November 23, 2010
Three signs your newsroom isn’t ready to cross the digital divide
I am startled these days to hear that some newsrooms are still doing digital as an add-on to their print operation. While I get that the print newspaper is still the cash cow (albeit one that is slimming down), newsrooms that want to have a future need to get cracking on building for a digital future. That may mean shoving aside many vestiges of print times now gone. Here are three signs that print is still running your newsroom:
1. The staff still reports to an assignment desk that is focused on print and/or is organized in departments that correspond to the sections of a newspaper. This inevitably means that newsgathering for print gets more time than the news organization can afford and print production demands drive the daily reporting and editing assembly line. The fix: Newsgathering staff reports to the online assignment desk. Print becomes a production team that draws heavily on the online report for content at the end of the day.
2. News meetings focus on top news for the next day’s paper and meeting times reflect print. If your frontline editors are focused on daily meetings that happen in the middle of the morning and late afternoon, you’ve got a big problem. If you’re spending more than one-fifth of the meeting time talking about the next day’s newspaper, you’ve got an even bigger problem. The fix: Meetings run by online editors at times that reflect digital publication timetables (like when to serve peak traffic) and focus primarily on online content, traffic and engagement metrics.
3. The top newsroom executives - say the Editor and Managing Editor(s) - are all print veterans who look at online from the outside. The fix: Either the top newsroom executive or the Number 2 has been steeped heavily in online - both the practical and the strategic - for at least five years, if not 10. That’s a tall order. But if you think an editor or managing editor has time for much of a learning curve about digital, that time is gone.
What all this is saying is that for all the noise about digital, many newsrooms still hold online on the fringes of power - at least the invisible power of culture and how leadership underscores what is important.
Think you’re making great strides with digital even though vestiges like these remain in place in your newsroom? Dream on.
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I find your list less than satisfying.
1) It’s a fact that we have to deal with both print and online—unless we’re feeling suicidal and deliberately want to erode the quality of the thing that brings in 90 percent of our revenue. In my newsroom, all stories go online in truncated form as soon as we have the gist. Then we update. This takes place throughout the day, the DAY BEFORE the print edition comes out. We’re all about getting online first. We’re not quite a 24-hour newsroom yet, but we’re close to 18. Our “assignment desk,” such as it is, deals with news in all media. Our multi-talented metro editor is in charge of two online editors. We’re not an “online newsroom” or a “print newsroom”—we’re just a “newsroom.” As for content corresponding to print sections: those headings are merely a convenient way to array information, not a “print” thing or an “online” thing per se. It’s just life. Anybody got a better idea than Local News, Crime, World/Nation, Sports, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Business, Politics for general topic organization? It’s still a pretty good list, although we’ve added some specialty blogs and such. But there I go revealing how irrelevant I am as a “print veteran.”
2.) News meetings… In my newsroom we’re constantly “meeting.” We don’t sit on our hands until some afternoon gathering where the Grand Poobah dictates all. News is constantly evolving and is being delivered to readers in real time as we get it. Our metro editor oversees the reporters and the online editors precisely to give us flexibility and ownership. Your imputation that we’re bad because an afternoon meeting is geared toward print is ... well, dumb. There are many ways to skin a cat. The suggestion that we’re backward if we don’t set meeting times to serve peak online traffic shows lack of understanding of a dynamic newsroom. In my newsroom, news flows online continuously as we generate material. We talk to each other continuously in a collegial environment. And we hold our own very well in a competitive market with two much larger dailies breathing down our neck continuously. Again, we’re not sitting on our hands waiting for any meeting—geared either for online or print. Our afternoon meeting is admittedly geared mainly to help organize print because last I heard WE ARE STILL DOING PRINT. The online editor is involved in this meeting as well because news flows both ways and presentation approaches often need to be discussed.
3.) I am one of those obsolete “print veterans” to which you derisively refer. No… Correction: I am a veteran journalist. I don’t give a damn how the journalism is distributed, so long as it continues to be distributed. Online has great advantages, and if that’s what large segment of readers want, well, fine. If we can reach other readers in print, great. The two delivery modes are not mutually exclusive anyway. But what about news gathering? I don’t know about your newsroom, but in mine reporters continue to ferret out information, conduct interviews and write sentences and paragraphs. Getting it right and providing all the supporting material we’re able is the goal even of us “print veterans.” I take umbrage at the charge that because I came up in an era dominated by print that I’m now only capable of watching the Internet haplessly “from the outside.” It still matters WHAT we deliver, after all, not merely how we deliver it. I don’t think I’m so stupid that I can’t recognize effective presentation when I see it, or so entrenched in the era of the pica pole that I can’t contribute to new media. I say bosh to your characterization.
By ProvoEditor, 11/24/10 at 10:59 am
Excellent points! I agree; it is not about print versus online. It is about integration, and practices in the newsroom must adapt. I think the term “print” will be obsolete to describe “news content,” even if there is still printed journalism, because nothing is exclusively print anymore.
@ProvoEditor - Bravo, it seems like your particular newsroom is understanding what changes need to be done. The article is addressing those that are not. I applaud veteran journalists who are spearheading innovation.
By domi.fong, 11/24/10 at 3:11 pm
Thanks very much for the feedback. ProvoEditor, I’m glad your newsroom is making progress. Many are not moving quickly enough. I do think many newsrooms cut could back on the staff they use to produce the newspaper and still produce a good one. It’s about setting priorities.
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