Great to hear @joonlau kicking off 3 days of the @WANIFRA_Asia Digital Media Leaders conference. Huge line-up, about innovation, product development, revenue diversification and more. #journbiz

1st #DigitalMediaAsia session: - Joe Kahn ( @nycscribe), Managing Editor of @nytimes, in conversation with @garyliu of @SCMPNews - two giants of digital innovation and revenue diversification. As Liu says, online events supports global knowledge sharing like this. #journbiz

. @nycscribe says 2020 upheavals have driven engagement "beyond what we had witnessed in the past. And we were in a good position to harvest some of this because we've had some years of focusing on digital engagement." (See more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions-coronavirus.html) #DigitalMediaAsia)

. @garyliu asks whether the current "supercycle of news" caught @nytimes off guard at all. @nycscribe says the Times thought the "Trump Bump", which coincided with refreshing its subscription process in early 2017, would subside but "it's never gone away". #DigitalMediaAsia

. @nycscribe says @nytimes has learned from cycle after cycle of major news events to provide "full multimedia storytelling that allows people to engage with them in more depth", and sought flexibility to reorganise staff "around the stories of the moment". #DigitalMediaAsia

He says this hasn't meant getting individual journalists to learn to produce every format, but to get people out of their silos to collaborate on multimedia formats that "harness the same journalistic strength" but maximise different
@nytimes
staff expertise. #DigitalMediaAsia

A bit off topic from this thread but #DigitalMediaAsia has participants from 38 countries, including Australia, Dubai, Fiji, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines Singapore, Thailand, US and Vietnam. VERY difficult to achieve that pre-2020. #journbiz

. @nycscribe says the Times now has multiple ways of creating a frictionless sales funnel leading users towards subscription, including newsletters & email. Subscription isn't a light-switch, he says. "Move into it deliberately and slowly with a lot of testing". #DigitalMediaAsia

. @nycscribe says the strength of the @nytimes core business over many years, patience from the owners on strategic reinvestment of resources since at least 2008, plus hiring new expertise, have all been critical to the paper's success. #DigitalMediaAsia

Q&A to @nycscribe - do you still have separate print & digital teams? Reply: "We're trying to move print more downstream from digital". Print is put together by a 'print hub' team, "which is prepared from the full selection of what's on our digital platforms". #DigitalMediaAsia

Q&A w/ @nycscribe: what about younger audiences? Reply: Long-form text & longer videos aren't always best formats for these users. "Revealing the underlying information of a story in the most impactful way will be appreciated by a younger generation." #DigitalMediaAsia