1. 63rd WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS
Session: Leadership
Title: The Leadership Challenge
Speaker: Jurij Giacomelli
Mark your calendar
64th WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS
19th WORLD EDITORS FORUM
Vienna, Reed Messe Wien
www.wan-ifra.org/kiev2012

2. The Leadership
Challenge
Jurij Giacomelli
President of Management Board
Delo, Ljubljana, Slovenia
63rd World Newspaper Congress
Vienna, October 15th, 2011

3. Slovenian news media
market
Slovenia - population: 2 million
Total readership of print dailies: 450.000
4 general dailies, 1 tabloid, 1 business daily
and 1 sports daily newspaper
Subscription driven market
Dominance of the TV in the advertising market:
over 70% share

4. The News Media Company
Delo is Slovenia’s leading news media company
with over 50-year tradition
2 leading newspaper brands – one quality
paper, one (and only) tabloid on the market

5. 8 independent media brands on multiple
platforms
40% of the Slovenian subscription market
4

6. Starting point: end of 2009
Decreasing circulation of both daily
newspapers
A drop in ad revenues by 35% in 2 years
(2009/07)
No digital strategy
A lack of editorial, marketing and sales
competences
A culture of mistrust and a legacy of
mismanagement
Owner: a brewery group in financial distress;
soon to put Delo on sale

7. The mission: making this
company successful again!
1. Reinforcing the readership of both leading news brands
2. A development of the entire brand portfolio to keep and
strengthen the market share
3. Investment into 21st centruy journalism
4. Strong belief in paid contents
5. Digital strategy: all brands on multiple platforms
6. Taking advertising sales into the wider market
7. Seeking efficiencies accross a vertically integrated
organsiation (print, distribution)

8. We need leadership at different
levels
Owners
Senior management and senior editors
Sufficient talent and competences accross the
entire organisation
At the regulatory level – in order not to defend
and preserve old business models but to help
create new ones

9. More lessons learned
Constantly check and re-evaluate your
priorities and focus.
Stay calm. It’s a process. Things will never go
quite as you have planned.
You are alone in this from the beginning till the
end. But we can only win together.

10. Leadership: a cultural challenge
It is about how to profoundly change the
capabilities of an organisation in a limited
time frame with limited resources and often
with limited authorisation.
It is ourselves racing against time.