Presidents Felipe Calderón, Juan Manuel Santos and Porfirio Lobo to add luster to the meeting in Mexico
Miami (October 15, 2010)—The battle against self-censorship and impunity in Mexico, the potential of Internet platforms and ways to generate new sources of revenue for newspaper companies are the key topics of seminars and panel discussions that the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) will offer during its 66th General Assembly, to be held November 5-9 in the Mexican city of Mérida in Yucatán state, in which the presidents of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, have already confirmed their participation.
The General Assembly will open with a series of seminars on the news industry in which one feature will be a discussion of “Alternatives in Digital Advertising for Newspapers,” with speakers Francisco Vásquez of E&P Research in Atlanta, Georgia, and Rafael Bonelly of NC y Asociados of Madrid, Spain. They will review the results of a study commissioned by the IAPA Press Institute and conducted recently with the participation of 190 publications throughout the Americas.
The what, how, when, where and why of positioning (SEO) and payment for advertising (SEM) in Internet search engines will be the subject of analysis in the seminar titled “Positioning and Marketing in Search Engines for Newspapers’ Web Sites,” to be held on November 6 with Rodrigo Stockebrand of InSite in Miami, Florida, conducting the discussion.
“The Various Possibilities of Products That the iPad and Other Tablets Offer” is the issue that will be taken up by Toni Cases of Cases i Associats in Barcelona, Spain, demonstrating the attractive opportunities offered for newspapers by the rapid growth of the mobile tablet market.
In addition, Earl Maucker of MauckerMedia of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Gonzalo Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, will take part in a panel discussion titled “The Integrated Newsroom in 2010: Advances and Challenges for Latin American Newspapers,” in which they will share experiences in such integration and lessons learned in the process.
Other seminars, panel discussions and roundtables will focus on the problem of the violence besetting the press in Mexico and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. These will feature experts such as Gustavo Salas Chávez, Mexico’s Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression; Roberto Rock of the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, and María Idalia Gómez of the IAPA’s Rapid Response Unit in Mexico. They will speak of the urgent need for mechanisms for the protection and safety of journalists and strategies to avoid resort to self-censorship.
Two other panel discussions will deal specifically with the issue of lack of safety. In the roundtable “Violence, Impunity, Drug Trafficking” Renato Sales Heredia, Francisco Alor Quesada and Héctor José Cabrera Rivero, state attorneys general of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, will discuss the official actions taken to halt the violence unleashed by organized crime. Meanwhile, in “Journalists Under Attack: Combating a Threat” journalists from Mexico and other countries beset by violence will offer views on how to report the news in a climate of violence and uncertainty. The participation is expected of Raúl Plasencia Villanueva, chairman of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission; Patricia Mercado Sánchez of the Zacatecas, Mexico, newspaper Imágen de Zacatecas, and Alex Flores Bonilla of the Tegucigalpa, Honduras, newspaper El Heraldo, among other panelists.
The program will also include keynote speeches. Among these will be the presidents of television networks Televisa, Emilio Azcárraga, and TV Azteca, Ricardo Salinas. Participation is also expected of the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela.
Confirmation of participation in the General Assembly, to be held at the Fiesta Americana Mérida Hotel, is also awaited from Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom, to join his counterparts from Mexico, Colombia and Honduras.
For more information in the General Assembly go to http://sip-asambleas.org/home.php. The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
