The Evolving Newsroom

On a similar tack to yesterday's post about when a story is 'finished' enough to go online, I was reminded while planning a sub-editing lecture recently of how lopsided today's newsrooms are when it comes to handling stories for web and print.

The image below is a rough snapshot of how many pairs of hands various kinds of stories might pass through in your average newsroom - from reporter through chief reporter, news editor, web editor, chief sub-editor, page layout, sub-editor, check sub, proofreader, editor, edition controller and so on.

Hard to imagine anyone allocating resources like that if they were designing a newsroom today, isn't it.

On the upside: there's lots of pairs of eyes on those newspaper and shovelware stories to catch mistakes before they're published.

On the downside: there's lots of pairs of hands on those newspaper and shovelware stories to introduce mistakes before they're published.

Not to mention the extraordinary length of time it takes to get a story online using the shovelware method.

Time for a rethink, surely. A rethink, a critical analysis of newsroom processes, a redesign, re-training and roll-out.

Shane Richmond (the Telegraph's Communities Editor) does a good job revisiting the issue of what 'finished' looks like in the fast-paced world of digital publishing.

In print, a story wasn't published until it was 'finished': written, edited, edited again, sub-edited, sub-edited again, proofread and so on. Only then did we hit 'send' and hand it over to the printers - at around 9.30pm, the deadline for the first edition of a daily newspaper.

But, as Shane points out, it wasn't so much that the story was 'finished', more that it was "as good as it could be" at the time the print deadline rolled around.

"The years of habit, the mere notion of a final edition, have created the illusion that news stories can at some point be considered finished," he says.

"All we ever do when we publish a newspaper is run out of time. Given more time there would always be more to add to a story, more angles to pursue and newer stories to find space for. We can never be completely correct, only as correct as possible in the time available. We check as much as we can but we still get it wrong sometimes, all of us.

"The internet removes the time barrier. Without it, we never stop, and still we're never completely right. But everything can be changed. Publish what you know now; learn more, add more. It's never finished and it's never completely right."

Worth a read. As ever.

I came across this journalism.co.uk report quoting Telegraph Media Group's digital chief Ed Roussel and thought it was worth a re-run.

Roussel was talking at the DNA2008 conference about the role of editors in the Telegraph's integrated newsroom and how they go about commissioning and publishing stories online.

The Telegraph was an early adopter of web-first publishing - where stories go online before they are readied for the paper - and redesigned its newsroom to bring web and print operations together and integrate the story commissioning and publishing process.

Roussel described the online story management guidelines thus:

• When news breaks send out immediate alerts: SMS, email, desktop

• After 10 minutes get 150 words on the website and solicit reader help with images/video or other accounts

• Within an hour update story to 450 words and add additional images and video

• Then look to commission analysis and opinion pieces, develop a topic page with multiple angles and multimedia

"This integrated news environment only works if you have got very strong leadership and you have strong people as heads of departments, running key departments, sports, business, news and the picture desk, but for a big story you want to have a story owner, and that person needs to be really, really good," Roussel said.

"They are essentially fulfilling three tasks, one is that they are constantly planning the story. We have something called the grid where owners enter their plan for the story, and they are constantly revising that plan, constantly talking to key people involved in it.

"Secondly, they are commissioning the stories, and they are being really specific, they are entering on the grid: Edward Roussel to file 300 words by 12.15pm, so that goes in the grid and my job, my contractual obligation, is to produce that content.

"Thirdly, they are monitoring it, making sure that the content that has been commissioned is published on time and equally looking at the competition so if there are any great ideas we can make sure we are stealing those ideas, making them our own and making them better."

Interestingly, Roussel said telegraph.co.uk looked well beyond breaking news.

"It's been interesting to hear over the last few days about the web being all about breaking news and the newspaper being about analysis, we don't agree with that.

"We think the future of successful websites is that we need to have everything, the first word and the final word. And that means analysis…we want to have the best people reporting directly for the website.

"It's about serving the customer, not serving the newspaper."