Successful ingredients

Last October, the number of unique visitors to Guardian Unlimited (GU) peaked at a record 18.4 million. In 2006, online revenues soared 40% and the site became profitable for the first time. There are about 100 editorial Web staff total. For actual news though, two-three subeditors, two-three correspondents (out of eight), and a news editor, staff the online edition at all times.

The success of Guardian Unlimited has been fueled by some general factors:
- The site was never sold and publishers continued to invest even after the dot-com crash, contrarily to other news sites.
- The Guardian has extensively invested in online journalism and building online staff. The online edition provides a platform for more related content and extended coverage.
- Due to the global context post 9-11, the Guardian has become a referential English-speaking news source that is both non-American and liberal.
- Since the Guardian Media Group is run by a non-profit trust, staff and management haven’t been pressured to secure 20% profit margins.

But the Guardian’s online success couldn’t have happened if online journalists had been on their own, however much investment there was. The company established a few specific strategies to promote smooth print-online collaboration:

- Financial and foreign news are almost systematically published Web-first. The switch to web-first was made early and initially “felt like a tectonic shift,” said Ian Katz, who was Guardian Unlimited’s first editor, now executive editor for the Guardian. In fact, it was “merely speeding up of the metabolism of the paper.” Typically, a wire will come in and the online news editor will immediately commission the news to an online journalist, who posts a bulletin within 15 minutes, then calls the correspondent to relay the information. The more detailed article is usually online within 45 minutes.
- As for the Telegraph, business journalists from print and online sit together, due to the necessarily reactive nature of business news.
- Most importantly, bridgeheads were put into place across the departments. An editor from print sits with the online team for two weeks at a time, which generally leads to content packages that are richer on the Web than in the print edition.

From the beginning, the Guardian has opted for a ‘liberal-education’ approach towards the development of its online edition and collaboration with the print team.

When GU was first launched, the paper “shook out of the staff our most enthusiastic and motivated staffers,” said Katz. A few print reporters were interested in working for the then-unglamorous online edition, for various reasons: their articles were too long for print but could unroll on the Web, some were ‘geeky’ or tech-oriented, others were interested in niche topics that couldn’t be covered in print, and so on.

Editors “never said you all have to do multimedia,” said Katz. Instead, the possibility of multimedia coverage was simply suggested, as a low impact way to draw in some print journalists. Some never tried it, while others became passionate about new media, “to the point that some of them just weren’t interested in print anymore.”

Thus the online team grew organically, without pressuring the print team to change its ways.

The Guardian’s road to integration: “journalists own the process”

The Guardian is planning its integration in the same way it started GU: by relying a lot on journalists’ own initiatives. According to Katz, the Guardian adopted an integration strategy opposed to the “Telegraph’s edict approach.” But “the payoff will be much greater because people feel they own the process.”

To plan its move to a new newsroom and integrated structure, the Guardian put in place a steering group, chaired by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and which includes representatives from The Observer, The Guardian and Guardian Unlimited. ‘Sub-steering’ committees have also been established to focus on specific aspects of the process such as production and design.

For a period of three months, groups of journalists were gathered to brainstorm about integration. They were allowed to map out new structures for departments, offer ideas for mergers of sections, even to imagine an efficient hierarchical model. One of the exercises prompted journalists to draw a floor plan for the new newsroom design: most plans pointed to the reorganization of the newsroom into specialist poles and departments, independently of a specific platform.

As far as strict integration goes, with a single print-online editor, as is the case for the Telegraph, “I still don't t think you would want all requests channeled through a single manager,” said Katz.

Inevitably, with integration and the new 24/7 cycle (there’s still a regular gap in coverage between 3:30am and 7am) will come with its share of painful changes in habits and requires changes in the agreements with staff. But the overall quality of news coverage can only benefit from this move.

Obviously, collaborative workflows and journalistic initiative can only partly explain Guardian Unlimited’s popularity. Part 2 will examine the online edition’s approach to design, video, blogs and more.

Source: Neil McIntosh, editorial head of development Guardian Unlimited – Tom Happold, network editor Guardian Unlimited – Ian Katz, executive editor The Guardian