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Permalink Reply by Scott McCartney on January 16, 2008 at 1:03pm

I think what is most important is a comfortable space in a central, well-traveled campus location. Staffers need to see the Chronicle office as their own, a special place with lots of history and character where they feel like they are stewards of something big. Because they are. They need to sprawl out on couches and crowd in for edit council and create their own memories of how great it is to work at that paper. It should be a place where they want to hang out, where they can make friends as well as make phone calls, where they can work together and play together until 5 a.m... I worry that a fancy, sterile newsroom could kill the culture of the paper.

I don't think equipment and physical layout is as important--the equipment changes rapidly, the technology negates many office needs. What's most important is having a flexible space that can adapt to different staffs as well as different technology.

In terms of location, it needs to be central enough so that editors can pop in for a quick check on a story or photo. And the location needs to reflect the paper's importance to the Duke community. The Chronicle -- a strong daily newspaper with a long history of excellence that has produced many journalists at a school lacking a journalism school -- is an institution Duke should be proud of, and should highlight to prospective students and alumni. To maintain its voice on campus, it shouldn't be shunted off into a remote corner. The Chronicle is every bit as important to Duke as basketball and the Chapel. (Well, maybe not quite as important as basketball....)

Hope that helps. Good luck with the project, and let me know if I can help.

--Scott

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Permalink Reply by CE on February 5, 2008 at 9:07pm

You might check out the new facility just opened for the College Heights Herald, the student newspaper at Western Kentucky University. The 6,500 square foot facility cost $1.6 million and was built largely through donations from alumni of WKU's student publications. The freestanding building houses both the Herald and the Talisman, the campus yearbook, both of which are among the best in the nation. The Herald and Talisman count more than 25 Pulitzer Prize winners among their alumni. The Adams-Whitaker Student Publications Center is set up to be fully multimedia, with television facilities, a sound booth for podcasting and other sound recording, etc. Information on the building and the campaign to raise money for it can be found at www.heraldalumni.com. I am attaching a picture of the exterior.

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• AWSPC.jpg, 98 KB

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Permalink Reply by John Cass on February 19, 2008 at 7:26pm

It used to be that the leading news analysts in the country were the top traditional media outlets, that is no longer the case because anyone can publish content and analyze an industry with the web. However, companies because of their drive for market research data and now blogger engagement buzz reports have a better pulse on what is happening within a particular community than many traditional media outlets. I think for a publication to be competitive in tomorrow's world, many publications will have to adopt some of the technology tools that companies are now using in this area. For example there are tools available that analyze text across the web, discover individual posts, rate by sentiment and authority to provide company managers with tools for market research and blogger engagement. Publications in the future, which adopt these tools, will have a competitive advantage.

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Permalink Reply by Chris O'Brien on February 19, 2008 at 10:41pm

Very interesting. As a journalist, I sometimes worry that we're not doing a good job of taking advantage of all the data that's out there about how readers engage with our work. And therefore, we aren't being aggressive enough in pursuing some of the opportunities to re-imagine how we connect with readers.

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Permalink Reply by John Cass on February 20, 2008 at 9:08am

Hi Chris,

Though engaging readers is certainly part of the point I was making with my posting, as the new tools that are available now also deal with customer engagement, or I suppose reader engagement in this case. I was making a wider point about newsgathering activities, what news should be reported by the newsroom. I'd suggest that these new tools could help a newsroom to find, and evaluate news. I don't think that means people are taken out of the loop, far from removing people, these tools need people to interpret what is important and what is not. I am not a journalist or a PR person, but a marketer, so you will forgive me if I don't quite understand how today's newsroom works, I do however, understand how social media campaigns are being managed in corporate America, and I think those tactics can we used in the newsroom of the future for monitoring and engagement.

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