Svetlana Mironyuk, Editor-in-Chief of Russian news agency, Ria Novosti, joined Session 2 at the 15th annual World Editors Forum to speak about her company's radical transformation to a completely integrated newsroom.

Mironyuk explained how the news agency had plans to reorganize its newsroom over one year ago. Those plans changed immediately after she visited the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town, South Africa, and heard several case studies of successfully integrated newsrooms. She crossed her fingers on the plane home, hoping that the construction workers that were supposed to start reorganizing the newsroom would arrive late.

Fortunately, they did, and Ria Novosit's team was able to decide over night that they would scrap their original plans and launch an integrated newsroom.

Ria Novosti's transition has been very fast. Three and a half years ago, the agency didn't even have a website. Now, it's journalists are competent in multimedia and work in an innovative newsroom.

Because of space problems, the newsroom is on two floors, but the floors are in constant contact with one another through large screens and news tickers that display the latest news the agency is producing. There is also a public address system that is used to announce top priority breaking news across both floors.

This new newsroom layout created many advantages for the newsroom. Journalists now interact more and are more effective. There are more opportunities to exchange information within the newsroom and there is more competition between journalists. Perhaps the most advantageous aspect of the new newsroom is the increased speed with which journalists react to news.

Mironyuk said that the change in newsroom created a change in focus. Instead of being a primarily b to b content producer, the news agency began producing directly for consumers. They launched many new projects such as fashion sites, financial literary information sites, and social networking.

Journalists in the Ria Novosti newsroom are now encouraged to look for stories, not just for news. Instead of simply performing multimedia, they think it. Their new strategies have helped the agency to increase its revenue by 50% in one year.