Results matching “of newspapers fight agai”

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.

Paul Moreira is an investigative reporter who has worked extensively in the print press and was one of the founders of the defunct French, investigative, television show “90 minutes.” In his latest book, Les nouvelles censures, Moreira describes the widespread practices of overt and covert manipulations of the news media. “One of this era’s most powerful myths is that we live in the information age. In fact, we live in a media age, in which information is repetitive, “safe” and limited by invisible borders,” writes John Pilger, Hidden Agendas. Are these theories ‘Big Brother’ paranoia, or are information flows much more controlled than the public would like to think? Is this only the case for television’s spectacular requirements, or also for trusted newspapers? Moreira investigates, and answers.

Belgian French-language newspapers, which had sued Google over its use of their copyrighted content, are back on Google. The papers agreed that Google could link stories to their websites.

Robert Niles of Online Journalism Review says that Google and Google News aren’t stealing content and readers, and often actually drive traffic to newspaper websites.

In the Newsroom Barometer, three questions revolved around editors’ views about the new challenges and opportunities for newspapers that have emerged with new forms of journalism, such as free papers, citizen journalism and online news. Far from resenting these forms, senior news executives embraced them.

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and Jeff Jarvis, new media proponent and founder of Buzzmachine, comment on the results of the Newsroom Barometer. Both found that editors’ optimism and open-mindedness to new media was a clear indication that newspapers were embracing the digital revolution, yet Jarvis fears that may not be enough…

Paid-for newspaper revenues have been declining, due in part to the significant decrease in single-copy sales. Editor & Publisher considers how to boost the sales of a still-important aspect for newspaper revenue.

"In the news industry, professional and “amateur” content combined creates a better product," or so Reuters CEO Tom Glocer feels. In a Financial Times article entitled "Old Media must embrace the amateur," Glocer tries to allay the fears the MSM has of its recently media empowered audience and tries to persuade it to use their respected names not only as a place where the audience can get news, but as a place for them to gather, contribute and communicate.

The British and American press are faced with an editorial decision. An overwhelming majority of their newspapers declined to publish the Mohammed cartoons claiming that the images were too offensive to Muslims among numerous other excuses. Now, the French Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands-Posten, the same Danish daily that commissioned the cartoons, have printed a manifesto signed by 12 well-known academics and writers including Salman Rushdie, that is undoubtedly anti-Islamist Extremist and will certainly be interpreted by some in the global Muslim community as clear evidence that the West is prejudice against them. So, if Muslims find this manifesto offensive, how will the British and American press report on it?

Three cartoonists, Dilem (Ali Dilem) of Algeria’s daily newspaper Liberty, Cabu (Jean Cabu) of France’s Charlie Hebdo and Le Canard Enchainé (both political satire weeklies) and Iran’s Nikahang Kowsar have answered questions about their own perspectives on the Mohammed cartoons and freedom of expression.

Each cartoonist has a different perspective. Dilem asserts that people should be "allowed to make cartoons of everything", while simultaneously stating that he understands how a cartoon depicting Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb has shocked some people. Kowsar criticizes the publication of the cartoons, stating: "I am critical of what they did: when you do something that you know will create hatred and annoy people who are a minority in Europe, this can be very insensitive." Finally, Cabu defends the publication of the cartoons, asserting that Nikahansuch actions are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

The World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum have protested against a wave of repressive action against editors and other journalists in Arab and Muslim countries who have published the cartoons of Mohamet at the centre of the current controversy.

In letters to the governments of Algeria, Yemen, Malaysia and Jordan, together with that of Russia, the Paris-based WAN and WEF have called for the release of jailed journalists and the reopening of banned publications.

 The Editors' Weblog has compiled a provisional list of the newspapers that have printed some or all of the cartoons since 30 September 2005, date of publication of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. Even provisional, this list is the most exhaustive on the internet, thanks to members of the World Editors Forum and to bloggers close to the EW.

The main conclusions are:

- to our knowledge, more than 130 national or local newspapers (excluding the student newspapers and online publications) published some or all of the 12 cartoons (sometimes just a pohtography) in approximately 50 countries . It also means that around 1,7% of the dailies around the world - 8,300 paid-for dailies according to World Press Trends 2005 - made the difficult decision to publish the cartoons.

- Europe was the continent where the most newspapers published the cartoons: at least 70 papers. It is not surprising that the Netherlands was the country most involved in the controversy (after Denmark)... a few months after the assassination of the film maker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist activist. Same thing in France after the veil debate and the November 2005 riots.

- Within Europe, the first publications to reprint the cartoons in January-February 2006 were in general right-wing publications, for example ABC in Spain, Die Welt in Germany and Corriere della Sera in Italy. Then more leftist publications followed suit, for example Libération and Le Monde in France.

- Surprisingly, Arab and Muslim newspapers were also involved in the controversy from the very beginning, with the first reprint on 17 October 2005 (see below)! More than 12 Arab and/or Muslim newspapers published the cartoons. The decision to publish provoked terrible consequences for the editors-in-chief of these publications. Same consequences for some directors of television in Sudan and Algeria. 

- How to define the position adopted by American, British, Canadian and Australian newspapers? Media responsability, political correctness or self-censorship? The most surprising is not the position defined in many editorials (from The New York Times to The Guardian), but this strange impression of unanimity and consensus: only three regional newspapers on more than 1,400 newspapers in the States and zero newspaper, but a student daily in the UK for taking the risk...

- And what in the rest of the world? Nothing. Almost the desert for the publication of the cartoons in the Americas (apart Brazil), Africa (apart South Africa) and above all Asia (apart New Zealand). As if this controversy was only between Europe and the Arab world and if blasphemy was still relevant in regions as Asia and the Americas: not only about Mohammed, but about all religious issues.

My conclusion: the geography of the publication of the Danish cartoons tells us a lot about our democracies: what is allowed, what is forbidden... and what is taboo. In fact, it's more geopolitics than geography!

Illustration: "Mohammed the Prophet / The Fanatism", a tragedy written by Voltaire in 1741. Edition of the complete works of Voltaire, 1846, Société des publications illustrées (drawing by Moreau).

I love old books, but I didn't know one day I would be obliged to go to my bookcase to argue about press freedom, media responsability and the current Mohammed cartoons row. Last year in November 2005 I was already surprised that some French and Swiss Islamic organisations contested the live performance of Voltaire's play. For them, the tragedy was an insult against the Prophet and they asked - without success - that the play cease to be performed. But police had to protect the actors, the director Hervé Loichemol and the audience*...

France Soir, the French daily that yesterday re-printed the infamous Mohammed cartoons originally published by Danish paper Jyllands Posten in September 2005 (see previous posting and here and here), has fired its managing director Jacques Lefranc and issued an apology for the re-printing of the cartoons.

Raymond Lakah, owner of France Soir, stated he had "decided to remove Jacques Lefranc as managing director of the publication as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual .. We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication" of the caricatures.