Paris, France and Darmstadt, Germany, 8 March 2010

The FIFA World Cup in South Africa later this year offers newspaper companies the opportunity to expand multimedia news coverage to attract new audiences and revenues, and few are doing more than Italy's leading sports newspaper, La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Diego Antonelli, Director of Gazzetta.it, explained how the company is organising its multimedia coverage for the World Cup in an online seminar organised by the World Editors Forum and the International Association of Sports Newspapers.

The "webinar" was recorded and is available to newspaper companies looking for new ideas for their multimedia coverage of the World Cup. Full details can be found at http://www.editorsweblog.org/webinars.html

"The way to the South Africa World Cup for Gazzetta.it started with the Confederation Cup in June 2009," said Mr Antonelli. "In just two weeks, the Confederation Cups website was visited by more than 1 million unique visitors."

Gazzetta intends to provide around-the-clock news coverage of the World Cup with real-time information - online but also SMS services, mobile, internet, and iPhone applications.

Among Gazzetta's offerings are:

- GazzaSpace, a dedicated social network that is the largest sport community in Europe, with more than 460,000 registered users and 34 sports federations involved.

- Magic Cup, the Italian leader in soccer fantasy games, with more than 120,000 paid subscribed teams. Magic Cup will offer Gazzettas users multiplatform access by Internet, mobile devices, smartphones, and telephone.

The next WEF webinar will be held on Tuesday, 16 March, and will be dedicated to understanding the terms of accreditation for covering the World Cup and other sports events. The webinar, organised with the IASN, will feature Andrew Moger, Executive Director of the News Media Coalition, and Juan Ignacio Gallardo, Deputy Director of Marca, the leading sport newspaper in Spain.

Other upcoming World Editors Forum webinars include:

- "E-readers and tablets: how to build your news applications for mobile devices," on 30 March;

- "New job positions: the community editor how to interact with social media," on 13 April;

- "The news strategy of a pure player : how the Huffington Post achieved success," on 27 April;

- "Using editorial outsourcing to reduce costs and keep quality high," on 11 May;

- "Crowdsourcing journalism: is there a good business model? The example of Californiawatch," on 27 May;

- Plus more webinars to be announced. Full details at http://www.editorsweblog.org/webinars.html

The World Editors Forum (http://www.worldeditorsforum.org) is the organisation of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that represents editors-in-chief and other senior news executives. The International Association of Sports Newspapers (http://www.press-iasn.org) gathers leading sports newspapers, sport journalists and other sport-related organisations and acts as the sports arm of WAN-IFRA. The IASN exists to defend and promote the values of sports and the interests and freedom of the sport press.

WAN-IFRA is the global organisation of the worlds newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.