Göteborg: The Wall Street Journal welcomes experimentation

Integrated newsrooms are a great hope for us and a great excitement, said Almar Latour, Managing Editor, wsj.com. Speaking at the 15th World Editors Forum, Latour said that the integrated newsroom at the famous Wall Street Journal has been an inspiration for its journalists. 

The Wall Street Journal started integrating its newsroom about twelve months ago, commencing a year of tremendous change. Since online editors and journalists were separate from print editors and journalists, they did not even know each other. Work was being duplicated and there was some competitive friction between the two newsrooms. The solution to these problems was an integrated newsroom.

Wall Street Journal editors now work side by side, creating a news factory. News move faster, there are fewer duplicated edits and print editors have started to gain online skills. There are new sections and more videos since the editors are thinking about the news online.

They focus their online attention on:
Videos
Images and photos
Infographics
Community Outreach
New Projects

The new online strategy has worked. The Wall Street Journal online's unique page views has doubled.

But Almar Latour says it has been a challenge to convince reporters to spend time on activities other than writing. Not only are many reporters and journalists devoted to the written word, producing videos etc., the online edition adds to their work load. One tool to convince their journalists about the advantages of posting stories online has been their Most Popular List. This is a list that shows how many people have read the story, watched the video etc., on the web site. Reporters can now actually see that their stories are read. This creates healthy competition among the reporters. They can see if they are in the top ten for example.

At the Wall Street Journal experimentation is welcome. Reporters are given cameras and are encouraged to do what they will with them. Failure is accepted: some things have worked, some haven't. But Latour sees much promise in the integrated newsroom. For example, many journalists have learned that video compliments the written word and offers a different way of telling a story.

Latour took the example of journalist Jeffrey Zaslow. He wrote a story about a teacher with terminal cancer whose last lecture was captured on video. Zaslow posted the edited video aside his written aritcle on the website. Mr Zaslow discovered that through the video he could connect to new people. He could show something that the written word could not. People started to link to the video and it got a lot of attention. Posting it on line also generated a lot of responses from viewers. The story was later turned into a web site and a book published in 29 languages.