The Evolving Newsroom

If you haven't caught up with the appointment of former Observer editor Roger Alton as editor of the UK's Independent, here's a nice piece from the Guardian's Peter Wilby.

And then comes this blog post from Richard Addis with a few suggestions for Alton as to what he might do with the Indy once he gets his shoes under the desk:

Launch a daily magazine instead... The paper is already half magazine. The famous ‘viewspaper’ covers are straight from the magazine world. The consumery parts (50 best etc) and the promotions (mini-books) would sit comfortably in many a magazine package.Drop the idea of covering news at all, at least in the conventional way.

Instead you could transfer 85% of the staff to features duties and retain 15% to provide an excellent and intelligent news aggregation service that would be printed, say, in a single column on page one.

As for the website, apart from becoming the central exchange for directing readers to news sources, make it a TV station. All those new feature writers, not to mention educated readers, will have so much to say, so many background stories to tell and will so quickly learn to take a camera with them everywhere that you can see the Indy becoming a upmarket mini-You Tube in just a couple of years.

9.30 this morning, NZ time:

News of a big fire in London's Camden Market reaches me on Twitter via a news feed from Netherlands-based BreakingNewsOn. They seemed to be getting information from Sky TV.

By 10am NZ time, the Guardian had a picture and good story up complete with eye witness reports. The Times had a smaller report and was asking readers to send in pictures. The Telegraph and Independent had nothing, nor did the Evening Standard.

By 11am, nzherald.co.nz was running the story and asking New Zealanders living in London to send in pictures. Using a combination of Reuters reports, their own staff and TV coverage,they had a pretty good outline of the story. Stuff.co.nz didn't have anything.

At 11.10am a couple of google searches brought up coverage by BBC, CBC in Canada, AFP, AP TV, Sky, Jerusalem Post (carrying an AP report) and plenty more. Conspiracy theories and other conversations were under way on Yahoo Answers, Neogaff, Suzy's photos and elsewhere.

The BBC, in inimitable style, had a full report, pictures, video of eye witnesses and the scene, links to related sites including the fire service, Camden Council and Camden market, and was asking readers for information, pictures and video. (Shame international viewers have to sit through an insurance ad before the video footage plays, kills the sense of immediacy somewhat).

By 11.45am, Guardian had really fleshed out the story, as had Sky and BBC. Times had added three pictures and NZ Herald one (all agency pics). Telegraph had nothing, Stuff was running Reuters copy and pic, the Independent had PA copy with no picture and the Evening Standard was running a headline on the ticker. TV3 was running APTN copy and video, TVNZ had Reuters copy with no footage.

Notably, search for 'fire', 'camden' and 'london' on YouTube brought up nothing. Am I missing something? No sign of ugc on any of the news sites yet, all agency footage and eye witness commentary gathered by reporters on the scene.

The Guardian reports that the UK's Independent and its sister Sunday title the Independent on Sunday are merging their business desks into a seven-day operation. Shouldn't be difficult finding room around the desk for everyone, the Sunday was down to one staff business reporter anyway.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and online business desks merging.

The appeal of a seven-day operation is clear: pool your precious resources and co-ordinate your story coverage across print and web titles. The execution, however, is tricky.

Sunday editors are understandably reticent to let go of the secrecy and spirit of competition that traditionally exists between a Sunday and its Daily stablemate. Competition fosters ingenuity, after all, and no one wants to risk losing their page one splash to wagging tongues, especially when it's a Daily section editor who gets wind of it and steals a march on Friday night.

Nor does anyone want to risk a ratings dive by messing with the chemistry behind the distinct tone that sets the Sunday apart.

Then there's the men and women in the reporting pools and subbing teams who don't necessarily thrill to the prospect of changing work schedules.

That said, it's hard to see how publishers can do anything but move towards seven-day operations in the current climate. From a backend point of view it makes sense - they often already share a building, a website, an IT department, a content management system, marketing department, print site, and canteen. Why not subs and reporters?

Some moonlight on sister titles anyway and/or work for competitors. And there's no inherent difference in requisite skills, only a need for good editorial managers giving clear direction to their reporters and subs.

A co-ordinated approach to coverage takes care of the internal story thieves and sensible house rules about blabbing can take care of the rest (along with judicious use of privileges in the content management system to restrict visibility of sensitive stories and limit story handling to those in the direct chain).

Papers could always turn to their web editors for a few tips: news websites have largely been seven-day operations from the get-go.