SOME photographers just fall into their job with a lucky break, while others discover an unexpected talent by playing with a second-hand camera.

Stuart McEvoy’s does not fit either of these descriptions. The Melbourne-based photojournalist works for every shot – just as he worked hard to break into the business a dozen years ago.

“I wasn’t young. I’d been trying for several years,” he recalls. Dedication – and an understanding wife – are core to his success as a top
newspaper photographer.”

Read more on MediaPlanet

Waikato Times journalist Alistair Bone (left) and intern Davis Boyce put their storytelling couch to use in Cambridge – the first northern New Zealand town that Waikato 100 visited

THE Waikato Times is gunning for a century.

The Fairfax Media-owned New Zealand regional is running an ambitious project that promises to unearth new audiences, turn print journalists into multimedia gurus and tell a hundred local stories along the way.

The project, called Waikato 100, “is about finding out who we are, it’s about meeting local people and exploring how they see themselves”, videographer Mike Scott told The Bulletin.

Already, the Waikato 100 team has captured the lives of a hot air balloon pilot, the ‘burning men’ of radical art festival Kiwiburn, and a self-confessed ‘nark’ who fights for children’s rights.

Read more on MediaPlanet

Digital first. . .The Coffs Coast Advocate’s strategy is paying off

DIGITAL-first strategy is paying off for APN News & Media.

Papers in two centres, Tweed Heads and Coffs Harbour, converted to online-led publications with an emphasis on breaking news reporting and supported by print publications twice a week at the start of 2012.

In the weeks since, the websites www.mydailynews.com.au and www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au have grown traffic by 30 percent each, and “both business units are recording substantially better earnings compared to those for the prior year”, the company said
in a statement.

In the APN annual report for 2011, released on Tuesday, chief executive Brett Chenoweth said the company had made “great strides” along the path to “substantially reposition the company for growth”.

“Our journey to transform APN is under way,” Mr Chenoweth said.

Paul Dovas, CEO of the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

UPDATED: The vote has come through with the result here.

A HISTORIC vote today could allow Australia’s Audit Bureau of Circulations to publish break-downs of its members’ total masthead sales, including separate figures on print and digital sales.

If publishers vote to report separate print and digital sales, the ABC will become the first in the world to use the metric, chief executive Paul Dovas told News Now.

“This is an opportunity to finally put digital on the map,” he said.

The new metrics would allow digital-only products to report audited figures for the first time. Members will vote on whether to introduce an aggregate print and digital number; or go one step further.

This would feature the combined number plus an average paid digital sales metric to complement the existing circulation metric.

If one or both metrics are introduced, figures could be available next month.

Mr Dovas said publishers which did not yet offer paid digital products had contributed to the metrics’ development.

“There is a lot of interest among the members,” he said.

“Just about every member is going to be affected by these new metrics.”

Mr Dovas denied Fairfax Media had forced the body’s hand last month when it independently released its own unaudited digital figures.

“We have had up to 20 members involved in this process at any one time,” he said.

“We are moving forward with just about as much consensus as we can in this.”

Patrons enjoy the Bay of Plenty Times Flavours in the Bay festival at Mount Maunganui. Photo: Chris Callinan

MORE than 2,500 gastronomes turned out for the Bay of Plenty Times’ inaugural food and wine festival.

The newspaper-run festival, named Flavours in the Bay, included stalls, music and packed-out workshops on cheese-making, cooking and mixology.

Ticket sales raised NZ$12,500 for the daily’s Newspaper in Education program and Bay of Plenty staffers handed out 1,000 newspapers.

Event organiser Samantha Dowling – also the Times’ marketing manager – told News Now the festival had been a hit.

The Bay of Plenty Times had sponsored festivals before, but owning the event gave it more control, she said.

“This was an opportunity not only to support our Newspapers in Education program but to control how our brand was being represented.”

Stallholders are already clamouring to book again for 2013, her paper reported.

“We still have to weigh up over the next few weeks whether we should repeat the event next year,” Ms Dowling said.

“If we were to do it again, we would want the event to be even bigger.”

Daily Telegraph designers Bill Watt, left, with Vinnie Taylor

PRINT newspapers must freshen up to be taken seriously by consumers as products with a future, according to designers at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

The News Limited tabloid this week unveiled a major refresh, including a new masthead, to create more cohesion between the print product and the online brand.

Creative director for editorial, Bill Watt, told News Now the revamp was designed to preserve the print product’s own identity.

“We wanted to come from a position of the newspaper, so this whole design is ‘newspaper first’. It appeals to the new consumers as well as the old.”

Editor Paul Whittaker said: “We wanted to develop a bold, fresh new look but retain the heritage and traditions of the newspaper, including dynamic, quality journalism and campaigning for our readers.”

The redesign includes new fonts, a brighter colour palette and busier pages with higher story counts.

Daily Telegraph art director Vinnie Taylor said refreshed page layouts played well to time-poor readers.

“In every page, we’ve tried to create some bigger entry devices that jump out and call you to read that article.

“So if you want to scan through the whole page, then great. But if you haven’t got the time, you might whiz to that straight away,” he said.

Mr Watt added that the new look was conceived with the “modern reader” in mind.

“We couldn’t keep our 120-year-old Franklin Gothic typeface if we’re trying to influence an audience in 2012 and tell them: ‘this is a modern product, this has got a future, this is as important as any of your daily media consumption’,” Mr Watt said.

“We have to give them a product that’s evolving and changing. People expect change.”

Colour helped signpost the paper’s different sections, Mr Taylor added.

“Part of the problem in the past with the Telegraph is that while you’ve gone through the paper, you kind of weren’t sure where you were. The whole thing didn’t hang together very well as a package,” he said.

The masthead has received its first major update since 1995 – though it was revised in 2008 – and used a form of the Century font.

Editor Mr Whittaker said the masthead was chosen to retain “its current shape but with a more contemporary appearance that will translate into the digital space, be it website, iPad or m-site. The new masthead will unify our brand across all platforms.”

A newer font named Antenna, available in a range of weights, replaced Franklin Gothic in headlines and allowed more flexibility, he said.

“Some of the pages prior to this, there was nothing wrong with them, but they were just very samey. This has allowed us to inject a bit more character, have a bit more fun.

“It can still work on a serious story but if we want to have a bit of a play with it, we can do that.”

It will use DTI ContentPublisher and DTI Advertising.

Managing director Michael Muir said: “We are replacing our existing systems for future expansion of the newspaper.”

“DTI ContentPublisher provides us creative flexibility to build engaging customer experiences on every channel. DTI Advertising extends our digital ad sales capabilities.”

“We need to increase revenue and be the market leader.”

DTI ContentPublisher serves up multimedia content directly to any web-enabled device.

DTI Advertising is a browser-based solution for booking, creating and publishing both digital and analogue ads.

Mr Read, who held the same position at fellow APN News & Media-owned Warwick Daily News, told News Now he came into the new job without any preconceived plans for the daily.

“It’s just a case of having a look before I come to any conclusions,” he said yesterday, his second day on the job.

“The focus will be on moving into the digital era, as we are doing across publishing, and finding ways to bundle that with the print.”

His successor at the Warwick Daily News is Bruce Partridge.

He helped Australia’s biggest publisher become one of its smallest emitters, and News Limited became carbon neutral in 2010.

Here, Dr Wilkins explains what publishers should expect, and where the hidden costs of the carbon tax lie.

His tips are relevant for all Australian publishers, big and small.

READ THE FULL STORY ON MEDIA PLANET

The Australian's COO, John Allan. . . "this is an extremely encouraging start"

DIGITAL subscription packages at The Australian have exceeded targets, boosting overall paid sales and new print subscriptions, the paper’s chief operating officer, John Allan, announced today.

The masthead has now attracted 30,000 paying subscribers to its digital platforms.

But publisher News Limited would not reveal which of these subscribers had purchased the all-access digital pass, which launched in October.

The paid digital figure includes sales of the digital pass, new print and digital bundles, individual tablet applications and ‘smart’ editions of the paper.

A further 10,000 existing print customers have taken up a complimentary 12 month digital pass offer. Non-subscribers were offered free three-month trials.

The figures are the first that News Ltd has released since it began charging for The Australian digital pass in January.

“Clearly we are still in very early days, and we are learning every day, but this is an extremely encouraging start,” Mr Allan said.

“The number of consumers who have trialled our product, and subsequently taken up the subscription offer, has comfortably exceeded both our internal sweepstakes and our budgets.”

Mr Allan said the masthead takes in more digital revenue with a paywall in place than when it relied on a bigger, entirely advertising-supported audience.

“Additionally, the launch has boosted print subscriptions – many people have chosen to take up the print and digital bundles – and we are gathering extremely valuable customer data. This is a great story for our advertisers.”

News Ltd would not reveal the breakdown of which paying digital users were purchasing what product, but would do so “when expected changes to the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s reporting comes into effect in the coming months”.

The Australian’s website includes a mix of premium subscription and free content and attracts a domestic unique audience figure of 1,139,000 per month and has a Monday to Friday print circulation of 133,701 and 295,000 at the weekend, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.