Are staff hampering your business transformation plans? Try taking away their tools, desk or job.

The radical advice came from Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, president director of Indonesian government-owned news agency Antara in an Asian Media Leaders eSummit session moderated by radio host and consultant Glenn Van Zutphen.

He urged delegates to embrace the COVID-19 crisis as a tool for accelerating change. “People know they have to change, and it gives you a carte blanche on anything that needs to be done,” he said.

Rather than bothering to learn Clubhouse or do podcasts – “our younger journalists will do that” – he stressed his job was to find the business model. “Not tinkering, but finding something completely new.”

The traditional news agency business now accounts for only nine per cent of Antara’s revenue, as business has developed through the provision of data and financial information, and the use of 34 internet portals, indoor and outdoor media, including screens in 500 public locations including hospitals and waiting rooms. He urged delegates not to dismiss the value of offline, or underestimate the value of public spaces.

Deals with local newspapers – which use Antara’s content to fill about 15 per cent of their column space – gives the business access to contra advertising space in 99 local newspapers.

With changes happening faster as a result of COVID-19, he urged delegates to enforce a new workplace regime. “Force people to change the way they work,” he urged.

And with a third of the usual office occupancy bringing a saving of 15-25 per cent, Antara has shut one floor and part of another it no longer needs. “People who might want to go back to work will have no desk to go back to,” he says.

A focus on safety protocols – with mass testing for 1100 people – and productivity rather than process, “everyone was adapting well.”

Not that Meidyatama Suryodiningrat would pretend that it was easy: “There is no-one more opinionated than a journalist, they like their ways,” he said, urging delegates to change the system, rather than try to change the people. Antara changed its CMS to introduce new ways of working – “take away the tools and force them to use new,” he advised – and recruited 60 new cub reporters, who are bringing “new breath and climate to editorial”, while making about 100 redundant. “Obviously it’s very painful,” he said.

In questions, Suryodiningrat admitted the model would not work in Singapore, where the virtual conference was centred… or probably France or Sweden, from which other speakers came. NWT president Victoria Svanberg told delegates they realised people were as productive at home, and appreciated the flexibility.

Svanberg – whose great grandfather bought the company for SKR1 (about 15 pence) – told delegates most staff work alternately at home and at the office, a survey confirming that 60 per cent wanted to continue doing so.

While a large part of group revenue still comes from print, delivering packages and mail produced a new source of recurring income through the pandemic. Almost 70 per cent of morning paper revenues came from readers rather than advertisers.

Established in 1837, the publisher now owns 16 newspapers and is a shareholder in the Schibsted and Polaris groups in Norway, and in Stampen in Sweden.

“There’s an increased demand for quality local journalism and a willingness to pay for it,” she said.

From Le Parisien - Aujourd’hui en France, publisher and managing director Sophie Gourmelen said the last 12 months had accelerated digital strategy. France’s “largest national and local newspaper”, with 20 million readers online and 160,000 print subscribers, was looking to be more digital-orientated and was fitting the content to suit its digital subscribers. Its goal was to reach 100,000 digital subscribers in five years.

A moved to Washington Post’s Arc Publishing technology two years ago, an increase in the level of competencies at the digital desk, the change in strategy to suit digital with web-first content, and a fremium paywall were paying off. With more articles and 30 per cent of them behind the paywall, subscriber numbers have more than doubled in the year after peaking in March and April.

An editorial project based on content with high digital potential had delivered “fewer, better, long reads, together with investigations, profiles and opinions”, all of which had proved to have high conversion potential. Newsroom teams had also changed to cover these priorities, embracing video, graphics and social media experts.

Gourmelen says audiences were also targeted, with content created for them and for “obsessions” such as the environment, sexuality, buying power, football club PSG (Paris Saint-Germain), and cycling, topics not necessarily reflected equally in print.

With a further tech commitment to the Globe & Mail’s Sophi, dashboards in the newsroom show which articles convert.

New digital products aimed at collaboration with audiences include newsletters – which deliver one per cent of audience, but ten per cent of subscribers – and a daily podcast attracting 800,000 listeners a month, and video for which the monthly audience is 50 million views. A new app for Le Parisien, attracts ten per cent of its audience, but delivers almost 50 per cent of subscribers.

The publisher had created 100 new FTE positions – recruiting 400 journalists – with parity between men and women, and 52 of its management roles occupied by women.

She advocated training in management, storytelling and digital culture, creating a multidisciplinary squad for each key issue. “Design and do, go for early wins, set clear KPIs, and make choices – so we stop doing things,” she urged.

Snapchat, Facebook and podcasts were important platforms for new younger audiences who “don’t know about our website or newspaper.

“It’s about meeting the audience where they are,” she said.

Peter Coleman

From left: Sophie Gourmelen, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat and Victoria Svanberg