According to Almar Latour, managing editor of WSJ.com, newsroom integration is a matter of newsroom culture and collaboration, rather than physical proximity.

Latour will explain how the Wall Street Journal has integrated its news operations - while remaining non-integrated in the restrictive sense - at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held June 1-4 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

"The overarching point of integration is that it should take place in the reporter's minds," said Latour. What's important is "changing a culture, going from a print news cycle to a 24-hour news cycle."

However, physical integration "is also something that is taking place" at the WSJ. Both print and online editors sit at the central news desk, which dispatches news to all platforms. "The newsgathering and distribution, the processing of news, is taking place centrally now - in an integrated fashion," said Latour.

Physical integration at the Journal - establishing the central news desk - only took a few weeks and some desk-shifting.

On the other hand, the integration isn't complete, since staffers from print and online remain platform-based. A team of WSJ.com staffers is specialized in Web-specific activities such as video, audio or online production.

As Latour said, the real challenge is to change staffers' mindsets, through practice.

For example, when the WSJ handed out video cameras to its bureaus 18 months ago, the initial results were very amateurish, and journalists sometimes confused. Now though, WSJ.com's videos have become a regular offering for the website, whether they're quality 90-second clips or full-blown 'documentaries'.

Among the steps followed by the Journal in that case:

- first, givz reporters access to the proper equipment
- successful examples of videos, which show other journalists the benefits of these forms of coverage. "A success story like that really drove home the point to the other reporters that you can and must tell stories in different ways," said Latour.
- a concerted effort to train - enthusiastic - people. WSJ used video editors from one of Dow Jones' companies to train reporters who were genuinely interested in learning video.

"That journey has been the one of real integration, the one that's still ongoing," he said.

Latour will speak at the upcoming World Editors Forum. See other preview interviews here.

Source: Almar Latour, Managing Editor, WSJ.com