Should a newsroom integrate its online operation into the main newsroom, or keep it separate?

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Permalink Reply by Sanjay Bhatt on February 22, 2008 at 11:40am

Here at The Seattle Times, the print newsroom supplies content for both the print and online editions. The editor and senior producers of our website, seattletimes.com, sit in on all the story planning meetings for the newspaper, and the staffs sit in the same newsroom. In other words, the online staff are integrated into the print newsroom.

Given the major trends -- growing online readership, stagnant print readership, and many digital media platforms -- it seems to me that we should be publishing the news with our online audience in mind first. But we can't forget the thoughtful, in-depth journalism that has kept audiences coming back to the print medium.

In my perfect world here's how the newsroom of the future might look:
-- Online Newsroom: Offer a morning, afternoon and evening edition as well as breaking news updates. Emphasis on speed, accuracy and variety each day, with longer pieces in the evenings and weekends. This will require at least two, maybe three shifts. Every reporter and editor in this newsroom has received training in how to create content for print, broadcast and online media.
-- Special projects division: A group of top journalists who develop in-depth investigative or stylistic pieces for weekend editions, special reports online and niche magazines.
-- Formatting division: A crack group of producers, designers and copy editors whose job it is to repackage content from the Online newsroom in the most appealing way for old media and new media. Here's where engineering talent can be brought to bear as well.
-- Library and data division: With the mushrooming of online databases, wikis, and blogs, there's a need for a group that can provide the traditional support to the newsroom AND produce cool maps, data charts and interactive widgets relevant to the online audience.

A lot of this structure already exists, but it isn't organized in a way that is oriented to the online product as the primary one.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Morgan on February 25, 2008 at 6:30am

I like Sanjay's suggestions and the emphasis on the type of content that is better suited to print and online delivery--breaking news and shorter stuff online, longer pieces for print. Also seems like a college newsroon can't help but be integrated. If you tried to divide a bunch of 19-year-olds into "print" versus "online" reporters, there wouldn't *be* a print edition, would there?

Seems like the Washington Post's two newsrooms must merge or one will win out over the other (and perhaps that's what the Post's management wants?). The suspicioun and rivalry between the two just doesn't sound healthy.

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Permalink Reply by Brad on May 19, 2008 at 4:39pm

I don't know how most newspapers could even field this. Many small newspapers barely even have enough reporters to put together a newspaper, let alone have the money to have a separate newsroom.

I like the roles that Sanjay has outlined, but in smaller markets it is nearly impossible.

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Permalink Reply by Haley Crum on May 19, 2008 at 6:40pm

I work at The Daily Mississippian, the student newspaper at the University of Mississippi, and we tried separating the print and online staffs a couple of years ago. Only one word can describe what happened - disaster. We soon realized that it was hurting our content on both platforms, and readers know something is up when everything is not "right" in the newsroom.

I know I'm a rookie here, but I think by separating the two staffs you are only creating an unnecessary disconnect. By integrating the online staff in the main newsroom it enhances your content because, well, everyone knows exactly what's going on. Plain and simple. There are many other reasons as well, but I think that's the most obvious.

In response to Brad's post: I think you are right, but this is why reporters need to be trained in more than one area. While you don't want to spread reporters too thin (who wants all mediocre content?), it's a huge help in smaller newsrooms if one of your print reporters can also take photos or edit video. If everyone pitches in a little, a small print publication can still have a quality online publication.

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Permalink Reply by George Sells on May 20, 2008 at 7:57am

The last two TV newsrooms I worked in covered both sides of the discussion. WHAS TV in Louisville is integrated, News 12 Long Island in New York is separated. There is no question in my mind that the two need to be together. At the end of the day, your biggest stories will be both online and in print (or on air) and having everyone separated does nothing but increase the chance of errors. One, converged newsroom means there's a gate keeper seeing that all the information from all your reporting sources is making all platforms. It also reduces that chance of person A, telling person B, who screws up the facts in conveying it to person C.

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Permalink Reply by Chris O'Brien on June 5, 2008 at 1:55pm

I'm glad to see the discussion continuing here. My own sense is that it ought to be a single newsroom as well. But I remain surprised at how often that's not the case. Since I originally posted that article about the Washington Post, their multimedia guru Rob Curley announced he was leaving and taking his team with him to the Las Vegas Sun. I'm looking forward to hearing the full story one day about why he decided to leave. But I'll bet that having two newsrooms probably marginalized the impact he could have on the entire operation, print and online.

At the San Jose Mercury News, where I work during the day, our online folks are still separate from the main newsroom, which I've found to hamper the conversation and the culture. Folks in the newsroom don't fundamentally understand the mechanics of how online works in the same way they understand print production and decisions. That needs to change if we're ever going to change the way news gets produced.

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