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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?"
 

Swiss free daily .ch announced plans to restructure by the end of October.  A number of changes are planned including a new system of distribution, staff changes and new content coverage.

Home delivery will no longer available.  Distribution will be concentrated in and around public transportation.  

Founder and director, Sacha Wigdorovits will step down from his post.

The content of the paper with also change.  It will focus on a mix of news and entertainment and the paper will also be redesigned.

Sources: Newspaper Innovation

Bertrand Pecquerie wrote in an article in Le Monde yesterday that the French newspaper industry is in crisis and, worryingly, turning to the State for help. Newspapers have been subsidized in France for the past ten years and, in those ten years, the situation has not improved, it has actually worsened.

Pecquerie believes that there are four core problems facing the industry and these are not being addressed. The four core issues are method, diagnosis, objective and means.

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 Wall Street Journal Online has signed a deal with Yahoo! which will enable Yahoo! users in the UK and Ireland to access its coverage of the US presidential election race.

WSJ.com's political blogs, 'Political Perceptions' and 'Washington Wire' will be available on a Yahoo! microsite specially created.

Tristan Leaver, director of business and audience development at the Wall Street Journal digital network for EMEA, said it is, "a very effective way for WSJ.com to raise brand awareness and expose our unparalleled content to a new UK audience."

In an interview with the EditorsWeblog in September, Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray, said the brand had ambitious plans to expand internationally. This deal with Yahoo! looks like a significant step in pushing the Wall Street Journal brand and content to a European audience.

Source: Brand Republic

US: Newly redesigned WSJ site attracts 10 million users on re-launch day
US: Murdoch on the future of newspapers
US: Wall Street Journal to launch new website on Tuesday
Wall Street Journal unveils magazine supplement, WSJ
US: Wall Street Journal launches new mobile application
Murdoch: Newspapers willing to invest in new forms of delivery will prosper

The US free daily, The Examiner, which is owned by billionaire right-winger Philip Anshutz, has taken his newspaper into unusual territory by endorsing presidential candidate John McCain.

Free dailies do not usually endorse candidates or wade into murky political waters as they are trying to appeal to the widest possible audience.

The free daily featured a picture of McCain and Sarah Palin on its front cover and, in emotive language, put its support behind the Republican candidate. The Washington Examiner has endorsed McCain.

Source: Newspaper Innovation

In an article published yesterday in The Huffington Post, Bob Guccione, Jr. presents an interesting series of predictions for the future of the media.  He predicts the endurance of print, the decline of Google, and that imagination will play a key role.

First, he believes that major city dailies will be transformed into free papers and that home delivery will require a paid subscription.  Also, the Sunday paper will continue to be sold, but will become a source of information for the weeks events.

Guccione also predicts that Google will loose significant market share because competitors will finally step up to the plate and create good or even better search engines.

His next prediction comes as somewhat of a surprise, "The Internet will not consume print, because it's not strong enough, it's not better, and it's too busy consuming itself."  Although, he does admit that print has a lot to worry about, but that their problems can be resolved.  

He s quick to highlight the fact that publishers need a new formula, what used to work is not working any longer.  "The Internet hit traditional publishing like the asteroid that struck the earth and killed the dinosaurs."  Publishers need to start getting creative.

Ultimately, Guccione theorizes that the future of media will come down to one thing, imagination. "So those in publishing should pick their collective chins up off the floor and realize that the future couldn't be brighter, as soon as we recognize that digital technology is the modern-day equivalent of color printing and faster presses, and that the thing that feeds the new machine is the same thing that fed the old one: imagination."

Sources:  Media Bistro, The Huffington Post

Singapore newspaper The Straits Times (ST) revealed its print and digital makeover last Friday. The revamped print version features some changes in fonts and colors as well as an increased amount of top news on the front page. The redesigned website features a division of www.straitstimes.com into a paid service ST Digital and the free ST Breaking News.   

This week, the print edition will change the days that the sections "Digital Life", "Mind Your Body" and "Urban" are printed to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday respectively.

Like the US paper the Philadephia Inquirer, the ST is putting more focus on covering breaking news online. ST Breaking News will include breaking news coverage and news blogs, and the readers would have the ability to comment and interact with the reporters. The paid subscription service ST Digital will provide users with e-papers.

ST also announced the launch of the ST Razor TV, a free interactive online TV feature that offers live news programs, video on demand and a space for users to interact and communicate.

The paper plans to raise circulation until the end of August by providing 10,000 additional copies daily to unsubscribed households and coffeeshops.

Source: Publicitas

See also:
Singapore: The Straits Times should focus on "sponge" readers
US: Philadelphia Inquirer managng editor takes "backward" step?
US: Response to Philadelphia Inquirer's new online policy

An interesting and growing market has opened up for newspapers with online editions in Africa: the expat reader looking for news about home from a familiar news source. The print version of newspapers remains paramount in Africa in terms of readership and revenue, but newspaper organizations are waking up to this new medium's potential.

When Kenya's Daily Nation launched its website a decade ago, it had a clear vision. The country's leading newspaper recognised that the 1.8 million Kenyans living abroad had little access to news from home, and that an online edition would have mass appeal to the increasing number of ex-pats who hungered for news. This is something that editors and publishers across Africa should bare in mind: the International Labour Organisation estimates there are some 7.1 million Africans living outside their home country. The number is rising rapidly and by 2025 could climb to one in ten, the IOM predicts.

The Editors Weblog spoke with the Daily Nation's managing editor of special projects, Macharia Gaitho, about his newspapers online edition and he said: "We wanted to extend the paper's audience beyond Kenya's geographic borders to deepen the paper's voice and authority, while also offering a service to the growing Kenyan diaspora." The website was launched formally in October 1998 with a dedicated team, following trials the previous year just before the Kenyan general election.

This service goes back to the very foundation of what newspapers are all about, they are not only providing a news service, they are also serving their communities, even the members of it who have moved away.

The fact that the online edition is very reflective of the print edition is a pull to the expat community who will immediately have the emotional response of recognition and thus feel "familiar" with the web version from their first visit, this familiarity will likely encourage return visitors. As one of the most trusted news organization on the African continent, it would already be a first port of call for expats looking for news from home, but with its easily navigable site, clear graphics, photographs, video footage and with a style that echoes the print version, they have cleverly tapped into the expat market.

Gaitho, who describes the Daily Nation website as the "recognized go-to place online for news on Kenya" said it was important that the web edition reflected the "Nation's look and feel."

The Daily Nation site has recently undergone a revamp and the new-look site achieved 50,000 unique visitors daily in its first week after the launch. The previous version averaged 80,000 unique visitors daily. Explaining this disparity in visitors, Gaitho said: "Because of faster download speeds and improved features, we project the new one will surpass 80k".
 
However, some news organisations in Kenya have been slow to see the potential of this new market and only have a web version as a nod to this evolving technology without fully engaging with the medium. Dr George Ogola at the University of Lancashire says that in Kenya, "The element of interactivity, the very essence of 'experiencing' news online remains unexploited." He believes that news organisations need to recognise that with the advent of online news, the relationship between the reader and the newspaper has been altered.

The appeal of ex-pat readers is therefore another attraction for African newspapers to consider when they lead the charge to online editions, not only for editors looking to boost their news organizations readership and to keep their media house relevant, but also to appeal to advertisers such as Western Union who wish to reach the expat audience. It is as a result now mandatory for any newspaper in Africa to have an online edition.

The Editors Weblog spoke to the Directeur de Publications at Le Jour in Cameroon, Haman Mana, about his thoughts on this issue. Recently launched newspaper Le Jour is a particularly interesting case, as they chose to launch the print and online version at the same time on the 17 September 2007. This decision underscores how online media is growing in importance in Africa, even though print still creates more revenue and attracts a larger readership. When I asked Mana about his thinking behind this decision, he said bluntly, "It is inconceivable for any Cameroonian newspaper that wants to be taken seriously not to have an online edition."



Mana agreed with Gaitho on how it is important that the online edition mirror the newspaper, saying, "The design was an important step for us, because we wanted to keep the spirit of the print edition." Mana reports that a significant portion of Le Jour's online readership is also made up of the Cameroon disapora. He also highlighted how having an online edition is simply good publicity for a newspapers brand, he said the web version has opened up a world of markets to Le Jour and, "it permits us to have a global presence and visibility."

It is therefore clear that the expat reader opens up a whole new market of readers and revenue to Africa's newspapers. For those organisations that are reticent about connecting with the web, they need to be aware they are ignoring a growing market waiting to be exploited. The African web news market is already jostling with competitors, so if they do not leap now, they could miss out completely.

Sources: AllAfrica.com, Business Daily, International Labour Organisation, Daily Nation, Le Jour