November 23, 2022: Leading figures from Australia’s think tank and antitrust regulatory circles, along with the heads of India’s top news publishers, will converge on Friday at the inaugural edition of the DNPA Dialogues, a first-of-its-kind conference to be hosted by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA).


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Rod Sims, Ex-Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and a prominent face of the country’s regulatory initiatives, will be among the speakers at the summit, which will see the eminent speakers engage and discuss topics covering the collaboration between Big Tech and digital news media, the significance of antitrust measures around the world, and the future of the digital news ecosystem.


Sims was instrumental in getting Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code rolled out, which made it easier for Australian news media to sign deals with tech platforms such as Google and Facebook. He headed the ACCC from 2011-2022. He is now a professor with the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University, and Chairman of the Steering Committee, Competition Research Policy Network at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, in London.


Emma McDonald, Senior Policy Adviser at Minderoo Foundation, Peter Lewis, Director at The Australia Institute, and James Meese, Senior Lecturer at Melbourne’s RMIT University will also attend the conference to be held in webinar format.


McDonald was a Senior Policy Adviser for Australia’s communications ministry from 2019-2021. At Minderoo, she negotiated with Google on behalf of 24 Australian news outlets. Lewis, a leading public policy campaigner, oversees the fortnightly Essential Report and is a regular columnist for Guardian Australia. Meese is writing a book titled Digital Platforms and the Press: Distribution, Deals and Dependencies.


The 1st DNPA Dialogue, scheduled for 10am-12pm on Friday, will see the cream of India’s media industry exchange ideas with the Australian dignitaries and brainstorm ways to build better, fairer and fruitful partnerships between tech giants, such as Google and Facebook, and the country’s news publishers.


The event promises plenty of takeaways for Indian stakeholders from multiple walks of life. The topical discussions could especially benefit members of the legal community and law students, those in the media circles, as well as in academia.


The pathbreaking, cross-continent conference on the publisher-platform relationship is a brainchild of the DNPA, a Delhi-based umbrella organisation of the digital wings of India’s leading 17 news publishers. The independent advocacy body promotes equality and fairness in how news organisations and Big Tech companies engage in the digital ecosystem.


Tanmay Maheshwari, Managing Director of Amar Ujala, and Paul Thomas, Managing Director of Star News Group, are among the prominent speakers at the conference, which will also feature Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director, DB Corp; Annurag Batra, Chairman and Managing Editor, Business World and e4m.


“It will be a unique exchange of ideas that will immensely contribute towards making India’s digital news landscape a level-playing field,” said Maheshwari, who also heads the DNPA.


Scheduled Line-up of speakers: Rod Sims, Ex-Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC); Emma McDonald, Senior Policy Adviser, Minderoo Foundation; Peter Lewis, Director, The Australia Institute; James Meese, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University, Melbourne; Tanmay Maheshwari, Managing Director, Amar Ujala, and Chairperson, DNPA; Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director, DB Corp; Annurag Batra, Chairman and Managing Editor, Business World and e4m; Paul Thomas, Managing Director, Star News Group.