One group goal, one convergence

The move to partial free distribution “was immediately a great success,” said Paul Horrocks, editor of MEN. Since the switch, readership has grown 20% and overall ad revenue posted a whopping 8% growth year-on-year (compared to an 8% decline on average nationally). In fact, MEN is “certainly on the road to become a free newspaper,” said Horrocks, because the goal for the MEN Media group was to reach 85% of the total audience weekly with any one of its products – MEN Media counts 23 local weeklies, the flagship daily, a TV station, Channel M and radio stations including Smooth Radio and Century FM. None of which ever communicated prior to the wind of change, which started towards 2000, when MEN initially consulted IFRA to choose a new content management system.

So although the partial move to free distribution was effective (free circulation surpassed that of paid-for in 2007, Horrocks doesn't doubt the paper is on its way to become free), as part of MEN’s efforts to increase its local penetration, the integral convergence of its different media outlets was the backbone.

Luckily for the group, the impetus to integrate its media outlets coincided with the flagship paper moving into a brand new building. Had this not been the case, no doubt the convergence would have been much more difficult.

One of the first steps in the new design was to create a central news hub, “unique in the regional newspaper industry” said Horrocks. At the hub sit editors from both the  online and print editions, as well as a representative from the weeklies, the radio stations and Channel M.

Ian Wood, assistant editor of MEN, was appointed convergence coordinator for five months to oversee the change. Wood had been MEN’s news editor: he had a journalistic background and already had the trust of the journalists who would go through the change.

Converged workflows - editorial

Now there are three daily editorial conferences that gather editors from all media – the main one takes place midday. They discuss their news priorities for the day, allocate resources for each platform, and determine how reporters on the ground can gather content for other platforms.

Admittedly, “we still need a lot of work to improve our workflows” and are “still too print-centric,” said Horrocks, but the new system seems to be working. The editorial process isn’t yet as effective as Wood wishes it to be: currently content is generated, then selected, then checked and edited at the same time. Only after the last step can content be distributed to the different platforms. Ideally, “the editing and checking process will be separated,” said Wood, so that content can first be approved before being sent out to the different platforms, where it can be edited adequately for each medium. But this would necessitate an increase in manpower and a new content mangement system (CMS).

MEN’s outlets still have three distinct CMS, which will eventually have to be merged. MEN is seeking a new CMS that could accommodate the editorial process depicted above, in which editing and checking are separated. A difficult task, since late changes after the checking phase would need to be automatically carried out on the other platforms, an option unavailable on current CMS. “We’ve been good at convergence in spite of technology rather than because of technology,” said Wood – technological woes that other editors have certainly encountered along the way.

The real challenge: reporters

How did MEN’s editors convince staff to go ahead with convergence?

By telling them “there’s a cliff,” and that they might fall off of it if they don’t change, said Horrocks half-jokingly. The internal communication for convergence was “both a process of encouragement and coercion.”

Wood used a more ‘diplomatic’ approach: a great way to sell the convergence process to journalists was by explaining to them that learning about new media and new storytelling techniques simply improves their ability to deliver news.

Sending the union representatives on a free trip, among the first batch of trainees to IFRA’s Newsplex, South Carolina, probably didn’t hurt either. MEN sent about 40 journalists to the Newsplex to learn multimedia basics (a common mistake to watch out for: the paper wasn’t sufficiently prepared or equipped for their return, so they couldn’t immediately put their lessons to use). Another few went to the Press Association in Yorkshire to follow a course on video training.

However, one “must understand there are some people who will never be good at everything,” said Wood. Some print writers still stick to text-only today, but the added value they bring to the paper still makes them indispensable. On the other hand, Horrocks openly said that “I don’t want to hire single platform journalists anymore.”

Also very important, editors shouldn’t expect their reporters to capture all media. Horrocks and Wood quickly realized that journalists came back with nothing at all when asked to do everything. Instead, reporters should gradually get used to gathering the ‘easy’ extra content – without having to work twice as much.

Although the convergence process seems to have been smooth at MEN, there were about 30 editorial redundancies, out of 130 total editorial positions. However, Wood said these weren’t all related to the convergence process.

Multimedia convergence, not necessarily editorial alignment

So right now a print reporter on the ground might capture a sound clip (technically no extra work for him or her) that can then be used by the radio, and maybe even snap a few pictures that can suit both the online edition and Channel M.

Most video is collected by Channel M’s seasoned crew, and all videos from Channel M are reverse engineered into the MEN website at the end, which means the paper’s site posts about 15 video clips daily (in some cases of breaking news, footage has even been posted on the site before the televised evening news). But trained reporters from the paper can also collect video, and the paper also uses mobile footage if the high importance of news is worthy of the lower quality.

Print reporters can conveniently go do an interview for MEN’s radio stations, within the building. Eventually the newsroom will be outfitted with broadcast capabilities too. Every paper and outlet regularly cross-promotes for other platforms by displaying logos, links to the websites and more – training the audience to convergence, as Wood put it.

Now that the commissioning process across the media outlets is converged, there are no more reporter redundancies on assignments: only one photographer is sent to football games, or one reporter can write up a sports article that will be used by several outlets. The downside of convergence –efficient cross-platform commissioning – is that it leads to a certain amount of duplication, but MEN tries to limit duplication.

Importantly though, convergence doesn’t imply blindfolded editorial alignment. Although the different outlets and platforms rely on the same base content, “each editor and each brand can use this information however they wish,” said Horrocks. “We’re not trying to create a monsterbrand.” Or in Wood’s words, it’s important for editors and journalists from the group to have the same ethics and principles, but not to carry out the same coverage.

Perspectives

As for the future, Wood is already looking at further improvements. The central hub will be redesigned to be smaller, to enable ‘sitting-down’ physical communication. The newsroom will certainly be rethought into ‘sub-hubs’, rid itself of the notion of a Web team altogether, and be designed on a task-based organization (for more on this see this interview with Bruno Patino, President of Le Monde interactif). “An online sports journalist needs to talk about sports, he doesn’t need to talk about the Web,” said Wood.

The main challenge of integration, for MEN as for others, it to rethink the news process in terms of delivery while maintaining or increasing the quality of content, summed up Wood. And the Manchester Evening News has successfully done this so far, successfully reaching 85% of the local audience through any one of its platforms.

Source: Paul Horrocks, editor Manchester Evening News, Ian Wood, assistant editor and integration project manager Manchester Evening News