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Video journalism pioneer Michael Rosenblum gave editors an option at the Society of Editor's conference:  print publications "must have video" on their websites, or go out of business.

"As the web goes to video there's a sort of Gresham's law--more dynamic media drives out less dynamic media," Rosenblum said at the conference in Bristol.

The technology makes the process of creating video "incredibly simple," he said, and news websites that fail to adapt to the changing technology will be at the mercy of their competitors.

"A nine year-old can produce professional material," Rosenblum said.  "And the cost is next to zero."

The Editors Weblog reported some sad news for the newspaper industry this morning: the closure of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) and its magazine CPQ.

For a lot of editors and journalists trained by the CPU, receiving its newsletter, or participating in its Editors Forum or the regular CPU conferences, this is painful news. It is painful not just because they have lost a partner (and frequently a sponsor), but also because the CPU was the oldest international press association in the world. The CPU would have celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2009 - the Empire Press Union was founded in 1909 - but the board has scheduled the closure of almost all its activities on 31 December 2008.

What does the closure this historical institution mean and what will the consequences be for the current CPU members in almost fifty countries?

Who will take care of small newspapers and small organizations?

In the obituary of CPU, it is said that, very soon, a Commonwealth Press Training & Education Trust (CPTET), will take over some CPU activities, mainly focused on training. The CPU Foundation, which funds training, will be maintained, but at the moment the financing behind this structure is not yet set. But the basic idea of the CPU - through the unique and common language of English - was to create links and to network between publishers, editors and journalists from the 49 countries belonging to the CPU. The new trust will loose this ambition, even if the contrary is said on paper.

The most important challenge will be to ensure the balance between big countries/small countries, big newspapers/small organizations. Rationalization will focus on larger countries and newspapers. The real risk is if we forget the Salomon Islands, Fiji, the small African states and the Caribbean countries. Australia will take over for the Pacific, South Africa would like to support African English-speaking countries and the US and the British Foreign Office will certainly take care of the Caribbean, but the global picture will disappear.

It is true that a press association based on the Commonwealth souvenir and the thirties was maybe not the most up-to-date organization, but its death will break a worldwide community unified by common ideals and ethical views. I'm sure regional organizations will do their best for small organizations, but with very specific geopolitical interests. And for this reason, the disappearance of CPU and a global point of view on journalism is bad news.

What will be the future of international press organisations?

The death of a 100 year old association is a symbol and a signal for all other newspapers organisations. Two years ago, the IPI (International Press Institute), encountered significant problems but found a way to maintain its activities. But are IFRA in Germany or WAN in France (the World Association of Newspapers, including the World Editors Forum) not threatened by the evolution of the newspapers business model? Regional organizations are also potentially in trouble, such as the IAPA in the Americas, TAEF in Africa (organization for editors-in-chief) or Panpa in Oceania, and so on.

The closure of CPU and the difficulties faced by the IPI clearly demonstrate that the existing business model for these organizations is under threat: how long will they rely on state funds, sponsors' money, conference fees and memberships? For instance, more and more members want to consume business information as they consume music on their iPods: by just paying for the specific item they want, and no more.

The subscription business model is under attack and press organizations must anticipate this shift.

Another problem is the development of webinars and online conferences as competitors to the current "face-to-face conferences". Either traditional organizations grasp these new ideas and the opportunity they represent, or the new pure online players will. It will take time to define standards and to build up customers and partners, but it will happen.

See also:

End of the Commonwealth Press Union on December 31, 2008

With the World's financial markets nose-diving and talk of an imminent deep recession, people are turning to newspapers to cut through the jargon and market turmoil and to tell them the truth. However, some newspapers stand accused of sensationalising the crisis in the pursuit of a dramatic front page and of being ill informed on the subject matter. General sentiment in the City of London, for instance, ranged from financial workers accusing the press of creating "complete hysteria" to "fanning the flames of the crisis". These severe reactions in the City, combined with an utterly confused public, sparks the question: how should a newspaper cover a global financial crisis?

The Financial Times has proved to be a port in the storm of screamer headlines and misinformed commentary. The Editors Weblog spoke to the Managing Editor of the FT, Daniel Bogler (left), about his views on the coverage and how his newspaper reacted as the crisis unfolded.

Firstly, Bogler agreed with the City's negative view on some of the mainstream media's coverage, saying, "It's unfortunate that the financial literacy and understanding of how things work in the City and of basic accounting and so on, is actually very thin in financial journalism. The FT, because we are a financial newspaper, take the stuff a lot more seriously. We hire people from the City... and also spend a lot of time, effort and money on training our people."

Rethinking the layout

Bogler reported that one of the key things the FT did when the magnitude of the story unfolding became clear was rethink the entire layout of the paper. To ensure that the FT provided enough space to deliver comprehensive coverage, it cleared the first four pages of previously planned stories and bumped them further inside. This shift in focus did result in other key news getting squeezed, but this highlights the newspapers keen news judgement on the significance of what was unfolding on trading screens throughout the world. The bar for a story to get onto the front page was suddenly raised.

Bogler said that not only did the FT clear the first four pages, but it also redesigned the front page to emphasise and reflect the newspaper's focused coverage. The FT's template for its front page is usually three or four stories and a taster section (long column down the side) for stories within (left). However, with its decision to provide focused coverage on the rapidly changing story, it now featured two stories on the financial meltdown and leads to the rest of its coverage.

To further provide space for reporting the story, it reorganised the letters page and also largely cleared its flagship Markets pages at the back.

Since the story broke, half of the Financial Times coverage in print and online has been entirely focused on the credit crisis. The paper is not only featuring pieces to assist and inform investment bankers, but also pieces that will be useful for the average individual. The Personal Finance section last Saturday did a special on how to manage your finances during the credit crash, with practical advice for everyone, from savers to those seeking information on their mortgage.
 
This flexibility in terms of layout is another key reason for its success in its treatment of the story; templates and layout do not dictate to the newspaper when a big story breaks.

Refocusing the team

Layout flexibility followed into the newsroom itself. From what Bogler reports, it appears that three key teams spearheaded the newspapers response to the global financial crisis. The teams were the Crisis Counsel (Chief Editors and senior editors), The Leader Conference (meeting for in-depth coverage) and, specifically, the Hit Team (the financial services (banks) reporters).

Crisis Counsel
As the story hit, a Crisis Counsel was called at around 10am with the Editor Lionel Barber, News Editor Robert Shrimsley and other senior editorial staff. It was here that the decision to clear the first four pages of the newspaper to focus on the meltdown was taken and a senior news editor was appointed to manage the pages. Furthermore, the decision to make this story the focal point for the newspaper was made, with the senior team then notifying the rest of the staffers.

Leader Conference
The team then moved on to the Leader Conference to inform them that in depth and "Leader" stories would now be on the market meltdown. Previously planned articles on the UK's Conservative political party were shelved and resources shifted for optimal reporting.

The Hit Team
The Hit Team strategy had previously been utilised by the FT during the Iraq War. The Hit Team - which consists of reporters and editors from the relevant beat for a story - co-ordinate the entire newsroom: deploying reporters, co-ordinating news flow, writing the front-page splash and managing the opening pages. The Team can also pull reporters off their beat to boost coverage of a topic, ie, an autos journalist can be drafted in to aid coverage of a banks story. The core of this unit for the crisis was, and still is - as this rapidly developing story still has legs - made up of ten financial services reporters in London and six or seven in New York. Staffers around the world also called in with their regions' story and any new angles developing. Bogler reported that the news editor and reporters around the world "shaped these pages relatively quickly."

The highly respected "Lex Column" was also given priority. It is a column that features widely read analysis and commentary from a group of reporters who previously worked in hedge funds and investment banks.

The payoff

As a result of its dedicated focus and clear and comprehensible content, FT.com's traffic has exploded. Page views have risen 300 per cent. Unique users are also up by 250 per cent.

When asked about the FT's competition, Bogler said, "Its unfortunate perhaps for the Wall Street Journal, having just been bought by Murdoch, that they have switched their interest to general news, political news and focusing on US politics at a time when US politics is just not the story. We have looked a bit more nimble."

Responsibility and ethics

Reflecting on this fast-changing story, the media coverage it has received, and the perceived "sensationalist" angle taken by other papers, Bogler said he is aware of the added pressure on the FT, "We do have an extra responsibility and we take it very seriously.  We do not 'fan the flames' of the crisis."

He went on to say, "It is in the nature of newspapers to write the most dramatic headline, the most dramatic copy and have the most dramatic picture, so you have impact on your readers.... this irresponsibility is kind of bred into the industry. You have to be very careful, you have to take a step back. A picture of someone with their head in their hands in front of a trading screen, is that the right picture?"
 

Newspapers around the world are facing a challenging time, not only because of the current difficult economic climate and declining advertising revenues, but also because of the ever more rapid push to multi-platform publishing and the changes to the operation that this has involved. Is it time the whole operating model underwent a shake-up? Neil Benson, Editorial Director - Regionals, at Trinity Mirror believes that newspapers need to radically overhaul the entire structure and that, being from a "conservative industry", they have been "overly-cautious" for far too long.

Benson, and the three Editors of the Birmingham titles affected, have rewritten the rulebook on workflow and newsroom management at the Birmingham Post (Editor Marc Reeves - business orientated newspaper), Sunday Mercury (Editor David Brookes - tabloid) and Birmingham Mail (Editor Steve Dyson - a popular evening paper); and the new system is scheduled to go live in mid-October. Benson says that in previous recessions for the media industry, the standard way newspapers have responded is to cut the pagination of the paper and axe staff, but Trinity felt that this was simply "inadequate". Benson says, "The financial pressure is nothing new, but the additional factor is the internet and convergence and the effect that this is having on the industry, so we felt that rather than do the straightforward cost-cutting, we needed to do something much more imaginative." The Editors Weblog spoke to Benson to get all the details.

Rethinking workflow

Trinity Mirror has been using the same tried and tested newsroom workflow as most other newspapers, ie, (1) journalist writes the article, (2) submits it to the news desk, (3) designer fits the story into the page, (4) sub-editing desk scrutinizes, and (5) final revision and publication. This whole system has been completely turned on its head, with Benson stating, "We are truly a multi-media business now, so lets structure for that." The old five-step system has now been honed down to just three steps: create, place and complete. Benson says that not only did they have to look at the overall operating costs in the current difficult economic climate, but they also wanted to fully integrate multi-media working practises into the operation. With the advent of new publishing platforms, such as mobile and the Internet, newsrooms have had to adapt rapidly and have thus frequently "bolted-on" on new practises to the traditional model. Benson wanted to revamp the whole process so that multimedia is fully integrated into the operation.

The new workflow system is as follows:

1) Reporters - who will now be known as multimedia journalists*, - create the content.
2) Send to the "Multimedia" desk where a newly trained multi-skilled team will not only check the copy but also place it into heavily templated pages. This is the key step in the reinvention; here Trinity have merged the news editing and production function into one.
3) Page finishing, revising and tidying up.

Benson says he cannot remember such substantial changes being made to a newsroom in 35 years. Not only will this system help to cut costs and integrate multimedia publishing, but it will also cut down on the time between a reporter finding a story and it appearing in print or online. Furthermore, the three titles at Trinity Mirror Midlands will all be sharing a newsroom; so if a big story breaks the merged newsroom can push more resources towards the story and cover it more thoroughly than was ever possible before.

Integrated newsroom - open space and collaboration

One of the key areas where the changes can be seen is in the newsroom team itself; the individual Head of Content or Head of Sport for each title will be merged and will now work across all titles and channels. Furthermore, the whole team, including advertising and sales, will all be on one floor working together.

In the centre of the new newsroom (the whole team is moving to a new purpose-designed site in Birmingham in about a month's time) there will be a structure that Benson describes as being "like a broken doughnut" (ie, a round structure, open at two points for exit and entry) which is the multimedia desk: everything will be directed from this central hub. It will also contain the conference table where all of the news meeting will take place, making it open to the entire staff rather than in the Editors office behind a closed door as in the past. This structure also enables the multi-media desk staff to always be at their workstations even during the news meetings.

Furthermore, over the summer, a new publishing system was introduced called "Content Watch" (produced by a MediaSpectrum) which is completely web-based making it possible to file copy and sub copy from anywhere.

Training journalists: the "nuts and bolts" of integration

The training programme undertaken to make this radical change in structure possible has been comprehensive. Benson describes the training as "nuts and bolts" and philosophical, ie, enabling the team to "think" multi-media when they are working.  Staffers are all being equipped with laptops for filing on the move and Smartphones (Nokia 95 Smartphones for shooting video, streaming video, and take digital pictures), so there have been practical training sessions for the new kit, being led by the Head of Multimedia and the editorial training manager.

The team have brought in Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham City University, who has an online journalism blog, for the philosophical side; the sessions involve talks on multimedia and issues surrounding it for senior staffer, who will then "percolate this knowledge down". The staff have also been attending a series of multimedia awareness sessions led by Andrew Dickinson from the University of Central Lancashire, who also has a journalism blog.

Benson is very clear on the importance of this training programme, "We are asking people to do something very new, and unless you invest in the training it is not going to work."

Managing the team through unfamiliar waters

Another key consideration for Trinity Mirror in this reinvigoration of its newsroom has been its staff. The process resulted in 65 voluntary redundancies at the newspapers and this understandably caused concern for staffers at the group's Birmingham titles. Furthermore, with the whole workflow system being turned on its head, staffers were required to apply for roles within the new structure. This, reports Benson, was a difficult decision and one "not taken lightly". However, the changes in structure are so radical that they felt it was necessary to take this step to underline the enormous change the Birmingham titles were undertaking, and for the staff to truly consider if they wanted to be involved in it. Benson reports, "We had our eyes open, we expected a big reaction."

Bearing this in mind, management moved ahead quickly and launched a consultation period where staffers had one-to-one sessions to discuss concerns and ask questions. Rapidly after, the job application process started.  

The UK's National Union of Journalists took a role in the process, telling management that they would fight any forced redundancies; thankfully, the voluntary process proved successful and a strike was averted. Benson reports that communication was open with the union throughout the process.

With hindsight?

Trinity Mirror Midlands is nearing the finishing line in this whole process, but with the benefit of hindsight, would they have done anything differently? Benson says that he does not feel that there is a "fundamental" in the process that they got wrong. He does believe that the communication process with staff is vital and needs to be as open and detailed as possible. For Trinity, communication has been, "pretty good, but more would have been better."

Furthermore, with the office move planned well in advance and with Trinity's desire to undertake the changes before the office move so teething problems could be ironed out, lack of time was an issue. Benson says, "Ideally, a bit more time, but then again I have been involved in projects in the past where you can give yourself too much time. Being journalists, we all like a deadline."

* The multimedia journalists role now involves shooting video, taking picture, and so forth, as well as being equipped to file from anywhere with the new web-based publishing platform.

The Poynter Institute, which offers training in the journalistic sphere, acquired a five-year, $1.4 million fund from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to develop NewsU, its online journalism program, Journalism.co.uk reported.

Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation's journalism programs director, said, "New technology is transforming journalism. Journalism education cannot meet the training needs of today's journalist without using that same technology. We hope this grant helps anyone learn to use new platforms to pursue the fair, accurate, contextual search for truth."

NewsU announced that it would improve its services by enhancing online journalism training, reaching people who do not have a chance to get formal training and increasing literacy. It intends to develop courses in different language, create  online  training modules on news literacy and change to a Web 2.0 platform for content management.

NewsU has been operating since 2005 and stated that it has had 73,000 enrolments to-date.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

The Star Tribune announced that this summer, experts would train the Tribune staff to edit videos and produce programming. It said that the paper's staff has increased training in news production and entertainment videos to "enliven" the site, "diversify the news" and "prepare for mobile delivery."

Last year, Tribune photographers were trained to shoot documentary and breaking-news video. They were also trained to bring a basic video camera to shoot breaking-news.
 
"We're trying to transform a site that was once a newspaper on the Web into one that takes full advantage of the medium," Nancy Barnes, Tribune editor, said.

The Tribune's Rick Sennott is familiar with both photography and videography and he enjoys being a "one-man-band." His aim is to "produce images that act as a channel for true understanding and give a clear voice to the people being photographed."

The Tribune's site includes video content on issues such as gardening, health, sports and local news (see above). 

"While I'm still not crazy about seeing myself on the small screen, I really enjoy how video reporting can bring a story to life," Connie Nelson, Home+Garden editor, said, "You get the sights, the sounds. You can show rather than say. And you can make a personal connection."

Barnes expressed some concern over the increasing importance of visual journalism and how journalism has evolved to deliver more than just print news.

"It's no longer sufficient for a news company to put out a fine newspaper. We have to deliver the news anywhere, anytime, however the consumer wants it. Some days, this feels a bit like the old game where you see if you can jump up and down and pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Now, can you do it on one foot?" Barnes said.

This trend towards increased online vide content is what news sites like the Tribune or the UK's Telegraph are following.

Source: The Star Tribune

See also:
UK: Telegraph releases online video widgets
Opinion: Best practices for video journalism, with Travis Fox
UK: Telegraph's main competitors are BBC and CNN, in era of multimedia journalism
 

Leonard Tow, 80, philanthropist and former newspaper executive (CEO of Citizens Communications and Century Communications), donated five million dollars to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and three million to the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism for research and development (R &D) and "innovation efforts" to study the future of print and online newspapers, PaidContent.org reports.

CUNY's Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation will be the "R & D center for business models and developing new ventures", PaidContent.org wrote. "The center would bring in venture capitalists s to fund the best ideas", according to Stephen Shepard, reported PaidContent.org via New York Times. Meanwhile, Columbia will be focused "on training journalism students in digital media", according to PaidContent.org.

Source: PaidContent.org

There has been a lot of coverage of the results of the Newsroom Barometer, including Reuters' own take on the findings.

If you haven't taken a look at the main findings (namely editors' massive acceptation of the integrated newsroom model, as well as about half of them believing news will be free in the future and that online will be the most common platform for news), you can read more below:

Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results


But here are a few more results that may have gone under the radar.

If provided resources to invest in editorial quality, what would you do first within the newsroom?

Across all categories, the responses illustrated two clear concerns for editors, which superceded all others: their staff needs to be attuned to new media (36% of the respondents would first train their staff in new media), and they need more journalists to produce quality coverage (30%, up from 22% last year). As more newsrooms face layoffs and tight budgets, editors are increasingly seeking to safeguard one of the main conditions to quality journalism: a team of qualified journalists.

For editors from newspapers whose number of journalists had decreased, their main priority was to recruit more journalists, at 50%, while also recognizing the necessity of new media training, at 31%. Even among newspapers whose staff had increased, 26% of editors wished to recruit more journalists (36% new media training).

This clearly shows that, in the view of editors, cutting staff and journalistic resources is not a solution - to the contrary - to resolve financial concerns a newspaper may have.

Overall, what do you view as the two greatest threats to the future of your newspaper?

57% of respondents saw the biggest threat to the future of newspapers coming from declining readership among young people. One of the greatest challenges faced by newspapers today is structural, linked to a change in habits among readers, as they become consumers of alternative forms of media.
Tied to this, a good share of respondents (37%) saw the Internet and digital media as a threat. This was closely followed by lack of editorial innovation (36%) and lack of investment (29%), which are also inter-related.

The results showed a split between perception of threats as being external, due to contextual evolutions of the market (young readership decline, digital media) and internal, due to lack of newspaper innovation - or the financial means to innovate.

Now looking specifically to your newspaper's editorial independence in the future, what do you view as the principal threat?

Perceived threats to editorial independence ranged relatively closely from 13% who listed 'other' concerns, to 23% who thought the biggest pressure would come from advertisers, through 19% who listed political pressure and 20% shareholder pressure (20%). Still, a combined 42% perceived the main threat as being related to newspapers' financial dependence, whether on shareholders and advertisers.

Where newspapers were heavily capitalized in the stock market, such as in Western Europe and North America, shareholder pressure was strong, 35% and 23% respectively, but political pressure didn't pose any threat - 3% for both.

Inversely, in many other regions, financial pressures were less important, but lack of press freedom led many editors to fear political pressure.

Do you think that in the future opinion and analysis pages will:

The results were stable compared to 2006. Two thirds (67%) of the respondents believed opinion and analysis pages would increase: many foresaw the upcoming evolution of newspaper content, which will be less about factual news and more about analysis and commentary.

An astonishingly small number of respondents from North America (50%) believed analysis and opinion would increase, compared to 76% for Western Europe (and 78% Eastern). This large difference underlines a divergence in editors' perception of the function their newspapers will have in the future, whether these increasingly focus on constant breaking news or instead turn to more analytical, magazine-type content. These results also reflect worries by American editors about having the proper resources to increase their opinion and analytical content.


If you would like more information about the Newsroom Barometer, don't hesitate to contact us. And let's not forget that the bright revelation of Barometer, as was the case last year, was that 84% of newspaper editors are optimistic about their newspaper's future, despite frequent doom and gloom reports...