Zero Hora, flagship title of the RBS media group in Brazil, has had an integrated newsroom since last September, which was officially inaugurated in December 2007. In Part 1, Zero Hora’s editors, Marcelo Rech and Marta Gleich, and RBS’ CEO Nelson Sirotsky, describe how integration has changed their and their journalists’ jobs, both in theory and practice.

In 2006, when the
Manchester Evening News decided to make the paper free in central Manchester, while keeping paid-for distribution in the city’s outskirts, few fellow publishers understood such a decision. Yet at the heart of this commercial move lays a greater will to adapt to the decline of print ad revenues by becoming a converged media group, and the Evening News now boasts the UK’s most integrated regional newsroom.
It has been said that journalism schools have been
lagging behind in their adaptation to new media and the rapid evolution of journalism (flashback: in 1995, a publication by the
Society of Professional Journalists contended journalists’ new media skills were “nice, but not necessary.”). This is starting to change though – or is it? What should tomorrow’s journalists be learning?
Jeff Jarvis,
Roy Greenslade, and
Keith Woods from the
Poynter Institute describe their own experiences for the Weblog.
Randy Covington, director of the Ifra Newsplex at the University of South Carolina, recently gave some tips to newspaper editors on how to avoid common pitfalls on the road to media convergence, including lack of concrete planning and fear of high costs of new equipment and staff.
Richard Addis, former editor of the Daily Express, thinks convergence is just a fad. Writing in the Independent, Addis reflects on the state of convergence in British media as highlighted by the Daily Telegraph’s recent upheaval, including its new online-savvy editor. Of the two big ideas floating around, convergence and citizen journalism, Addis believes that only the latter will stick around.
A new guide to help newspapers better understand their audiences and provide them with compelling content through innovative print and digital delivery has just been published by the World Association of Newspapers. "New Editorial Concepts", from WAN's Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, examines how newspaper companies worldwide are researching their audiences and using the results to provide readers with information they want, when they want it, through a variety of media.
The widespread availability of broadband internet has upped the ante adding much variety to what internet users can view, hear, in short consume, online. In such a climate, video is set to become one of the key new requirements for newspaper websites.
UK regional daily The Hull Daily Mail began offering video news reports on its website in November after six of its journalists completed a diploma in videojournalism, comprised of three weeks of intensive practical training, organised by The Press Association and taught by David Dunkley Gyimah, senior lecturer in Digital Journalism at The University of Westminster.
The Editors Weblog interviewed David Dunkley Gyimah and Paul Hartley, assistant editor at the Hull Daily Mail, asking them about the diploma in videojournalism and the implications of online video for newspaper websites. Both agree that online video will soon be found on most newspaper websites.