Asia is to get its own Newsplex under an agreement between Nanyang Technological University and WAN-Ifra.

The new centre dedicated to creative innovation, training and research for newsrooms of the future will be operationally ready in September. It will be located in NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Singapore, and cover 160 m2 of space in the Yunnan Garden campus. 

A memorandum of understanding has been signed by NTU Provost Professor Freddy Boey and WAN-Ifra deputy chief executive Thomas Jacob. The signing was attended by guests including Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief of the English & Malay newspapers division of Singapore Press Holdings, and Walter Fernandez, editor of ‘Today’ and managing director of MediaCorp Press.

NTU will provide resources and space, with WKWSCI professors and researchers gaining access to WAN-Ifra's newspaper and news publishing conferences, training, seminars and research reports, as well as its global network of publisher members.

Says Boey, “Newsplex Asia reflects NTU's firm commitment to excellence in training the next generation of digital-savvy journalists, while advancing Singapore's position as a global media hub in the heart of Asia.

“It will leverage NTU's strengths in communication studies, science and technology, and bring best practices in new media teaching and learning to the students.  This is a timely and welcome development in an era when news consumption is rapidly changing and increasingly defined by new technologies, as more and more people use the internet and social networks as their primary sources of news and information.”

Thomas Jacob says news consumers are changing in the way they access and choose news: “Newsplex Asia will help newspapers and media companies understand and manage these changes through training, coaching and research services.

“It will draw on many sources, both global and regional, to provide the latest tools and techniques to Asia’s media professionals.”

Newsplex Asia will be the fourth centre of its kind in the world. The others are at University of South Carolina, USA (November 2002), WAN-Ifra headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany (September 2005), and the International Media Centre in Saint-Etienne, France (expected to be ready next month).

NTU is a research-intensive public university with 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Beside the main Yunnan Garden campus, it has a satellite campus in Singapore’s science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore’s medical district.