If you're a working journalist, you'll be forgiven if you've never heard of Ifra, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany. The 45-year-old service organization, which describes itself as the world's leading association for media publishing, has a membership of 2,200 publishing companies and suppliers in 70 countries, including 350 media organizations in North America.

	Kerry J. Northrup

Newspapers in the Tribune, Knight Ridder, Gannett and New York Times chains are among the news organizations that turn to Ifra for recommendations on new technologies and publishing strategies. Membership is not open to individuals, though chances are that your news organization may be kicking in dues. 

Last month Ifra established a new U.S. bulkhead by moving its NewsOps Centre to the Newsplex in Columbia, South Carolina The center has three primary uses: for demonstration, training and research. But they all focus on the themes of innovative storytelling and news presentation techniques emerging from the convergence of print, broadcast and online media.

"Most newspaper editors realize their newsrooms need to change," Kerry Northrup says. "The problem is they don't know what the possibilities are. One of the key purposes of the Newsplex is to be there as a model to show news organizations how things could be different."

The facility's second mission is training, both training of professional journalists by Ifra and academic training by university partners.

Its third purpose is research. "Ifra is at its core a research organization so this is a place where we can stress-test different workflows and new technologies to give the industry a heads up on what works and what doesn't," he says.

Ifra, whose name derives from an alphabet soup of European media acronyms, donated $2 million to launch the center, and the University of South Carolina provides the grounds in the South Carolina Educational Television complex near the University of South Carolina campus.

Ifra operates the Newsplex jointly with the university's College of Mass Communications and Information Studies. A consortium of publishing, academic and public groups are contributing funds to the Newsplex to help the news industry meet technological challenges.

In addition, an international roster of journalism institutions have indicated they will tie their programs to the Newsplex's initiatives. Ifra and the university are also approaching several foundations for underwriting with a goal of improving public access to news and promoting public discourse.