EVANSTON, IL - Six special capabilities "could well prove the difference between winners and losers in the next generation market for news and information," according to a new Media Management Center study of technological trends affecting news and information businesses.

"Emerging technologies are opening up both enormous possibilities for news organizations as well as threats. It's vital that news organizations understand these trends and learn how to harness them to their advantage," said Michael P. Smith, Executive Director of the Media Management Center (MMC), in releasing the report.

The report, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," is by innovation expert Annette Moser-Wellman. She is also the author of another MMC report, "Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy to Win In the Digital Age," released last year.

The Six Competencies report, the result of interviews with 24 technology leaders and thinkers, identifies major technological trends that promise to have significant impact on the collection, production and distribution of news and information. It outlines a series of special skills and capabilities organizations should develop, acquire or strengthen as a result.

Moser-Wellman calls the six special competencies "The Platform Strategist," "The Marketer," "The Community Builder," "The Data Miner," "The Complete Storyteller," and "The Entrepreneur." These competencies encompass many specific skills, from smart product differentiation and advanced digital storytelling to the abilities to technologically extract maximum value from archives, leverage content across platforms, and drive contact and collaboration.

The technological developments reviewed range from the Semantic Web, 3G and 4G connectivity, cloud computing and mesh networks to the democratization of the tools of media, the rise of location-based information and the increased ability to target both content and advertising.

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NOTE: The Media Management Center has created a special Webinar presentation that outlines and explains Moser-Wellman's findings. Moser-Wellman is also willing to do a small number of customized, interactive live Webinars for interested companies or associations. For more information, contact Vivian Vahlberg at v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu, or 847-467-1790.

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"As the report points out, greater sophistication of devices and software will lead to growing consumer expectations for different levels and types of content from each platform" said Vivian Vahlberg, MMC Managing Director. "To successfully deliver experiences on and across multiple platforms, news organizations must understand what function each platform plays - and then develop products suited to the unique dynamics of each platform."

To remain viable, the report concludes, news organizations will need to partner with companies that have skills (particularly technological) they don't have, that have high engagement with Web audiences, and that can help solidify their market leadership and shore up their consumer base.

Here are the six recommended competencies:

• The Platform Strategist: To capture market opportunities by leveraging content over and across multiple platforms, news organizations must understand the unique attributes and capabilities of each platform; know consumers and spot their unmet needs; understand their own strengths and offerings, and develop products accordingly.


• The Marketer: News organizations need to think like the best marketers – carefully defining their brands and working to develop deep consumer engagement with them. The essential first step: identifying more clearly what differentiates them in the marketplace and determining what unique value and role they provide.


• The Community Builder: News organizations need to become more expert community builders, using technology to help connect people around shared interests. Using the increased technological capacity for information-sharing between individuals and groups, news organizations can more effectively shape dialogue and enable consumers to link to discussions of increasingly wider context.


• The Data Miner: News organizations that become expert data miners and managers can develop unmatched depth of insight about consumers that they can use to profitably deliver both personalized content and targeted advertising. They can also unlock the value of their current and archival content.


• The Complete Storyteller: Digital technologies give news organizations a much broader palette and set of tools to use in thir storytelling. It's not just text, photos and videos - it's a mix of all three plus interactivity, games, charts and much more. Excelling at these new kinds of storytelling is a competency that can differentiate news organizations from competitors.


• The Entrepreneur: In this environment, news organizations must develop their ability to think like entrepreneurs and identify assets they can leverage and new services they can provide, by pursuing partnerships, experimenting smartly and developing new models of advertising.

The Media Management Center is an executive education, research and development institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

To download the complete report, go to: www.MediaManagementCenter.org/research/sixcompetencies.pdf.