AS LEADERS OF YOUR NEWS ORGANIZATIONS, there are three areas in which you have to provide the vision, the support, and the enthusiasm for change. New technologies, new resources, new products, and a new customer base are changing so many aspects of journalists’ work. Keeping an eye on and preparing for the new while building on the well-honed traditions of journalistic practice are the challenges for newsroom leaders.
The three areas of news media most affected by new media are:
- News-gathering and reporting
- New products
- News customers
News-Gathering and Reporting
When the big story breaks, how is your team prepared to tap into online resources to get the background it needs? When covering an on-going story, how is your team able to see what others are saying, to find new angles and perspectives? When doing enterprise, how is your team finding new and fresh ideas, covering the uncovered? When bringing voice to the story, how is your team locating people with expertise and people with experience?
If the resources of the World Wide Web are not part of the answer to those questions it borders on journalistic malpractice. The Internet is where stories are breaking, where background is provided, where experts are located.
Computer-assisted reporting techniques are under-used in television newsrooms. Using spreadsheets to compile and analyze data, developing databases to track trends, and working with mapping programs that can reveal concentrations of occurrences provide powerful new storytelling techniques. They have the potential to uncover untold stories, to wrest away the power of interpretation of data from the officials, to bust popular perceptions, or to confirm anecdotal evidence. What kind of journalism are you doing in your newsroom — reactive or investigative?
Opportunities
- Level the playing field — anyone anywhere has the same access to resources
- Cheaper access to resources only well-funded newsrooms had in the past
- Take the lead, don’t just follow others’ coverage — using news alerts, mining sites for new stories, doing original data analysis
- Keep talented, energized journalists by providing them with resources
Issues
- What access do reporters / producers have to the Internet? Is it a resource at their desktops or is access limited to a few stations in the newsroom?
- What kind of training have reporters / producers received?
- What resources are available to help them find good sites (an Intranet, a researcher)?
- What techniques are used to facilitate news finding (filters or personalized news services)? Are all the advanced techniques of research and personalized services understood and being used?
- What is the budget line for accounts to “for-fee” information services? Not everything is free on the web. How will subscription services be managed?
- How are successes promoted? Are examples of innovative research and enterprise rewarded?
New Products
Mono-media is dead. The creative product of your newsroom is going to multiple platforms. The packaging of the news product has to be multipurpose — for broadcast, the web, the cell phone, the PDA, the bathroom mirror. Soon the potential of High Definition Television (HDTV) delivery of news will bring new opportunities and issues. How are you preparing your staff to anticipate and embrace the potential of multi-platform delivery of the news?
What is your own attitude toward these new technologies? HDTV has been referred to, disparagingly, as High Deficit TV. How might the development of plans for HDTV go if your team thinks of it as Hot Damn TV. While developing plans with a sense of reality is critical, don’t stymie creative R&D in the early stages when enthusiasm and idea generation is essential.
Opportunities
- Audience can get the news they want when they want it in the form they want
- Create the product line that people use, rely on
- Provide more depth, additional material, “give-me-more” features to customers
- Re-engineer the newsroom to think of information in multiple forms, prepare for the future (which is now)
- Potential for collaboration of content, specialize in local audio / video stock
Issues
- Training: Do your journalists know how to create multimedia, interactive, non-linear news packages? What skill sets will be required to think in a 3D information space?
- Collaboration/integration: How is the “new products” unit operating — as part of the news team, as a separate unit with little interaction with the news team? How is this helping or hindering efforts to re-engineer the newsroom?
- Digital asset management: As things go digital, are you archiving for re-use? How can you tap into resources of the past to make up the current news package? How do you control and manage various media resources?
- Creating not just “media neutral” newsrooms but “media sensitive” newsrooms. What business are you in, what products are you creating, what do those products need?
- Staffing: What kind of reporters/researchers will you need to create the elements of the multiple media/interactive news product? What will the positions in the multiple media newsroom be?
News Customers
The “Us to Them” model is dying. New news consumers will expect to have control on many aspects of the newscast: when they watch it, from what angle, the depth of the coverage, the type of news they want to see. Time-shifting, multicasting, camera vantage point selection — all will provide the viewer with more power over the product. News consumers will have new means of communicating with you about the news, and will expect a response.
If you look at the top 50 websites in terms of traffic you will find out a lot about what people want to do online. They want to communicate with each other. They want to create their own pages. They want to play games, buy things, find things. How are the products you are creating helping them do those things? The primary mission, being a credible and reliable source of news and information, has not changed, but it does need to be augmented to satisfy the expectations of the new news customer.
Opportunities
- Get a better sense of the news consumers’ appetites and reactions
- Track actual use of the news consumers’ behaviors
- Create a dialog with the news consumer
Issues
- Do your reporters all have e-mail addresses?
- Is there a public forum area on the website? Do you offer interactive features on the website?
- Are users of your site able to customize to their needs and interests?
- How easily can people find things on your site? Do you facilitate learning or frustrate it?
