All the technology in the world cannot solve the birth pains of a cross-media integrated newsroom when human factors go wrong.
Contrast therefore, the newsroom wishlist presented by HT Media chief information officer David Bicknell at Publish Asia in Kuala Lumpur, with the nightmare recollections of Mediacorp Newshub director Chitra Rajaram’s “labour pain that never goes away”.
Hers was perhaps the poisoned chalice... to implement an integration project across TV, radio, online and print most said could not – and some were determined would not – happen.
It had been discussed for seven years before former newspaper editor and PR company managing director Rajaram took on the job in 2008. Yet all the personality which equips her as a columnist, current affairs producer and radio presenter was not enough to charm Mediacorp’s journalists into a cross-media cooperation.
Singapore locals had already questioned previous duplication of roles, one politician asking how many journalists it took to report ‘a speech I’ve already sent out’.
For Rajaram, there was a simple KPI: To push out SMS alerts ahead of the competition. “We wanted all reporters to work across at least two channels, and believed the connection between TV and radio or print would be easy,” she says.
Her first efforts to integrated business coverage were blocked in all directions, and when the IT team was pressed to action, the quality of stories suddenly deteriorated. And while sports reporters were “so cool, amazing’, there were bigger problems when attention turned to the general news desks, with print reporters particularly resistant to change.
But like a well-known hair product, while it didn’t happen overnight, it did happen.
Rajaram reports wonderful synergies, fights to be first with a story, flexibility to work together producing fast text for online... and the establishment of central assignment desks for business, sport and general news.
Yet although most targets were being met, a review in March concluded that staff were unhappy, frustrated and there were complaints of lack of consultation and animosity. A happy ending comes when Mediacorp ‘called for the doctor’ in the person of WAN-Ifra PEGM executive director Dietmar Schantin.
Things are better after a week of meetings and a string of recommendations which Rajaram says, “we all knew, but nobody wanted to do”. The key conclusions were that “we had too many chiefs” and did not consult enough. “Now we’re talking,” she says.
Bicknell, a former editorial systems salesman now based in Thailand, outlined a publishers’ wish list, accompanied by technology which bore more than a passing resemblance to the offerings of former employers DTI and Atex.
Newspapers now have to serve many more media channels and geographic areas. “The ‘Hindustan Times’ readership used to be primarily in India, but now there is a balance of non-resident readership which we also serve,” he says. Time-based editions are being pushed out by the requirements of modern logistics, but the number of channels proliferates: Unified production means delivery of timed and location-targeted print editions with their features and supplements, online, SMS, WAP and mobile web, RSS feeds, e-paper, blogs and social networking, PDF and searchable archives, image and editorial wire services and syndication targets (such as Factiva), publishing to iPads and other tablet devices, and creating and products such as podcasts and vidcasts.
That’s the demanding requirement at HT Media... and Bicknell says that each channel tends to think of itself, of their own newsroom, tending to be ‘siloed’.
It’s effective but each unit is insulated from the process chain, there’s an inward-looking decision-making process, plus workflow and cultural differences. In an uncontrolled process, each wants to hold content open ‘as late as possible’ – with problems accruing to deadline – while if there were better visibility, content could be produced earlier and released or activated to schedule.
He urged editors to ‘step back and look at what you do’, considering the benefits of an integrated workflow which handled both newsgathering and news planning.
“The newsroom needs to accommodate all the ways you now receive news. Earlier in the conference, Pichai Chuensukawadi (editor-in-chief of the ‘Bangkok Post’) had talked of the importance of social media in coverage of political disruptions in the city.”
And XML can play a big role in improving production workflow, “separating content from style; the prose of the copy from its presentation in a platform-appropriate way”.
Another essential component is a dashboard, delivering with information to journalists and helping reorganise the way in which stories are produced. “The system would constantly monitor progress, and assemble elements,” he says. “It’s useful if attached objects – such as photos and infographics, and links to the detail – ‘come along for the ride’ as well.”
It’s ‘helpful’ if the system knows what formats are appropriate to the sections being worked on, and that designers see the ads which will appear on the same pages.
On the subject of newsroom layout, he discussed the consistent vision of the London ‘Daily Telegraph’ with its ‘hub and spoke’ arrangement.
“News executives can meet by simply turning their chairs around,” he says. “It’s not just about how best to manage the elements, but how to manage the people elements.
“It’s better if people can meet in the middle of the newsroom, and do so constantly. A newsroom needs to be able to handle crises and do so gracefully.”
That’s something with which Chitra Rajaram would no doubt, also agree.
