UK: BBC integrates newsroom with new media on-demand production unit

The BBC's mammoth reorganization has been the subject of recent press scrutiny. Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News' website, offered readers a peek into the mechanics of integrating one of the world's biggest media organizations.

"For us one [challenge] has been the practical difficulty of moving 100 or so journalists and all their equipment from one working newsroom to another whilst simultaneously maintaining a continuous 24-hour online news service," Herrmann writes on the editors' blog.

BBC's integrated newsroom includes several features that could become staples of the future newsroom, says Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com. Jarvis mentions the media wire - an operation that "ingests and assesses content from all over to feed any product and medium" - as one such technological advancement.

"This curatorial function, editing the world, is critical in a news ecology that pushes us to do what we do best and link to the rest," Jarvis writes.

The BBC's newsroom also includes a "new-media on-demand production unit" and a hub responsible for content from BBC News resources.

But while some news organizations, like the Telegraph,  are following the BBC's lead and condensing their operations, others are doing the opposite - thinning out their centers and scattering their reporters.

"Call it the 'rise of the mojos,'" writes the Guardian's Peter Preston, "Reporters with backpacks (including video camera, audio recorders and laptops) who roam continuously, working from cafes or the back of their cars."

Whichever way news organizations decide to approach the 21st century newsroom, a bumpy transition is inevitable. Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC newsroom, admitted to Jarvis that the switch has been difficult.

"We've had to blow up BBC News to totally remake it."

Source: Guardian (Peter Preston), Guardian (Jeff Jarvis), BBC