Results matching “integration changing mindsets t”

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

Le Monde’s print and online teams are non-integrated, and it’s only this year that the paper began mapping out a concrete plan to further collaboration – not integration. Yet this relative ‘belatedness’ doesn’t prevent Le Monde and LeMonde.fr from being considered by many as the French quality newspaper of record, and being second among national news sites for time spent and first for number of unique visitors. Why isn't Le Monde integrated? How does it keep both operations running smoothly? The Weblog interviewed Alexis Delcambre, editor of LeMonde.fr, and Philippe Le Coeur, who coordinates the relationship between print and online.

When The Australian News reported that Fairfax would equip 400 or more journalists with all-purpose multimedia mobile Jasjam devices, at the cost of $1300 a piece, this sounded like a project equally revolutionary and costly. Here, Fairfax’s top editors describe the overarching vision behind the mobile tools, and how its newspapers are training reporters to adapt to an evolving breaking news culture.

In the run-up to the 14th World Editors Forum, to be held in Cape Town between June 2 and June 7, the Editors Weblog is providing snapshots onto some of the ideas to be developed by the main speakers. Starting first: Mike van Niekerk, Online editor-in-chief of the Australian group Fairfax Media, who will speak about his experience with integrated newsrooms. He describes the necessity of cultural change among the staff, of going through the process slowly but surely, and how Fairfax – once mindsets were changed – equipped its reporters with multi-functional devices.

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