Running notes from the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and the Society for Newspaper Design annual conferences.
Dietmar Schantin takes this session on a tour of newspapers around the world that are in various stages of moving beyond publishing once daily in print. Schantin directs the Newsplex unit of IFRA, an international media consulting firm, advising newspapers on integration of various publishing platforms.
“It’s not about a single channel (of distribution) anymore,” he says. “It’s about breadth.”
He describes a cycle of publishing when big news breaks, which starts with an SMS news alert to mobile users, followed quickly by posting of the first online report, then continuing updates and SMS alerts (which also direct mobile users to the newspaper’s website for more information) through the day. In the evening, the story is prepared for the next morning’s paper, which will include a promo urging readers to visit the website for the latest updates.
Schantin says newsrooms publishing on multiple platforms are currently structured in one of three ways, and he gives examples of each:
Newsroom 1.0, multiple media newsroom.
Reporters and photographers (he calls them content gatherers) mostly focus on print, there are production teams for each platform and an editor with overall responsibility. There are usually one or two editors “running around a newsroom begging for content for online.”
Newsroom 2.0, cross-media newsroom.
The content gathers provide for print, online and sometimes broadcast. Each platform has an editor who decides which of this content it will use. There are packaging/production teams for the platforms.
He says about 4 percent of newsrooms work like this.
Newsroom 3.0 media integrated newsroom.
This is similar to the 2.0 version, but with one layer missing: an editor for each platform. Instead, editors of news departments (sports, business, local news, etc) are responsible for that department’s content on all platforms. In this structure, only the production specialists focus on one platform. “It’s about topics, not platforms,” he says.
Schantin says so far only two or three newsrooms in the world have moved to this degree of structural integration. One is the The Telegraph newspaper in London, which recently made the transistion. He shows a video in which Telegraph journalists and executives describe the operation. (In the U.S., he says, the sports department at the Tampa Tribune comes closest.)
