As the world cautiously opens up again this spring & summer, one of the things we here at Lineup have been so looking forward to is attending conferences and events for the tech and publishing industries. It’s one thing to have a Zoom meeting – another thing entirely to be able to bat ideas around in a room of people, feeling energized from brainstorming sessions with brilliant minds.
We had the opportunity to attend America’s Newspapers Mega-Conference last week in Orlando, Florida, and wanted to reflect on some of the lessons learned from that, and pass on some of our excitement about upcoming themes and tech developments we’re seeing in this new year.
The conference was full-to-bursting with keynote speakers with expertise across the industry, from Google to Oahu Publications. Though there was a great breadth of content – which we love to see! – there was one key theme that stood out to throughout our time in Orlando: how to adapt and develop into a non-traditional media company.
No session tackled this subject more enthusiastically than Eyes on 2025: Actions to Secure a Sustainable Future. The fireside chat group was made up of industry veterans:
- David Chavern, president and CEO, News Media Alliance
- Tony Hunter, chairman and CEO, McClatchy
- Jeff Johnson, president, Hearst Newspapers
- Donna Hall, publisher, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Leonard Woolsey, president, Southern Newspapers, Inc., and president and publisher, The Daily News, Galveston, Texas
During this lively discussion on the growth and future of non-traditional media companies, two key points were highlighted that we think will help with adapting to the changes we’re seeing in the industry. First, Donna Hall contended that interdepartmental communication and the effective “de-siloing” of these departments were the key to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s success. Second, Tony Hunter discussed the success that McClatchy is having as a company by digitizing and automating its systems. Each leader discussed the vital importance of these respective changes in moving their companies forward, and ensuring the success in our ever-changing industry.
Both points – increased departmental communication and the digitization/automation of systems – are important to both our industry and how companies are run in the wake of the changing office structures put in place by Covid precautions. Lineup, moreover, has been working with companies to both improve their departmental communication and ensure smooth systems operations & automation with Adpoint. Since 2009, customers like McClatchy have relied on Adpoint’s tech to cross those (sometimes intimidating!) departmental borders and automate workflows to save the company money and employees time spent on admin.
We’re thrilled to see more companies adopting similar attitudes to technology and interdepartmental cohesiveness, and especially discussing the successes they’ve seen therein in spaces like America’s Newspapers Mega-Conference. If your company was inspired by the discussions of these critical steps, please reach out to our team to discuss how Adpoint could be applied to ensure the future of your company. Or, seek us out at any upcoming events! We’d love to chat.
Thank you, once again, to America’s Newspapers, for bringing us all back together for such a wonderfully collaborative conference.
