The issue of newsroom integration is simple: “we no longer have a choice,” says van Niekerk. As a result, his talk at the conference will be bluntly entitled, “Adapt or Die: Newsooms on the Brink.” On the other hand, he nuances this idea, saying that integrated newsrooms will have a greater potential to succeed, but won’t be the only ones. At this point in time though, greater potential for success is all newspapers are asking for.

Fairfax has very recently doubled in size, as a result of its merger with Rural Press. Van Niekerk’s speech will focus Fairfax’s main metropolitan papers though, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Among his speech’s main points, he insists that integration can’t take place too fast. “It is a revolution but you have to treat it as an evolution.” At the two main papers, the process started four years ago, and is still on the go. By September 2007, van Niekerk hopes The Herald’s newsroom will be fully integrated. First lesson then: despite the urgency of integration, don’t rush the process, as this will often be counterproductive.

A physical setup can greatly help newsroom integration, especially to change staffers’ mindsets and working relationships. Van Niekerk recalls how the physical proximity of the offices at The Age accelerated the process, as web editors were always alongside news editors. As opposed to the Herald, where the lack of proximity actually “retarded the culture” – he hopes the Herald’s new building will help change this.

In fact, van Niekerk considers the main challenge for integrating newsrooms to be that of cultural change. “You can’t communicate enough,” he says, and the goal is to have everyone understand that “ultimately a newspapers is a media team,” which must deliver news at all times on the appropriate medium to fulfill the changing needs of the audience.

So the essential step in newsroom integration is to get journalists to think about the platform before content – or just as importantly. Once that is achieved – and van Niekerk admits there is always lots of resistance – reporters can be given the tools for multimedia production. For the upcoming federal elections in Australia, the Herald has equipped all its reporters with full-fledged multimedia PDA devices. From these, journalists can unfold a mobile keyboard, file in a text story, take pictures and video, transfer pictures from a high-definition camera, browse the Internet, and more.

As for another types of integration, that of user-generated content into the paper, Fairfax is still wading its way through possible uses.  Nowadays, the Herald usually gets at least one good story tip-off per day from a reader. As for actual user-generated content, the paper often uses photographs from readers and promotes participation by including bold headlines in the paper, inviting readers to submit their work. The paper hasn’t carried entire user-generated stories at this stage, which require more in-depth journalistic crafting, but van Niekerk doesn’t hide that his team is exploring the possibility. Will there ever be an entirely user-generated story in the newspaper? Yes, eventually, he says.


For more information about the 14th World Editors Forum, please click here.

For more information about Fairfax’s newsroom integration, please consult this piece about The Sydney Morning Herald written by Mike van Niekerk for the Editors Weblog.

Source: Editors Weblog