Just take the design for the latest Daily Telegraph newsroom (see above). At first glance, you think it is well organized for a newsroom working on a 24-hour rhythm  instead of a daily deadline and that it encourages for more cooperation between desks and departments. It also seems very logical with a center-periphery model.

The only problem is that this model doesn't fit with the basic requirements of what is expected for an integrated newsroom:

1) Look at the design of an "up to date newsroom" and surprisingly it looks like the Panoptikon designed by Jeremy Bentham for an 18th century prison: the goal was to control people and to give the impression that the directors always knew - night and day - what the prisoners were doing. I'm not saying that yesterday’s prisoners are becoming today’s journalists, but the similarity between the  two designs tells us a lot about newsroom design trends. Instead of finding new ways for reshaping the newsrooms, it reveals that "modernity" often means "back to the old authoritarian model".

2) The first criticism for the Daily Telegraph model is that modern newspapers don't need a huge central newsroom. It would be better to focus on small independent units and decentralized departments instead of producing a sort of "spider monster" design.

3) The comparison with a TV station control room or a nuclear plant control room would have been more interesting: a lot of screens, a lot of accessible data, but just a few people for taking the final decision. And all departments and desks (foreign news desk, documentation, TV studio...) need to be really independent and flexible. And close to the readers, not close from the newspaper's hierarchy. A fractal design would be a better solution (see the image below).

4) What is the basic requirement of tomorrow’s newsroom? It is to give more freedom, more capacity of expression to journalists and writers. You cannot tell them "you must become backpack journalists and provide texts, images and videos" while at the same time asking them to work in a rigid newsroom organisation. Conclusion: the smooth and flexible newsroom must be re-invented.

5) How to become a 24-hour and multimedia newsroom with a flexible organisation? There are two different approaches: the first one is to say that "convergence" is bullshit and that newsrooms must learn first how to partner with radio stations, televisions, search engines and other news providers. Some editors believe that this kind of convergence can work - with new jobs as "converged editors" or "partnership editors" -, but not the classical convergence model.

The second approach of convergence is what you hear in some British and American newsrooms: "change everything in six months". It's more a marketing speech - for re-assuring shareholders - than a responsible speech, mostly because it requires around two years for training your journalists. In Sweden, Finland and Norway, journalists are trained in the long run and they discuss how the new newsroom will be designed. Unfortunately, newsrooms are designed by the management in the rest of the world with a motto: shrink the newsroom...

6) What will be lost with a centralized newsroom organisation? The main victim will be investigative journalism because a rigid organisation cannot allocate strong resources during a long period to a specific group of journalists. In the long run, investigative journalism could disappear from the integrated newsroom.

Am I too pessimistic? I don't think so. But newsroom design is too serious to be left to consultants

B. Pecquerie, WEF Director