What are the main steps of integration?

Two main steps:

- explain to the entire staff what was happening, why it was happening, and how this would affect their work. This created a foundation of understanding, developed through quarterly meetings and regular broadcasts on AP’s international internal TV. This also meant convincing staffers that the multimedia world would enhance – not undermine – the need for the core values of quality journalism (accuracy, investigative reporting).
- put these changes into life, as the workflow changes, deadlines are moved to suit readers’ habits and reporters diversify their skills. This also means reminding reporters there is no expectation of expertise in all domains for any one staffer. What matters is that reporters bear in mind the needs of different platforms: in the event of a plane crash, a text reporter on the ground might not be able to take breathtaking pictures or video, but he can research the logistics of the crash, airport and runways for the graphics team.

Why are newsrooms being integrated now, after it took years for the editorial process to segment its tasks for more efficiency?

Simply because old newsrooms were divided by platforms, not content. In the past, as stories originated from text, the inclusion of another medium (photography at first) came as a secondary thought – and was thought of as resulting from an entirely separate process.

Now all newsrooms are on their way to group their staffers by story and subject. Customers too are expecting an integrated presentation. For an online story about the war in Iraq, a reader is rightly expecting to see the text story, a video and a series of pictures – all in a unified presentation.

So how does the editorial process change from a staffer’s point of view?

Now, a project starts with a ‘multimedia meeting.’ At the start of each project, editors from all platforms (video, photo, online, print…) meet and decide the direction of the story. If a particular medium isn’t suited for it, it can be rooted right out, and vice versa.
While editors obviously can’t meet for every story, Associated Press holds three daily news meetings gathering its top editors, going through an analogous multimedia filtering process for the top stories of the day.

The selection process has also changed. Supervising editors now rank stories, factoring importance – as was always the case – but also ‘Web 2.0’ considerations such as the popularity of a story, or its coverage on big news sites. AP coverage of entertainment and showbiz stories has greatly increased in the past few years, in accordance with readers’ tastes, but “we’re also always prepared to move against the tide,” reminded Kent. If AP editors deem a story to have news value, they will rank it accordingly, even if it gets low web traffic.

In reality though, the integrated newsroom hasn’t drastically changed the principles of the editorial process.  Instead, integration has changed the way staffers think of the process. A lot of the communication is still done by telephone, but is now going across departments. A reporter might start researching a story as he always has, but he will also let someone from the graphics department know about it. AP staffers are learning to think in terms of content rather than the medium (more precisely, in terms of content’s suitability for a medium).

AP’s new building – physical integration (see map)

Associated Press recently moved into a brand new, building (the news operations’ floor is 100,000 plus square foot). While an integrating newsroom doesn’t necessarily have to change its whole setup, a clever layout can always facilitate cross-platform communication and interaction. AP doesn’t boast the Daily Telegraph’s hub-and-spokes newsroom, but its infrastructure eases integration.

Flexibility: as any newsroom integration is a constantly evolving process, flexibility is key. When moving into its headquarters, AP decided to have no walls – effectively creating a seemingly never-ending landscape of desks, computers and reporters interspaced by pillars. The few walls that were set up were removable, to enable swift changes in the layout when needed (60 new people were thus added to the floor since AP moved in, with little or no trouble).

Physical proximity: The Telegraph’s editor-in-chief, Will Lewis, sits prominently in the middle of the newsroom. At AP, in contrast, top editors have enclosed, glass offices to deal with confidential issues. But Kent said these offices were made “deliberately claustrophobic,” so editors stay inside only when they have confidential work to do and spend the majority of their time working next to the staffers they supervise.
All different departments remain physically separate, but one may notice how the units have been laid out, with central emphasis on international and national news, as well as the photography, video and Web interactive departments (and supervisors). Again, the absence of walls enables better visibility and movement across departments.

Practical management of details: what does this mean? Coming up with pragmatic ideas that will help staffers be physically and psychologically closer. At first, AP considered labeling each unit with distinctive department names, but it dismissed the idea, sticking to its “one AP, one product” motto. The same goes for staffers, who wear nametags at all times (this in itself eases interaction), but these aren’t differentiated by unit-specific colors. “Although they have their own specialty, everybody should be a video, photo and text person,” said Kent. Big screen televisions were set up across the newsroom, displaying the latest photos and web headlines. Practical management is also based on simple ideas, such as placing the coffee machines at the intersection of the units, so staffers get a chance to meet and chat during their breaks.

Strategies for integration – some good, others better

Below is a quicklist of some of the other strategies AP used to ease integration:

- staffer wikis to ensure cross-platform planning
- reward system to encourage and recognize integration, including a weekly cash reward to staffers who symbolize the multimedia “one AP” spirit
- quarterly meetings with the CEO
- staffers, including the 'pickiest' ones, helped choose furniture
- a training website and internal TV broadcasts
- mini video-trainings to encourage staffers to think of new media
- training for Soundslides, which enables the easy creation of online slideshows
- giving out over 100 portable audio digital recorders
- send journalists on the ground to do multimedia reporting (those who had covered hurricane Katrina were sent to report on the earthquake damage in Pakistan)
- build an AP gym and encourage staffers to use it, by giving them an AP gym bag on the first day of work

Ultimately, not all of these ideas were efficient. For example, the training websites tended to be underused by headquarters staff, since many journalists were too busy to regularly consult them (they were useful for bureaus outside New York, or as a reminder of the staffers’ trainings). The point is that AP put these tools into place – staffers could feel a helping hand pushing them along the process.

Other ideas were more successful: reward systems and incentives always appeal to staffers. The regular ten-minute meetings between staff and editors, or among cross-platform editors, kept everyone on the same page. And how do you get the more reticent staffers to firmly believe in change? Simply allow them to choose that brand new piece of furniture in the lounge…

Kent’s main advice to integrating newsrooms was of a more general nature though. “It is not really about creating new products, it’s about categorizing and linking them,” he said. All newspapers and news organizations already have a solidly established production process. The main difficulty is in “getting things into a reasonable taxonomy.” Concretely, this can mean enabling ‘text’ reporters and editors to categorize stories when they publish them, using automatic categorization engines (ie: automobile, business, racing sports).  So that if AP launched a specialized automobile website, the content would simply have to be retrieved from the appropriate database.

The future of AP and newspapers – how far does integration go?

“AP still believes in newspapers, we think they have a future,” said Kent. On the other hand, AP has fully realized the importance of digital and multimedia. “We will generate content in every format there is a demand for.”

And what could these formats with high demand be, right now and in the future? Video. “We are emphasizing video as we never have before,” said Kent. In the last meeting between AP and The New York Times, the conversation was almost entirely about how to get more video from AP!

As for newspapers themselves, no magic solution, they will “have to find the balance between what they can do best on paper, and what they can do best on the Internet.”

Source: Tom Kent, Deputy Managing Editor, Associated Press – tkent@ap.org