficient way.