Dubai: Gulf News has maintained its position as the leading newspaper in the UAE and Arabian Gulf to prepare for whatever market and technical changes may affect the news and information business in the Gulf.

Its strong position as a print-based newspaper is not unique in the Gulf, where print remains the dominant news and information media.

Gulf News is very conscious that it has to prepare for the inevitable - but as yet unknown - developments in technology and/or the market.

This has led Al Nisr Group to expand from being a one-newspaper company to launching XPRESS, a community newspaper, and new magazines as well as developing an important presence in other media, both online and on radio.

There are three important reasons why print is still the dominant news and information medium in the Gulf. First, the failure of other media to invest in reporting has not allowed them to challenge print effectively.

Second the printed copies of Gulf News classifieds sections remain highly popular. And third, the efficiency of Al Nisr Distribution is an essential part of print dominance.

In most of the Arabian Gulf, TV and radio stations have not had the revenues or imagination to allow them to invest in hiring reporters, so they do not have a flow of immediate or spot news.

This means that TV and radio have not built themselves the dominant position that they have in many parts of the world as the main channel for immediate news, even if many people tune into the radio while they drive around town.

The benefits of having a good reporting staff are made all the more obvious by the few exceptional TV stations which do their own reporting, like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya which stand out miles above their TV competitors, as do the few radio programmes which have original content.

The same problem affects the growing number of websites, even those focused on business news. They tend to have very few reporters, so either rely on press releases, or on taking stories from the newspapers, with the less scrupulous re-badging them as their own. This means most websites are doomed to be aggregators of other people's stories.

Gulf News, along with other newspapers, has the key advantage that it has reporters and editors who plan what the newspaper wants to cover, and produces original content which is relevant to its readers and important to the country.

Another important print asset for Gulf News is its classifieds sections. It was the first UAE newspaper to launch a separate classifieds section, and over more than 20 years it has built itself into the dominant force in the UAE's classifieds' market.

This means that the print edition of classifieds remains a strong pull for the readers and users of Gulf News, and the newspaper uses that position to maintain its dominance in this important revenue sector through strong marketing and aggressive pricing policies.

A printed newspaper cannot work without strong distribution. The UAE does not yet have mass transit systems and most people use company buses or private cars to get to work, so a newspaper cannot be sold at bus stops or metro stations, as would be done in other countries.

This is why Al Nisr Group has built up its own distribution network with over 1,000 staff, for Gulf News and all its other titles. It is important that the readers get their title on their doorsteps on time in the early morning.

In the editorial department, Gulf News has made some shifts in its newsroom, to prepare for change. It has moved to an integrated copy desk, and reorganised its newsroom to a hub-and-spoke layout.

A few months ago Gulf News split the old task of the sub-editors into copy editors, who work solely on text, and page makers who work on laying out the pages. In addition, each of these two functions was centralised, working for all the sections of the newspaper.

The newspaper is currently physically reorganising the layout of the whole newsroom so that the editors of each section can sit together at a shared oval desk.

They will face out towards their teams, but can turn sideways or inwards to hold continual planning and coordination meetings.

The purpose of this is to achieve better coordination between desks and better planning. In combination with the integrated copy desk, this will also allow Gulf News to move to a 'web-first' policy, as well as producing final content earlier in the process.

It is not easy to look ahead in the media business, but what is certain is that Al Nisr Group's capacity to produce its own original content is the key to retaining its relationship with its readers.

This article is an excerpt of part of a paper presented to the Power of Print conference, organised by the World Association of Newspapers, WAN, in Barcelona, 27 and 28 May, 2009