World Association of News Publishers


Interview with Ole Mølgaard, Program Director, CBS Executive, Denmark

Interview with Ole Mølgaard, Program Director, CBS Executive, Denmark

Article ID:

16424

Moderator at the World Newspaper Congress in Bangkok, 2-5 June 2013

As news publishers continue to transform their businesses from a traditional print-centric organization/model to a multimedia one, more than ever top management need to exemplify today's required leadership skills to move their companies and staff forward. Ole Mølgaard heads the Media Executive program, a cooperative effort between WAN-IFRA and CBS Executive that ultimately aims to put media executives and their companies on the right track. He has extensive experience in commercial and public radio and spent more than 10 years at the top level of Danish Broadcasting Corporation, where he was responsible for cross-media strategy, among other areas. At the World Newspaper Congress he will moderate the session entitled “Learning from the innovators.”

WAN-IFRA: The newspaper industry is a conservative one that faces radical disruption because of massive technological change. What other industries have experienced similar disruption without going extinct, and what can newspapers learn from them?

Ole Mølgaard: Disruption is a condition that exists in most industries, whether you produce means of transportation, writing equipment, or media contents. Looking at the music industry is always interesting, not least because the industry as such is extremely successful: Turnover in the music industry is higher than ever before. More music is being written, produced, and consumed than ever before. But still, for some parts of the music industry, digital conversion has been tough. That applies especially to the recording industry.

This is very similar to your industry: More stories are being told and more journalism produced than ever before. The crisis is for the business of printing news on paper. You have to get out of that. Just like the music industry had to get out of the business of producing CDs and instead get into Spotify and the like, and live music. Ask yourself: Where are you creating value for the customer? I think that you will find that you are in the storytelling business. And in the news business. And that can actually be transformed to the digital world.

What qualities are required of the current crop of newspaper executives in order to deal with the transition into the digital/mobile age?

All the studies show that the leaders in this new era must possess some qualities that are quite different from those traditionally required of managers. Now we need managers who exhibit strong leadership skills, high levels of personal integrity, plenty of creativity, and well-developed intuition. This new breed of managers will keep the organisations agile.

Some newspapers, including the New York Times, the Irish Times and others, are inviting start-up companies to take up temporary residence in the paper's headquarters, one aim being to incubate culture change in the publishing house. Could you comment on this development?

It's an interesting experiment. Unfortunately, what often happens is that after a while, the culture you tried to import into the company dies and the old culture lives on. Sometimes you will see that the new culture survives, but only in that particular corner of the company and without benefitting the rest of the company or adding to its knowledge.

As a rule, there are no shortcuts when it comes to creating a culture of innovation. You can’t buy it in a downtown shop. Companies have to redefine themselves and rediscover their core reasons for existing and their goals.

Information about the Media Executive program is available here.


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Anton Jolkovski

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2013-04-19 13:45

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65th World Newspaper Congress · 20th World Editors Forum · 23rd World Advertising Forum

02 Jun 2013 - 05 Jun 2013

JoongAng Media Network (JMnet) is the largest media group in the Republic of Korea. Jeongdo Hong oversees 25 media platforms, including newspapers, TV broadcasting, magazine publication, book publishing and Internet/mobile services. Since he joined JMnet in 2005 as a member of the Strategic Planning Office, he has developed overall corporate strategies for this leading media group. At the World Newspaper Congress, he will be a panelist in Session 8, Focus on Asian Media.

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Anton Jolkovski

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2013-04-22 15:12

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