Trends In Newsroom 2010

Newsroom Integration has been the key word on the lips of many editors for the past few years, as they sought to merge their print, online, and sometimes broadcast and radio operations, into a single and more efficient newsroom – both in the business sense and editorially. But whereas in 2007, many questions remained as to the benefits and challenges of integration, in 2008, a number of major newspapers began to integrate. In fact, a few of the newspapers that were touted last year as successful models of non-integrated newsrooms are now going through the integration process, including the UK’s Guardian and the US’ Washington Post.

CASE STUDIES

The Washington Post in the Unites States is the best example of a major national newspaper that decided to integrate its print and online operations, after long advocating the strengths of keeping two separate newsrooms.

For many years, the Post’s print and online newsrooms were located in separate buildings, and even in separate cities, on either side of the Potomac River. Needless to say, the regular drive for washingtonpost.com former Executive Editor Jim Brady (who left the Post at the end of 2008), from the Web newsroom in Arlington, Virginia to the print building in downtown Washington D.C., to attend the print editorial meetings, was only one of the inconveniences of the non-integrated situation.

However, for a long time, Post and washingtonpost.com editors praised the effectiveness of non-integration and the specific skills required by both Web and print. In fact, the success of various washingtonpost.com ventures and innovations can in part be attributed to the relative managerial independence of the website since its inception. For example, the idea for washingtonpost.com’s very popular Facebook ‘Political Compass’ widget, which polled Facebook users and placed them on the political spectrum, could not have originated in a print environment.

The Wall Street Journal: a publisher’s hands-on integration

More than a year after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation took over the Wall Street Journal, amidst fears that he may be tightening his grip over the Journal’s editorial independence, the paper has engaged in a formal integration process. Although the Wall Street Journal boasted one of the world’s first print-online Continuous News Desks, more than ten years ago, it had remained non-integrated in the strict sense: there were two separate print and online editors, journalists were platform-based, and both teams were located on different floors. While this process of more organic integration may have worked in the past, in 2008 the Wall Street Journal engaged in more formal integration, under the impetus of new Publisher and Managing Editor Robert Thomson, a long-serving editor for Murdoch.

DEBATE

THE WORLD’S EDITORS DEBATE THE BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF INTEGRATED NEWSROOMS

With Mr Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch, Nigeria; Espen Egil Hansen, Editor-in-Chief, VG Multimedia; Roman Gallo (right), Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group; Marcelo Rech, General Product Director, RBS Group, Brasil; Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail, Canada

INTEGRATED NEWSROOMS: EVOLUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONS

CASE STUDIES

DEBATE