Newsplex Special Report 6.30 (English)

The IfraNewsplex Initiative

Lessons in Convergence

Ifra Special Report 6.30

Newsplex Directorate and Imprint02Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

Newsplex Directorate Newsplex is a registered trademark of Ifra in the U.S., Europe, Asia and other locations.

Imprint

Ifra Special Reports, research reports, technical study reports and documents for the standardisation of newspaper production techniques. Published by: Ifra, Washingtonplatz, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany; www.ifra.com; Tel. +49.6151.733-6; Fax +49.6151.733-800. Chief Executive Officer: Reiner Mittelbach. Director of Research: Manfred Werfel. ResearchManager: Harald Löffler. Republishing – also of excerpts – only with express permission of Ifra and acknowledgement oforigin. Price: Ifra Special Reports are sold at the price of 130 EUR* per copy. For Ifra members, the price is covered by themembership fee that entitles them to an allotted number of copies. Ifra members may order additional copies at 13 EUR*per copy.

* plus 7% in Germany and for companies and persons in the European Union that do not have a VAT number.Cove

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Table of Contents

© 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

03Table of Contents


1 Introduction and Overview

1.1 Foreword .................................................................................................................................................................... 4

1.2 Forecast – Setting the Media Agenda ......................................................................................................................... 5

1.3 Executive summary .................................................................................................................................................... 7

1.4 The Case for Convergence .......................................................................................................................................... 8

2 Projects and Results

2.1 Newsplex Convergence Guides .................................................................................................................................. 10

2.2 New Roles in a Converging Newsroom ....................................................................................................................... 15

2.3 Newsplex Convergence Monitor ................................................................................................................................. 26

2.4 Convergence Monitor Case Study: Dispatch Media .................................................................................................... 27

2.5 2004 Convergence Spotlight ...................................................................................................................................... 40

2.6 Mobile Publishing Models for Wireless Convergence................................................................................................. 43

2.7 Video in Print – Converging Newspapers and TV ........................................................................................................ 46

2.8 Newsplex Fellow......................................................................................................................................................... 49

3 Training and Programs

3.1 Newsplex Training Methods ....................................................................................................................................... 51

3.2 Training Case Study – Greater Manchester Newspapers ............................................................................................ 53

3.3 Training Case Study – Florida Times Union................................................................................................................. 56

3.4 Training Case Study – Edipresse Groupe .................................................................................................................... 58

3.5 Training Case Study – Savannah Morning News......................................................................................................... 60

3.6 First-Year Special Programs........................................................................................................................................ 63

4 Facility and Technology

4.1 The Newsplex Model Environment ............................................................................................................................. 65

4.2 Construction Record................................................................................................................................................... 70

4.3 Architecture of Change ............................................................................................................................................... 74

4.4 Enabling Technology for Advanced Newshandling ..................................................................................................... 76

4.5 NewsGearTM ................................................................................................................................................................ 78

5 Appendix

5.1 Newsplex Directorate ................................................................................................................................................. 80

5.2 Reprints...................................................................................................................................................................... 81

“Putting the new in newsroom” – Editor and Publisher.............................................................................................. 81

“Busy first year for Newsplex” – Editor and Publisher ............................................................................................... 88

“Military action in Iraq puts Newsplex to the test” – Government Video Magazine.................................................... 92

“L’info grand écran” – La Liberation ........................................................................................................................... 93

“Newsplex gives thumbs up to Tablet PC” – Seybold Reports.................................................................................... 95

5.3 Testimonial letters...................................................................................................................................................... 98

Manchester Evening News/Guardian Media Group Regional Newspapers................................................................. 98

Florida Times-Union/Morris Communications............................................................................................................ 99

5.4 Convergence Dialog....................................................................................................................................................100

5.5 Newsplex Legates ......................................................................................................................................................103

5.6 Relationships .............................................................................................................................................................104

5.7 The Newsplex Staff..................................................................................................................................................... 107

1.1 Foreword04

1.1 Foreword

Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

When journalists walk into the IfraNewsplex at theUniversity of South Carolina for the first time, it feels fa-miliar to them. It feels like a newsroom. CNN and BBC onthe video monitors. Text and imaging editing software onthe computers. Cameras and recorders ready to be takenout on assignment. People in a news meeting debating themerits of a story.

At the same time, they realize this isn’t like any news-room they’ve ever been in before. See-thru/talk-thru wallsthat aren’t walls. Lots of sunlight. Stand-up workstationsnear the entrance. Lots of sunlight. A big video news dis-play to one side. Completely wireless networking and com-munications. Lots of sunlight. A knot of people workingtogether on a newspaper page, a desktop video production,a microsite web shell and a mobile web log all at the sametime.

Did I mention how light and airy it is? Especially com-pared to the typical editorial dungeon.

Some first-time visitors literally spin around trying totake it all in.

This mixture of familiarity and head-spinning wonderis precisely what Ifra was aiming for when it set out to develop a prototype newsroom for convergent news-handling. It is the Newsplex’ home-field advantage. It ismind-opening.

Whether the visiting journalists consciously realize itor not, they invariably wind up thinking to themselves,“Well, if a newsroom can be so different and still be anewsroom, perhaps we can do news a little differentlyhere, too.”

And with that first step, the journey begins.In the first 18 months after the Newsplex opened its

doors in November 2002, more than 1,500 professionalmembers of the news industry trekked to Columbia, S.C.,USA, to visit the future. Out of that number more than 170stayed up to a week to study the philosophy, tools andtechniques on which that future is built.

Regardless of whether they are participating in a fullfive-day Newsplex Roles Training for a Converging News-room or just a day-and-a-half executive briefing on con-vergence trends for corporate communicators, one particu-lar point is impressed on everyone who comes to theNewsplex to learn:

It’s really not about the impressive architecture or theeven more impressive technology with which the News-plex is endowed. You know this thing they are interestedin that goes by the name convergence but that is so hardto define? It’s really much more about the journalism. It’smuch more about the multiple-media workflow, the col-laborative organization and the cross-format editorialmanagement implemented in the newsroom. And perhapsmost significantly it’s about the mindset of an editorialstaff realizing they now work in the news and informationbusiness, not anymore in the newspaper or television busi-ness.

With that established, we then make a point to dis-suade our visitors of any idea that the Newsplex is simplygoing to present them with a one-size-fits-all solution forthe complicated transition from monomedia to multiple-media news business. The Newsplex is descriptive, not pre-scriptive. Its purpose is to demonstrate the possibilities forhow the news industry can advance and improve in thisinformation economy, how it can serve and prosper in theconverging marketplace of print, video, online and mobilemedia. It is the job of the trainees, after graduating from aNewsplex course, to help their newsrooms select and adaptthe Newsplex’ lessons to their particular situations.

We confer graduates of our training programs with thetitle Newsplex Legates. The distinction has a dual meaning.

A legate is an envoy, a representative. We have con-veyed some of the Newsplex concepts and expertise to ourlegates and now expect them to represent these conceptsto others in the industry who have not had the opportuni-ty to interact with IfraNewsplex firsthand. It is only in thisway that Ifra’s Newsplex initiative can reach its fullest po-tential in support of the future of news, newsrooms andnewshandling organizations.

A Newsplex Legate is also someone who is now person-ally invested in the legacy of the IfraNewsplex. Our successis their success. So we hope and expect that they will con-tinue to interact with us, give us feedback, suggest ways toimprove our effectiveness, alert us to new ideas and trendsthat they discover in their work and that we might incorpo-rate into our ever-evolving programs and services.

This special report is a compilation of Newsplex les-sons and experiences during its development and start-up.It is intended to serve as a guide and an introduction toconvergence theory and practice.

As with our Legates, Ifra welcomes your feedback and contributions as our experience in this field continuesto grow.

Kerry J. NorthrupIfra Director of Publications and Newsplex Founder


051.2 Forecast – Setting the Media Agenda


1.2 Forecast – Setting the Media Agenda

We live in a global information society.Media houses all over the world are taking on an in-

creasingly important social function: guiding through aninformation jungle that is growing more and more dense.Information itself is of little value unless presented in sucha way that its truth, credibility and implications are trans-parent. This calls for a team of responsible and creativejournalists who put the customer – the reader, listener orviewer – at the focal point of their work, i.e. the communi-cation of information. They must illuminate backgrounds,make comparisons and relate experiences, describe impli-cations and express opinions, even offer diversion. This isthe basis on which a society puts its trust in media – ordoes not do so.

In the first decade of the 21st Century, for newsroomsat newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, thismeans working in a way that is both media-neutral andmedia-specific.

The technological development of hardware and soft-ware, the strong push that is being experienced by the in-ternet, but especially the affordability of technology, haveall transformed newspaper publishing houses into mediahouses for which operating different information channelsis a natural activity. Their objective is to be the leading in-formation provider and communicator in a region.

And as for the other market players?TV stations become publishers of magazines. Radio

stations successfully run web sites. Personalized just-in-time information such as via mobile services is capturinggrowing market shares. This produces a media mix, wherethe consumer decides what information he is prepared totrust and pay for.

As a result, an evolutionary social process is takingplace in which the newsroom is taking on the role of mod-erator. No university in the world teaches this type ofcross-media working in organized processes, no matterwhat core business a media house puts at the center of itspublishing activities.

This is where the Newsplex model comes in. It commu-nicates concrete knowledge of how media-neutral workprocesses and media-specific publishing, tailored to the in-dividual character of a media house, can be successfullyorganized.

This model works via the NewsDesk in Asia, on theAmerican continents, in Europe, or in southern Africa. In-dependent of the publishing culture, process-orientedworking such as is called for and promoted by the News-plex philosophy has a positive influence on the atmos-phere in the newsroom and on the individual products forwhich a newsroom bears responsibility. This type of organ-ization provides transparency in daily operations, creatingpotential time windows that can be invested in the qualityof the journalistic work. Thus it opens up the possibility,also for smaller media houses, to become and remain theagenda-setter in a given region.

Based on Ifra’s experience from more than 10 News-Desk projects so far, this form of organization helps newsrooms acquire a higher degree of internal press freedom and makes a major contribution to the diversityof the press.

Newsrooms at regional daily newspapers all over theworld today see their role increasingly as that of the in-house news agency. They serve print and online, mobileservices, radio and TV equally. And they have long discov-ered the marketing departments of the publishing housesas communication partners.

The competence of a customer- and market-orientednewsroom is concentrated at the NewsDesk. All decisionsrelating to editorial content, independent of where, howand when it is published, are taken at this desk. The News-Desk is the competence center of the newsroom – the serv-ice point and development center.

1.2 Forecast – Setting the Media Agenda06Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

Content management systems allow access to all typesof information (text, image, video, audio, metadata, etc.),independent of where it is stored (database, intranet, inter-net). The main use of this kind of comprehensive new sys-tem is the capability to simply process information, fromboth the organizational and technical points of view, in amedia-neutral and media-specific way. Informationprocesses are developed, designed, controlled and trackedin an integral process. By aligning personnel with systemsand processes, a media house can focus its activities on itscustomers and benefit from all varieties of media conver-gence (online, SMS, e-mail services, electronic ink, etc.) ina product- and market-oriented way. New developments,modifications or simply changes in the distribution of in-formation are easy to implement.

Ads are simply information communicated with a dif-ferent type of objectivity, emotion or seriousness than is the case in newsrooms. The procedure is the same. Thetotal use of all available information also allows the trans-formation of the advertising department at a daily news-paper into a fully-fledged regional agency.

In the same way as the complex work in the newsroomis controlled via the NewsDesk, the AdDesk as envisionedin Ifra’s Adplexing concept controls all aspects of the media house relations with advertisers, both internally andexternally. As in the newsroom, besides the core businessof print, this extends also to cover cross-media activitiessuch as online, mobile services or even billboards andposters. The service provided to advertising customerstherefore becomes more intensive, personal, objective-oriented and effective. The ad consultant and his team actas a partner to the customer for all types of media.

In addition, the fully-fledged agency manages the customer’s brand and advises also about events. Adver-tisers are no longer managed only by one advertising representative. Media specialists with many individualstrengths look after the needs of the customer. Such a team consists of the ad-canvasser, his assistant, a mediadesigner and an editor, to whom usually several ad con-sultants are assigned.

With Newsplex, Ifra is further expanding its service tomedia houses worldwide. As a partner to the newspaperand media industries active on an international scale andfollowing the successful operation of the Newsplex facilityin South Carolina, Ifra now plans to open a European cen-ter at Ifra headquarters in Darmstadt in order to bring thisopportunity closer to more Ifra members.

Practice-oriented training and practical consulting onimplementation will be to the fore of the service offerings,presented by native speakers for participants from France,Spain, Italy, Scandinavia and the German-speaking re-gions.

Harald RitterIfra Director of Newsplex Operations


071.3 Executive Summary


1.3 Executive Summary

As the world’s media companies march into the newcentury, hundreds of them are marching to a differentdrum – a new rhythm with multiple media operating andpublishing in harmony – with the goal to be in bettersynch with their audience members’ needs.

The revolution from monomedia to multiple mediapublishing has created vast requirements for training, con-sulting and research. Media companies need to knowabout the best practices and best investments in conver-gence in order to construct their own convergence strate-gies. Ifra has been a leader in the areas of research, con-sulting and training for cross-media integration from thebeginning of the convergence revolution.

Upon identifying the industry media trend, Ifra set outon a sophisticated, 14-month research study to understandthe future media marketplace and its many plausible futures. It employed scenario planning research, and fromthat research, Newsplex was born.

The $2.5 million IfraNewsplex at the University ofSouth Carolina in the United States is a prototype micro-newsroom for demonstration, training and research innext-generation newshandling tools and techniques. It wascompleted in November 2002 and began operation the following February. The Newsplex is located at and oper-ated in cooperation with the University of South CarolinaCollege of Journalism and Mass Communication in Colum-bia, S.C.

The Newsplex model environment for a cross-medianewsroom was developed by starting not from the news-rooms and the news businesses as they exist today, butrather from evaluations of the kinds of media marketplacesin which journalism and publishing could operate in thefuture. Scenario planning is all about imagining multiplefutures rather than extrapolating just one. After analyzingthe range of these multiple futures, scenario planners makehigh-level plans to be best positioned for the gamut ofpossibilities.

The plethora of multiple media scenarios identified in the early scenario research pointed to the need for atraining facility for convergent newshandling – a modelenvironment such as the Newsplex.

The Newsplex is backed by a directorate of the world'smost forward-thinking media organizations and mediatechnology developers, who helped to fund its construc-tion. It is also supported by an international affiliation ofleading consultants, and media education and training institutions.

The Newsplex’ dynamic training programs providesmall groups of trainees with the tools, the mentoring, thetechniques and the news scenario exercises to take backand apply to their own news operations. The small-group,hands-on training for converging media companies setsNewsplex training apart from any other media training experience. The training gives participants first-hand ex-perience with the tools, skills and management processesnecessary to advance individual convergence strategies.

Through its first 18 months, the Newsplex has been aliving, breathing research project on converging news-rooms and media company processes. During this period,more than 1,500 visitors and training participants – includ-ing hundreds of professional journalists, students, aca-demics, managers and executives – have been challenged,enriched and energized by their Newsplex interactions.

Newsplex Legates, as training graduates are called,leave prepared to face current requirements of their work-place but also with a game plan for the future. Newsplexprograms mix practical experience with strategic thinking.

A project on the scale of the $2.5 million Newsplexcannot be relevant and illuminating without a constant in-flux of the best research, both theoretical and empirical,consisting of data that is both qualitative and quantitative.

Ifra’s Newsplex staff members stay abreast of the mostpowerful examples of convergence, and relay best prac-tices and tailor-made strategies based on tried-and-trueconvergence practices. They visit and evaluate more than25 converging operations in Asia, South America, NorthAmerica and Europe per year, and bring those experiencesand best practices into the training courses.

Newsplex’ Year One has been an unqualified success.The groups of trainees went on to implement their conver-gence strategies and continue down the path of cross-media integration. We welcome you to experienceIfraNewsplex for yourself.

1.4 The Case for Convergence08

1.4 The Case for Convergence


IfraNewsplex would not exist if not for multimediaconvergence. But what is the phenomenon?

There is no single definition of what constitutes con-vergence, because convergence is defined by each mediamarketplace. In the broadest sense, convergence is theprocess whereby media companies break out of their tradi-tional, “siloed” formats to deliver richer news and infor-mation services more in tune with what consumers wantand when they want it. It is a change brought on by tech-nology and the burgeoning information economy. Onceimplemented internally, convergence will most often be re-flected through integration of print, video, online and mo-bile journalists, and the joining of their formerly separatedepartments, organizational structures and newsflowprocesses.

Part of defining convergence is defining what it is not.Convergence is not simply collaboration, such as the trad-ing of content between a TV station and a newspaper thatin the final analysis produces nothing extra for the newsconsumer. Convergence is not simply swapping cross-promotional capabilities in hopes of driving traffic fromone medium to the other. True convergence is much richer,deeper and more permanent than that. It is a mindsetchange – a seamless integration where journalists arecross-trained and learn to think in terms of multiple media. It is a companywide reorganization, from mono-media to multiple media.

Inevitably, Newsplex training participants ask, “Whyconvergence? Why do we need it? What’s the big fuss?Why should we uproot the way we do things, in favour ofa much more complicated, communication-intensive wayof working?”

The answer is outside the newsroom’s windows, out-side our media organizations, in the media marketplace itself. That marketplace has changed. Consumers havemany more choices for satisfying their need to know, andthey are exercising their options to such a great degreethat many traditional media are losing significant marketshare. Without becoming more relevant and useful to theaudience, across media, the news organizations stand towither, and indeed may die.

As recently as the 1980s, the consumption of news washighly predictable: Newspapers were read in the morningand evening at home, news radio was listened to on theway to and from work, and network and local TV newswas watched during prime time in the evening. But for thepast decade, the media marketplace has been fueled by thenew news consumer who accesses information when hewants it, where she wants it, any time, any place and onany platform. The media marketplace is no longer drivenby media companies. The media marketplace is driven bythe audience.

Statistics bear the proof of the seismic shift from themedia-driven to audience-driven media economy. Whilemore media are being consumed, according to market re-search firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, traditional mediasuch as newspapers and television are losing ground. Anincreasing amount of entertainment media is being con-sumed, now and projected for the future. Media consumersare multitasking at an unprecedented level – reading thenewspaper while listening to the radio, watching TV whilereading a magazine, using the internet while listening tomusic or talk radio, etc.

Meanwhile, leaders of dozens of online sites with multimedia content are reporting that integrated mediacontent is being accessed more than ever, and the rate isrising roughly at the same pace as the increase in broad-band adoption of the Internet. More people are accessingvideo segments, multimedia packages built in MacromediaFlash, audio and music files, photo galleries with or with-out audio, animated graphics and more.

Newsplex training is designed to help companiesunderstand this colossal change.

Converged journalism is an opportunity to develop abroader, multiple-media news judgment that involves notjust whether a story is important enough to be publishedor broadcast, but also, how and when the story will bepublished across various distribution options. This three-dimensional news judgment requires great skill and a keenawareness of the audience the journalists are trying toreach with their cross-format coverage.

IfraNewsplex also helps media companies meet thenew challenges of the converging media world througheditorial reorganization. Tomorrow’s newsroom must bedifferent than today’s. It must work across multiple mediasimultaneously and in real-time. It must be the hub of aninformation-based service company, more content-drivenand less product-limited that is today’s typical editorial ac-tivity. It will be in a constant race for the latest publishingtechnologies, skills and methods, in a constant state of


091.4 The Case for Convergence


change and innovation. In this newsroom, the tenets ofjournalism must be stronger than ever. The manner inwhich they are practiced, however, must adapt to a newgeneration of journalists with new capabilities to serve thepublic’s ever-increasing need to know in ways both moreeffective and more accessible.

Convergence is also a business decision, and in manycases, convergence operations have their genesis in thebusiness department, not the news department. Newspaperpublishers and TV general managers often see convergenceas an opportunity for cost-cutting and redundancy reduc-tion. However, while convergence presents many opportu-nities for vibrant revenue-making and cost efficiencies, itis fundamentally an expansion strategy that in all likeli-hood requires additional resources. As explained by GilThelen, publisher and former editor of the convergentTampa Tribune in Florida (USA), “It’s not about doingmore with less, or even the same with less. It’s about doingmore with more, but also making more in the process andthereby securing the future of our company.”

Plenty of opportunities exist for fee-based mobile, TVand online download services, multimedia advertisingcampaigns and targeted advertising, to name a few. Butthe focus on the audience alone is a gargantuan opportu-nity to stabilize and grow market share. New services onnew devices such as mobile phones and PDAs, internet-based multimedia and interactivity appeal to a younger,more affluent audience that has not been reached bynewspapers, for example.

For many multiple-media companies, there may beonly 10 to 30 percent crossover usership among media, ac-cording to Newsplex case studies. That means that hugeaudiences are using common brands, and huge audiences,particularly for online, are new to the brand. New audi-ences present major opportunities for media companies ifthey choose to exploit their multiple-media capabilities.

Hundreds of media companies worldwide have em-barked on integration strategies for their media channels.

Each of those companies has approached convergence atits own speed, with various degrees of commitment andvarious amounts of human and technological resources. So far, no one media company has achieved 360-degreemultimedia convergence – the wholesale integration of allfour points of the convergence compass: print, broadcast,online and mobile.

However, the ones shining most brightly in this con-stellation are those implementing convergence from theoutside in as the Newsplex advises instead of inside out.

The mistake of inside-out convergence is that mediacompanies define their new organization and workflow bywhat they already do. They start by looking at the mediathey own and the content those media produce. Then theylook for ways to spread that content around among thosevarious outlets and to consolidate the various editorialstaffs that produce it. Rarely do they undertake to recastthemselves from manufacturers of information projectsinto deliverers of news and information services, which theInformation Economy demands. Rarely do they attack theinternal financial boundaries between existing businessunits that tend to limit cross-media enterprise.

Journalistically and financially successful convergencehappens the other way around – outside in.

First a publisher must understand how the local audi-ence is using news and information, all kinds and in allmedia. There is a critical need for market research thatprofiles communities in terms of what kinds of news theydepend upon from wake to sleep, how they access differenttopics, to what depth, at what times, in what environ-ments, over what devices, via what formats. The variouspersonality groups among local media consumers need tobe mapped.

One key finding in such market research is that peopledo not conveniently break up their news and informationuse based on media formats or based on our internal corporate divisions between media units – print, Web,whatever.

When news happens, contemporary news consumersmight get their first alert over a mobile phone or otherwireless device, via a text or multimedia message, orthrough email or some other personalized real-time serviceto which they subscribe. They will tune into a TV networkfor visual satisfaction, use online media to find additionaland specific details, and seek out print newspapers andmagazines for immersive explanation and understanding.Despite the mix of media employed, invariably these con-temporary consumers regard it as all one story that theyare simply accessing in different ways and to different degrees depending on their interests, requirements andconvenience at any point in time.

All this argues that successful convergence must be or-ganized internally around topics and stories, around geog-raphy or consumer personality, but not around individualmedia business units. That is key to making it an outside-in process, putting the emphasis on audience and serviceinstead of on product. <

2.1 Newsplex Convergence Guides10Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

2.1 Newsplex Convergence Guides

The Newsplex Convergence Guides summarize findings,analyses, experience and insights derived through Ifra’s involvement with and support of media organizationsworldwide that are reacting to the converging marketplaceof print, broadcast, online and mobile media. They embodyIfra’s Newsplex philosophy and highlight issues that converging publishing companies should consider.

Guides were developed and added to this list in no par-ticular order. Ifra adds to and edits the list as experiencewith convergent news operations and the results of News-plex training dictate. As a reference aid, at the end of thelist is a general grouping of the Guides based on their ap-plication to issues of strategy/marketplace, journalism/newsroom, management, technology, organization/staffing, content/media and business.

1 There is no single definition of what constitutes con-vergence because convergence is defined by the mediamarketplace, and marketplace conditions are differentfrom one location and to another. In the broadestsense, convergence is a process whereby media compa-nies break out of their traditional forms and formats todeliver richer news and information services more inconcert with the way that consumers are choosing toaccess and use such resources. It is a response tochanges in the media environment brought on by tech-nology and the information economy.

2 Cooperation is not convergence. Convergence of anyconsequence worth the effort is measured by whether itgives news consumers something more than was avail-able to them before the media combined, by whether itresults in some added value for the local news and information marketplace. If not, it is just an internalworkflow exercise that will not significantly repositionthe media company.

3 Journalists should view the varied formats and mediathrough which they can communicate a news story asa continuum and should build into their cross-formatcontent a natural integration that leads consumersfrom one presentation to another so that the audienceis made to realize the full depth and breadth of what isbeing provided. On a simplistic level this can be donewith promos, links and referrals from one medium toanother. At a more advanced level, however, story integration across media can be so seamless that theaudience naturally follows the content across formatswithout perceiving overt cross-promotion. Cross-promotion by itself cannot be substituted for real con-vergence. Simply referring news consumers from onemedium to another, such as listing tomorrow’s news-paper headlines during tonight’s newscast, or making ageneral statement that more information on this andother stories is available on the website, does not addappreciable value to the newsflow between providerand consumer.

4 Co-location is the fastest, most painless, most efficientway to improve communication, cooperation and coor-dination between news staff from different media for-mats and different media organizations. In particular,key editorial managers from converging news organi-zations benefit from sitting and working together at a“superdesk” that can serve as a central and concentrat-ed newshandling resource for the entire cross-mediaenterprise.

5 Convergence requires more resources. It is not a cost-cutting strategy but rather a growth strategy. Conver-gence is about doing more with multiple media thanthose media did each by themselves. While there areefficiencies to be realized from coordinated cross-media operations, doing more usually requires more.Expanding into convergence while cutting resources is unrealistic.

6 Convergence is not about technology. It is about thestory that reaches consumers by way of the technolo-gies that consumers adopt as part of their media mix.Digital technologies enable convergence and are vitalfor it to work. But technology cannot be allowed to getin the way of the story.

7 The management complexity of handling stories inmultiple media for integrated distribution across an array of channels to an increasingly fragmented audi-ence is quantum levels greater than what most news-rooms and news managers are experienced with today.It is relatively easy to find and train journalists to workcross-media, compared to preparing their editors towork non-linear in same environment.


11Ifra Special Report 6.30


8 Cultural issues, stereotypes and mindset are the mostdifficult and essential concerns to deal with in con-verging newsrooms and practitioners from normallycompeting media.

9 Integration, not duplication, of content in differentmedia formats is the goal of converged newshandling.

10 Converged newsrooms require some editorial roles notusually practiced in mono-media organizations. Theseinclude newsflow coordination across all media for-mats, news resourcing that applies information toolseditorial knowledge management to enhance the depthand context of content, storybuilding to manage andintegrate the varied resources and components of thecross-media process, and multiskilled journalism pro-moting competence in the strengths, weaknesses andcapabilities of all available and applicable content for-mats.

11 Not all journalists will be multiskilled, perhaps only aminority. However, all must be multiple-media minded.All journalists in a multiple-media news organizationmust understand the strengths, weaknesses and capa-bilities of all the formats through which their storiescan be presented if they are to be able to create themost effective telling of those stories.

12 The fundamental shift in the news and informationmarketplace – from mass audience to aggregate audi-ence. Overall news and information consumption is increasing an average 1.5 percent a year, plus morepeople are tending to use multiple media at the sametime. Yet market share for most individual media is flator declining. To tap the growth market, therefore, media companies must expand convergently.

13 The fundamental shift in media business strategy:Evolving from a content production and distributionindustry to an information service industry. In this ex-panding Information Economy, news is a commoditybut value is placed on services that inform, explainand evaluate. Convenience is the primary attribute of a service. Convenience in a news and informationservice dictates that it operate in whatever medium acustomer favours.

14 The fundamental shift in newsrooms: Focusing moreon content and information management than on tra-ditional production management. This is essential tosupport the service-oriented multiple-media company.

15 A news story cycle has four stages: breaking, develop-ing, following and resulting. No single news medium isideal for presenting all stages for the entire gamut ofnews consumers. The competitive advantage of con-vergent journalism is that it can apply the most effec-tive, appropriate medium or combination of media tothe story at each stage rather than be confined to thestrengths and weaknesses of just one format.

16 Print, video, online and mobile are the four points ofthe convergence compass and complement one anoth-er’s strengths and weaknesses, creating a comprehen-sive multi-medium.

17 “QPFI” is a general framework for successful cross-media news planning: a) Identify what questions (Q)news consumers are asking about this story, what theywant to know and what they need to know now andlater, considering the variety of consumer profiles; b) Decide the highest purpose (P) of each availablemedium at this stage of the story and at each futurestage of the story, considering the ways in which newsconsumers mix newspaper, television, web and mobileuse to satisfy their need to know; c) Determine whichaspects of the story are most effectively conveyed inwhich format (F), considering the relative strengthsand weaknesses of text, video, audio, pictures, graphicsand animation; d) Provide interactivity (I) in the storypackage since this is the new currency in today’s infor-mation marketplace.

18 Interactivity works best when it is graduated and ap-propriate to the stage of the story. When a story is firstbreaking, news consumers have questions they mightwant to input into the information-gathering processof their journalists. As more becomes known, some willwant to start expressing their own comments and in-sights. As the ramifications come be understood, manywill want to discuss these with authors, experts andpeers. Promoting too high a level of interactivity tooearly comes across as contrived and wastes resources.Too little opportunity for interactivity later may befrustrating to consumers and demonstrate unrespon-siveness.


19 Mobile phones and the evolution of the always-on, always-connected news consumers are redefining thenature of newsgathering and news delivery even morethan the wired Internet has. Only mobile is arrivingwith built-in revenue streams unlike the initial Internetrollout.

20 News consumers are leading the way in convergence.News media have to catch up. To consumers, a storythey read and watch and surf is all one story, just ac-cessed in different ways at different times on differenttechnology depending on what is convenient, what isrequired to satisfy the need to know, what fits withtheir media personalities. Media organizations that canserve only part of a consumer’s media mix are margin-alizing themselves.

21 Implementing convergence outside-in requires a newsorganization to study its market to understand the var-ied personality groups among its news consumers.Then it can change its editorial processes and integrateformats to best match the way people are actually us-ing news media in the community. The alternative istrying to do convergence inside-out, without marketfocus, mostly as an effort at internal harmonizationbetween various media units, and with less likelihoodof achieving significant results.

22 Video on the web is not TV. News and informationconsumers generally are not looking to watch televi-sion on their computers or mobiles. Effective onlinevideo content therefore should not simply replicate TV-style presentation but instead should adopt a style par-ticular to itself and to the environment in which it isbeing accessed.

23 Print-format newspapers are diversifying into stablesof various more tailored, targeted, personality editionsthat are more relevant to the diverse audiences that arereplacing the traditional mass audience. Editions forcommuters, youth, business and sports personalitiesare just the start of this evolution. Development oftabloid editions by traditionally broadsheet publi-cations is another aspect of this process. It is adaptivemedia convergence, and among other things it signifi-cantly increases the management and production com-plexities facing news and information providers.

24 Storyboarding techniques are useful in planning andexecuting the multifaceted cross-media story. Story-boarding helps editorial managers work non-linear todivide the story into its logical parts, figure out whichmedium to use for each part, and build the various ele-ments into an integrated whole.

25 A core technology for the convergent newsroom issupport for cross-media news management, a tool and process to coordinate the various facets of themultiple-media story.

26 Photographers can be trained and equipped to produceboth still and video images in support of multiple-media newsgathering.

27 The websites even of print-oriented media must incor-porate video and audio content or they forfeit the fullcapability and value of the online environment. Itwould be like printing a newspaper without pictures.

28 Create microsites, also called web shells, focused onparticular topics of interest – major stories, ongoing is-sues, etc. Microsites are a more direct and effective re-sponse to the news consumers’ need to know aboutsuch topics and are more likely to be incorporated intothe mix of media with which they choose to surroundthemselves.

29 In building relationships between newspapers andbroadcast operations, the web serves as very effectivemortar.

30 A properly structured newspaper/TV interaction bene-fits both players although in different ways. TV getsdepth and reach. The newspaper gets immediacy andvalidation.

31 Newspaper’s greatest asset in a cross-media partnershipis its reporting resources, particularly its staff size.

32 TV’s greatest asset in a cross-media partnership is itsemotional connection to news consumers.

33 Web’s greatest assets in a cross-media activity are itscapacity and interactivity.

34 Mobile’s greatest asset in a cross-media activity is itsintimacy with the news consumers.

35 A boardroom mandate is required for any serious convergence conversion of a media operation, butgrassroots adoption is the only successful approach toimplementation.

36 To generate grassroots adoption in the newsroom, seedthe operation with change agents trained in the skillsand mindset of multiple media.




37 Train the newsroom in convergence, not individualjournalists and editors. It is a process, not a skill set. Atthe same time, individuals need training in specialcross-media skills – such as talkbacks for print re-porters and still photography for TV camera crews – ifthey are to contribute effectively to the new process.

38 Have a measure of convergent accomplishment, a met-ric. The newsroom staff needs a tangible indicationthat progress is being made. For instance, count thenumber of stories handled in a converged way; giverecognition to the most innovatively cross-media newseffort; track news consumer response to particular stories by combining readership ratings, Web page hits,and the number of emails/letters/phone calls receivedabout the story in some formula that gives an indexfor the story’s overall impact.

39 Design the newsroom to match and support the con-vergent mission and newsflow. For instance, anticipatethe need for a talkback location for video shoots; mo-bile phones and wireless computers for staff flexibility;and a newswall as a focus point for editorial interac-tion.

40 Editors must cross boundaries between content formatsto most effectively manage the intersection and inte-gration of different media. Creating a convergence ormultimedia editor with responsibilities and authorityover more than one medium is a common start andcan eventually lead to, for instance, a sport editor whomanages all sports coverage in print, online and on theair.

41 There is value in mixing the tempos of newspaper andTV in terms of energy level and pace, such as in howthey respond to breaking news.

42 Breaking news is the easiest to handle in a convergedway, but requires the most advance planning betweenmedia partners. Enterprise stories are the hardest toconverge but are easier to manage in integrating cov-erage from different media and adapting to availableresources.

43 TV gets the biggest initial boost from convergence witha newspaper, gaining in perceived authority and mar-ket share. Newspaper benefits are over the longer termin circulation stability and brand reinforcement.

44 Converging media companies gain greater and fasterbenefit from their efforts by marketing their expandedabilities to pique news consumer awareness.

45 Print newspapers can evolve into a more premiumnews product, an up-sell from web and TV. This is be-cause print remains a preferred medium among con-sumers for knowledge transfer in contrast to informa-tion transfer. For a comprehensive media company,this requires that print newspapers be operated as acomponent of a mix of media offerings rather thantrying to function as a standalone time-delayed formatwithin the multiple-media marketplace.

46 Revenue gains from converged media operations arereal and significant, as experience is already showing.They are realized through an aggregate and integratedmedia business model rather than through a traditionalfinancial focus that tries to segregate income exclu-sively by media type.

47 The advertising model that successfully taps into thepower of media convergence emphasizes reach ratherthan product. Whereas a traditional rate card promotesposition in a particular format or combination of for-mats, a reach card promotes access to a specific audi-ence or combination of audiences through the mix ofmedia with which those audiences surround them-selves.

48 Convergent journalism is more powerful because itreaches more people at more levels, in more ways.

49 Convergence is an established industry trend, nolonger just an experiment or fad. For the most part, themore successful media companies are also the moreconverging media companies.

50 Not all of today’s journalists and editors will make thetransition to working for converged media companies,to thinking in terms of multiple media rather than justtheir format of specialization. Media managers shouldbe prepared for how they will deal with those whocannot adapt.

51 Convergence should be integrated into hiring, job de-scriptions, performance evaluations and career incen-tives, including salary. Media companies should decideup front what their remuneration policies are for cross-media performance in order to forestall deadlock onthis issue.

52 Newsrooms are no more resistant to change than otherdepartments of a news organization. However, itshould be remembered that journalists were hired fortheir skeptical and questioning natures. So it should beexpected that they will be skeptical about any changein their own environment that is not well explainedand well implemented.


53 In designing the technological infrastructure for a con-vergent media organization, put the story, the contentmanagement, the information processes at the centerrather than the production processes. Databases be-come a core corporate asset as they are in other infor-mation-based companies.

54 As a simple measure of the sufficiency of a convergentnews organization’s core systems, ask: Is there a placeto record, develop, communicate and track a storyidea? And when the story is done, is there anything toshow for it other than what was finally published andaired?

55 Go digital – with cameras, voice recorders, fax servers,PDF scanners, etc. News resources that are not digitalare of much less value in a convergent newsflow. Us-ing a digital voice recorder rather than a cassette taperecorder, for instance, instantly opens up possibilitiesfor providing audio to a website or broadcast partner.

56 Embed cross-media newshandling in the newsroomstructurally. “Superdesks” were some of the first em-bodiments, sitting media heads together to cause inter-action. Continuous news desks are a evolution, servinga liaison function between media. Cross-media starts tobecome integral in the form of full-media topic man-agers, such as a sports editor over all sport news re-gardless of format. Eventually, this leads to pervasivemultiple-media newshandling and the likes of story-builders.

57 Cross-media starts in the newsroom. Other departmentsof the organization follow.

58 Scenario-planning techniques are useful and effectivein developing a concrete strategy and vision for theconverging news organization.

59 Incremental storybuilding and news delivery is one ofthe defining attributes of journalism relevant in today'snews marketplace. Incremental storybuilding recog-nizes that for today's increasingly real-time news con-sumers, while any significant news deserves an appro-priately comprehensive telling and explanation oncethe story has developed, there are also elements of thestory that should be reported as they develop; that thisincremental coverage can accumulate and combineinto a particularly valuable element of the eventuallycomprehensive report; that different content and distri-bution formats will be appropriate for different stagesof the story and tempos of coverage and audienceneeds; but that there is value in having the coveragebe a continuum across the media, building on itselfwhile displaying common journalistic standards forquality and credibility.

60 Newsrooms need to develop a replacement for their ex-isting product-driven news-decision structures as theyshift from a product to a service focus and those oldstructures no longer support the process. They need anew sieve through which to strain the newsflow anddecide how to handle stories.

61 Recognize and take advantage of the increasing blend-ing of news and entertainment in this media genera-tion. If a vehicle for presenting a news story accuratelyconveys the facts and context, and successfully equipsthe consumer to make more intelligent decisions aboutpersonal and community issues, the fact that the pres-entation engages that consumer on an emotional orenjoyable level is not necessarily inappropriate or un-desirable. Interactive content online tends to be a goodmedium for this kind of presentation.

62 The mobile phone is developing into an ideal real-timecompanion to the newspaper. This is because newsover mobile – immediate, multimedia, but limited bybandwidth and screen size – tends to be the exact op-posite of news from a newspaper, which is static andseriously time-delayed but relatively expansive in con-tent detail. In combination they seem to cover thespectrum and share a key attribute in today’s mediamarketplace: the convenience of portability.

Guides categories reference

Strategy/marketplace 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 44, 49, 58

Journalism/newsroom 4, 9, 11, 15, 17, 18, 24, 39, 41, 42, 48, 59, 60, 61

Management 5, 7, 8, 21, 29, 30, 31, 35, 38, 51, 57

Technology 6, 25, 53, 54, 55

Organization/staffing 10, 26, 36, 37, 40, 50, 56

Content/media 22, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 43, 45, 62

Business 46, 47


152.2 New Roles in a Converging Newsroom


Despite all the impressive technology and architecturein the US$ 2.5 million IfraNewsplex at the University ofSouth Carolina, the most sophisticated and essential itemsin the facility, from the standpoint of a newsroom tryingto figure out convergence, are a couple dozen cheap plas-tic name tags.

Printed in blue, red, green and yellow to make themstand out, they display the titles “newsflow editor,” “story-builder,” “newsresourcer” and “multiskilled journalist.”Newsplex participants wear the tags during scenario train-ing to identify the roles they are assigned to fill while sim-ulating the planning and management of different types ofnews situations across different mixes of media.

Before they are given the tags to wear, however,trainees go through a detailed briefing and discussionabout what these new newsroom functions entail. It oftenturns out to be the most difficult lesson for them to master.Some will struggle through the rest of their time at theNewsplex to fully understand the changes in newsroomorganization, editorial process, journalistic mindset andmedia business model embodied in these Ifra-identifiedroles for convergent newshandling.

When they get back to their own newsrooms aftertraining ends, they will struggle even more with how toadapt these roles to their own companies, and how toadapt their companies to the essential requirements ofthese roles. They come to realize that, when Ifra’s News-plex marketing material declares “Tomorrow’s newsroommust be different than today’s,” that difference is embod-ied in these roles more than anything else.

Newsroom research

Development of what would come to be called theNewsplex roles for a converging newsroom began in 1995when Ifra launched extensive international research andconsulting in editorial processes beyond just the technolo-gy used. The mid-’90s was the period in which news or-ganizations, particularly newspapers, were coming to real-ize that effective integration of online publishing into theirextremely optimized print workflows required more thansimply grafting HTML editors and content managementdatabases into their infrastructures.

Over more than 10 years, Ifra has conducted detailedevaluations of newsrooms at newspapers and other mediaoperations in Thailand, Denmark, India, the United States,Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, Japan,Brazil, Switzerland, Iceland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Slove-nia, the United Arab Emirates, Sweden, China and Portu-gal. These evaluations have documented the newsrooms’organizational structures, communications patterns, storyassignment and management processes, job descriptions,staffing levels, skill sufficiency, editorial training pro-grams, daily and long-term news planning methods, newsmeetings, seating/desk arrangements, workplace environ-ment, remote bureau and correspondent interactions, useof existing and available technology, handling of digitaland non-digital news resources, technical infrastructures

and databases, and strategic visions for their changing media marketplaces.

The research has found a remarkable commonality inhow newsrooms operate worldwide. This seems to be because most newsrooms processes have increasingly been designed around the newsroom’s production tech-nology, and news production technology is more or lesssimilar from one country to another.

The research also revealed an almost global similarlyin the issues confounding newsrooms trying to adapt tothe internet and other new media, with an explanation apparently grounded in the first finding. Newsroom orga-nizational structures and newshandling processes have be-come so closely tied to the production technology for aspecific medium that they are difficult to adapt to alterna-tive media requirements such as those of the internet. Inother words, a newsroom so carefully and highly opti-mized for creating a print newspaper on a daily schedule isusually not optimal at all for the efficient production ofany other news product including a Web site. Further, thehighly optimized nature of a medium-specific newsroomtends to extend into the mindset of the people who workin that newsroom, making their adaptation to workingwith and in other media difficult as well.

This situation is a primary reason why the first years ofinternet efforts among newspapers have been character-ized by lots of going back and forth between integratedand separate print-online activities. First the conflicts andinefficiencies of operating the two media together over-come a joint initiative and force the staffs apart. Then the expense and inefficiency of operating them inde-pendently lead mangers to put them back together. Mediacompanies worldwide have been observed going throughthis together-apart-together-apart cycle for years now.

The situation is further aggravated as media companiesseek to expand convergence by integrating broadcast/video and mobile/wireless with their print and online edi-torial processes and staffs.


2.2 New Roles in a Converging Newsroom16Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

It becomes apparent that key aspects of the editorialprocess in a multiple-media news organization would bet-ter operate at a level more independent of or above thetechnology-driven production processes than has becomethe norm. The core news management and content organ-ization activities ideally should be focused more on thestory rather than on the media or products in which thestory will eventually be distributed. To a certain extent,this applies as well to content generation processes – suchas writing and image capture – although these cannot andshould not be so cleanly isolated from production demandssince they are dependent on technical aspects of the endproduct and that product’s consumers.

In each of the newsroom evaluations conducted byIfra, recommendations were generated to the media com-panies for advancing their cross-media operations. Itturned out that these recommendations usually dealt fore-most with restructuring the newsroom’s editorial organi-zation and redefining newsroom jobs, rather than withtechnological upgrades. As the news industry has startedto acquire more familiarity in convergent newshandling,its experience has mirrored Ifra results by showing thatnon-technical issues of organization, mindset and mediacultural are the most critical to success of such initiatives.

In its reorganization recommendations for convergingnewsrooms, Ifra has consistently identified four functionsor activities essential to an effective multiple-media work-flow but lacking in traditional newsroom structures andjob definitions. These are the functions that have come toform the basis for Newsplex roles training.

They are:> Newsflow coordination of a story across all available

and appropriate media formats.> Storybuilding to manage and integrate the varied re-

sources and components of the cross-media process.> News resourcing that applies information tools and

editorial knowledge management to enhance the depthand context of story content.

> Multiskilled journalism to integrate the strengths,weaknesses and capabilities of all available and appli-cable content formats for a given story.

It is important to understand that these are identifiedby Newsplex research as roles or functions in a convergentnewsroom. They are not necessarily standalone jobs or po-sitions, even though they are performed as such in News-plex scenario training for clarity.

In an established newsroom, the activities of newsflowcoordination, storybuilding, news resourcing and multi-skilled journalism very well could – and perhaps to somedegree should – be integrated into the skills and responsi-bilities of existing staff and therefore not require addition-al personnel.

At the same time, these new Newsplex-identified rolesdo not necessarily do away with the need for all the cur-rent functions in a newsroom. Plus, it will be recognizedthat these roles require skill sets and particularly thinkingprocesses not usually present and perhaps not compatiblewith legacy newsroom jobs.

Another caveat is that this list of Newsplex-identifiedroles for a converging newsroom is not necessarily fixedor exhaustive. As the media marketplace and the habits ofnews consumers continue to change, as new forms of media and new technologies for accessing news and infor-mation continue to be introduced, it is possible that addi-tional new roles will be required in a comprehensive mediaorganization.

However, these four roles seem to form the essentialcore of an efficient multiple-media operation.

The following sections will provide additional descrip-tion of each of the four roles.

In addition, first-hand perspectives on each of theseroles are presented from several members of the Newsplexstaff and of the journalism faculty at the University ofSouth Carolina, where the IfraNewsplex is located. Theseindividuals have started to acquire considerable insightinto the roles through their participation in Newsplextraining and research programs, and therefore add anotherdimension to this report. These perspectives were original-ly published in the University of South Carolina’s electron-ic Convergence Newsletter over the course of 2004.




Newsflow coordination

Newsflow coordination is focused on the story.Newsflow is the editorial process initiated by the first

introduction of a story idea into the editorial environmentand continuing over a period of hours or even years untilthat story is no longer of active or potential interest to thenews organization.

The word “newsflow” is intentionally used distinctfrom “workflow,” which often is thought of only in termsof a story’s production process – when a text, image orlayout file is created in one application or another andthen managed through the current production cycle for a particular format news product. In contrast, newsflowembodies the full range of news management and decision-making for a story. Being story-based rather than product-based, newsflow also extends over the fullrange of media formats in which elements of the storymight be gathered, and it has continuity across any number of production cycles.

In Ifra’s award-winning 1999 “Tomorrow’s News” con-cept video envisioning advanced newsroom operations ina multiple-media environment, two central editors areshown working at what the movie calls the “newsflowdesk.” Their work consists of managing the developmentof stories, of directing reporting activities to gather con-tent in a variety of media formats most appropriate tothose stories, and of coordinating the use of that contentin a variety of news products such that their news organi-zation offers consumers a rich and integrated report when-ever and however consumers want to access it. Most of thetasks these two editors are seen performing have little todo with the final form of news presentation but everythingto do with ensuring that their news packages contain awealth of material to support many different and simulta-neous means of distribution. In their newsroom, specificproduction tasks clearly occupy a second tier of newsmanagement.

Only within the past few months have editors startedappearing in actual news organizations performing thisnewsflow coordination function. For instance, the formersports editor of the Media General group’s Tampa Tribunenewspaper in the United States is now in charge of sportsstaff and sports coverage also for Media General’s co-located WFLA television station and Tampa Bay Onlinewebsite.

A more typical arrangement in evolving convergentnewsrooms is for media-specific editors to be co-located ata “superdesk” so that they are more likely to interact andcooperate in their still-distinct tasks for print, broadcast,online and other media. This is an advance in the right direction although falling short of the full newsflow coor-dination concept.

Newsflow editor focuses on journalism, not delivery method

By Randy Covington, Director of IfraNewsplex at the University of South Carolina

When the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated, anumber of TV news organizations provided extraordinaryon-air coverage. Yet a subsequent audit of their Web sitesrevealed that some lagged far behind, offering little morethan brief wire reports, in some cases several hours old.

The problem was not technology, which often isblamed for new media shortcomings. The problem was notsome third party, such as WorldNow or internet Broadcast-ing Systems. The problem was the way these newsroomswere organized.

While I wasn’t there, I can only assume that when thedisaster occurred on a weekend, thinly-staffed newsroomshad their hands full with their main service, providingover-the-air coverage. The internet, unfortunately, becamean afterthought.

However, research indicates an increasing number ofpeople are turning to the internet for news and informa-tion. In fact, when I ask my classes where they go for newsand information, the internet is the overwhelming prefer-ence.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between what newsroomsvalue and what news consumers value. That’s why news-rooms need to rethink how they operate.

At the IfraNewsplex at the University of South Caroli-na, we have identified several key roles to prepare news-rooms for the future and to help them manage the newsacross media platforms. At the center of this process is thenewsflow editor.

According to Kerry Northrup, founder of the IfraNews-plex and the person who developed these new roles, thenewsflow editor looks at the management of a story from30,000 feet while others in the newsroom are looking at itfrom 10,000 feet.


In a TV newsroom, the newsflow editor is similar tothe managing editor or perhaps executive producer. At anewspaper, he or she probably is closest to what we knowas the managing editor or perhaps the news editor. Howev-er, the key factor that differentiates the newsflow coordina-tor from these traditional roles is that the newsflow editorfocuses on the story, not on a specific delivery platform.

Does information a reporter has learned work best inone specific medium or should it appear across titles?What questions does that information raise and in whichmedium or media should they be answered? How can agraphic best be used in different delivery formats?

While others in the newsroom are concentrating on in-dividual stories, the newsflow editor is looking at every-thing that is coming and deciding where it best fits. Thequestion he or she must continuously answer is whetherthe news organization is feeding sufficient content to alldistribution channels.

For the Wireless Election Connection (an IfraNewsplexproject using mobile phones in covering the South CarolinaDemocratic Presidential Primary in February 2004), I servedin the newsflow editor role. As I managed our teams of stu-dent journalists who used photo phones to cover the SouthCarolina Democratic Presidential Primary, I was remindedof my days as a TV assignment editor and executive produc-er. I gave out assignments and communicated with the crewsin the field, moving them from location to location and fromassignment to assignment. When they encountered obstacles,we talked about ways to overcome them.

I sat just a few feet away from the primary story-builder and the lead newsresourcer. As the day progressed,we were in constant communication. Can we get more in-formation on religion and politics? Are we doing too muchon the media circus? Is our coverage diverse? Are we miss-ing anything?

I suspect similar conversations were being held innewsrooms across South Carolina. But the fact our conver-sations were within a cohesive management structure madethem easier and more effective.

We were providing content to one Web site(http://scprimary.textamerica.com). However with more de-livery platforms, we easily could have diverted the materialto where it best fit. There is no need for any medium to bean afterthought if news management is responsible for allmedia.

In his role as executive director of Ifra’s Centre for Ad-vanced News Operations, Northrup visits newsrooms allover the world. He points out that everywhere he goes theproduction process typically is in the middle of the news-room. That may facilitate the production process, but itdoesn’t improve the journalism and it certainly does notfacilitate servicing multiple delivery platforms.

There’s an old saying in TV news: “Your most impor-tant newscast is your next one." This philosophy succinct-ly captures why today’s newsrooms need a simple, crossmedia structure to best serve consumers who each day ob-tain their news and information from a variety of sources.

Storybuilding

In contrast to newsflow coordination’s focus on thestory, storybuilding can be described as being focused onthe story experience.

Credit for the term “storybuilding” goes to Nora Paul,formerly in charge of journalism programs at the PoynterInstitute in the United States and now with the U.S. Uni-versity of Minnesota journalism school. Paul identified ashift in the primary focus of news journalists from the tra-dition of storytelling to what she describes as the processof building an environment in which a news consumer canexperience and even interact with the story. Paul stressesthat solid, comprehensive, contextual, analytical, accurateand accessible storytelling is still the major component ofthis expanded journalistic process. But she notes that inthe changing media marketplace, with multimedia increas-ingly commonplace and interactivity now the gold stan-dard for online users, news consumers are demandingmore.

Even before Paul’s analysis about the changing natureof journalism, Ifra’s newsroom research identified the needfor digital-era copyeditors or subeditors to evolve newskills to efficiently coordinate multiple-media newsgather-ing involving an increasing number of local and remotecontent sources, taking on a role that has now been titledin Newsplex scenario training as storybuilding.

The effect is to integrate into the news desk a broaderrange of presentation planning and content finishing skillsso as to promote comprehensive story development andbetter coordination of various reporters’ efforts at the ear-liest stages of the newsflow and over multiple productioncycles. The copyediting function becomes a process ofquality enhancement rather than last-minute quality con-trol as is the case in traditional workflows. Experiencedcopyeditors eventually take on the activity of writingcoaches and story advisers, supported by technologies thatallow editors and reporter/writers to collaborate on storycontent and presentation though they may work to differ-ent time demands and perhaps in different physical loca-tions.

Storybuilding, then, involves managing and executingthe process directed by newsflow coordination, in par-ticular it involves combining and integrating the work of sometimes many other journalists and many formats ofnews content and presentation.




‘Storybuilder’ embodies new roles in evolving newsrooms

By Doug Fisher, Instructor, University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications

A newspaper person walking into Newsplex, a proto-type newsroom of the future, might ask: Where are thecopy editors, the assigning editors? A broadcaster mightwonder: Where are the producers?

They all there, but embodied in a new job of “story-builder.”

Storybuilder proposes how multimedia news workersmight deal with information and story flow different fromtoday’s linear, assembly-line models that have quality control concentrated at defined points (producers or copyeditors). In the future, multimedia elements of the samestory likely will flow at widely differing times and, pos-sibly, locations. [1,2,3]

Instead of managing multiple stories for one medium(or one and a half if you include much of today’s repack-aged Web), the storybuilder manages fewer multimedia“streams” on specific topics, filing the output directly ormaking the elements available to other more media-specif-ic desks. (“Topic” is specifically used here because Gelern-ter suggests “story” might denote something much differentin a future multimedia newsroom: Time slices so that the“story” from each stream changes from hour to hour orminute to minute, whatever the designated increment. [4])

Thus, the storybuilder must have a copy editor’s eye fordetail with the producer’s acumen for flow and pacing andthe assigning editor’s skill in seeing the various paths atopic might take and in matching resources to those possi-bilities.

Working as storybuilder during our recent experimentcovering February’s S.C. Democratic presidential primaryvia mobile Web log (http://scprimary.textamerica.com) isillustrative. In consultation with the newsflow editor whotracks the broader look, feel and progress of the entire out-put, we had decided on a daypart topic of “Congratulationsand Condolences.” I supervised, edited and filed the streamproduced by reporters assigned to Sen. John Edwards’evening party. The early theme emerged in the form of themany people from other states who came to help Edwardsget what he said was a must-have win.

Although we transmitted solely to the mobile Web log,photos, text blurbs and video were all in play, and as story-builder, I had to decide what to pursue with each type(each reporting team had a cell phone to shoot photos andlimited video and to file text via e-mail). I had to providesome direction to the reporters about topic (for instance, atone point we had no minority representatives; the reporterswere told to seek out people of color), and I had to consid-er other multimedia elements.

By working with a “news resourcer,” another key job,we quickly developed links to topics mentioned by those in-terviewed (such as Edwards’ stand on specific issues).Were a graphics specialist available, I might have asked for

a U.S. map on which we could have tracked where the var-ious volunteers had come from. (Roll your mouse over themap and see that person’s tale: under Gelernter’s concept,this kind of package might well be a time slice’s “story.”)Later, the theme moved to Edwards, his statements and thereactions, with a new set of multimedia decisions needed.

While the job is much like that of a wire-service edi-tor’s, it has many more elements, and it is unclear howmany effectively can be done by one person. Copy editing isparticularly troubling. As Russial has suggested, “Goodbyecopy desks, hello trouble?” [5] and smaller newsroomswith overworked editors and producers provide evidence ofthe increased dangers of inaccuracies. It was difficult as astorybuilder on primary night to always provide the keeneye to copy and graphics.

These and many other questions relating to news flowneed detailed study, but storybuilder, in some form, is like-ly to be found in future newsrooms.

[1] Newhagen, J.E., & Levy, M.R (1998). The future of journalism in distrib-

uted communication architecture. In D.L Borden & K. Harvey (Eds.),

The electronic grapevine: Rumor, reputation, and reporting in the new

on-line environment (pp. 9-21). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Earlbaum

Associates.

[2] Fisher, Douglas J. (2002, November). The editor’s role in a hypertext fu-

ture: The journey from story generalist and media specialist. Paper pre-

sented at The Dynamics of Convergent Media Newsplex Week Academ-

ic Conference, Columbia, S.C. Available from author at [email protected].

[3] Fisher, Douglas J. (2003, June) Integrity: The new management chal-

lenge. Common Sense Journalism, 17. Originally published in the South

Carolina Press Association Bulletin. Available at http://

www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJ17Jun03.htm

[4] Gelernter, D. (2003, June 23). The next great American newspaper. The

Weekly Standard, 8 (40). Retrieved March 28, 2004, from http://

www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/002/797bpp

bw.asp

[5] Russial, J. (1998). Goodbye copy desks, hello trouble? Newspaper Re-

search Journal 19, 2-16.


News resourcing

With newsflow coordination focused on the story, andstorybuilding focused on the experience, the role of newsresourcing can best be described as being focused on thecontext. However, news resourcing is perhaps the most nu-anced of all the Newsplex-identified roles for a convergentnewsroom, making it the most challenging to understandand implement.

Ifra identified the concept of a news resource desk asearly as 1999, describing it as a necessary development tohelp digital-age newsrooms cope with the increasing tidalwave of information sources starting to flood the in-boxes– paper and digital – of editors and journalists. As news-rooms became more information driven rather than pro-duction driven, it was reasoned that newsrooms neededtheir own information management assets.

The idea at the time was to deal with this need by cre-ating a hybrid support service inside the newsroom thatcombined such staff functions as electronic picture deskoperators, library researchers, archivists, editorial assis-tants, systems editors, technical support specialists, andperhaps even scanner operators. The desk would managethe digital and non-digital file traffic, coordinate research,guarantee images get tagged completely and accurately,track down facts for stories, and generally ensure that anyinformation resource coming with reach of the newsroom— whether in press release or on floppy disk — was cap-tured and added to the newspaper’s information repository.Essentially the desk would be the newsroom’s informationguardian and in particular handle all things that were keyto a smooth newsflow but that not necessarily direct jour-nalistic functions.

Over the past five years, the floppy disk has all butgone away. So too has the idea of non-journalistic newsresourcing.

In fact, one of the basic parameters of the Newsplex-implemented role of news resourcing is that it is specifi-cally a function of journalism, performed by trained jour-nalists exercising the same skills and values of news judg-ment as all other journalist in the newsroom. The insightsof Ifra’s newsroom process research are that, to become information-driven environments competing successfullyin the information economy, newsrooms must have infor-mation management and manipulation skills at their corerather than simply out-sourced to a support desk.

News resourcing, then, involves at least three levels ofjournalistic information management in the advanced,multiple-media newsroom:

> In reporting and newsgathering, news resourcing is theprocess of enhancing the depth and breadth of a storyby tapping into the seemingly unlimited informationassets increasingly available to newsrooms online andthrough their in-house archives and databases.

The goal is not simply to generate a list of links toaccompany an article in print or online. The goal is togenerate contextualization for the story that antici-pates the widest possible range of interests and needsamong the various consumer personalities that will access the story. While this might indeed result in a listof related materials, it could also and perhaps morevaluably be presented as a news organization’s ori-ginally produced summaries, explanations, analysesand multimedia presentations of the contextualizingmaterials. It could even be manifest as chat, forumsand other media-produced interactivity with a story’sconsumers.

To a certain extent, it is of course the expectationfor every journalist to put his story into context forreaders, viewers, listeners and users. However, to do socomprehensively in today’s information marketplacerequires more time and more informatics skills than areusually available to a traditionally tasked reporter.Therefore, news resourcing at this level anticipates theappearance of an informatics journalist every bit asspecialized in her form of newsgathering and contentgeneration as are photojournalists, videojournalists, infographic journalists and others in the newsroom.

> It is in connection with creating the story experiencefor news consumers that news resourcing has perhapsits most technical aspect. Here, news resourcing is thatcomponent of a multiskilled story team that supportsthe rest of the team with expertise in acquiring andmanipulating news content from and into any neces-sary media format.




The specially outfitted news resourcing alcove inthe Newsplex provides the widest possible array of de-vices for accessing content regardless of the form inwhich it arrives – whether as hard copy documents andimages or on any type of digital storage medium suchas DVD, CD, VHS, MO, CF, SM, MS, MMC, SD and therest of the alphabet soup. The Newsplex infrastructureallows for very flexible cross-connections betweenequipment to facilitate transfers, captures and record-ings as needed. And an array of software utilities isavailable to open and transform virtually any data ormultimedia format.

However, this is not simply an exercise in knowinghow to run a video patch panel or a file conversionutility. The process requires an intimate, journalisticunderstanding of how the content being manipulatedfactors into the storybuilding process so that the bestdecisions can be made concerning how the materialshould be handled to maximize its editorial effective-ness. In today’s digital information and communica-tions environment, time, quality and news value mustoften be balanced – i.e., the time needed to preparecontent at a certain quality vs. the quality acceptablefor the story experience given its news value to con-sumers. This balancing is clearly an editorial activitydespite its technical foundation.

> At a management level in the news organization, newsresourcing is the process of ensuring that the mediacompany’s critical editorial information assets are ef-fectively captured, organized, preserved and distributedin ways that maximize their value and effectiveness.As newsrooms become more information-tasked ratherthan just production-tasked, this aspect of newsresourcing could be invested in a dedicated “chiefeditorial information officer” to help coordinate thenecessary information focus. Such a CEIO would needto deal with newsroom information management as a totality from receipt of phone messages and pressreleases, to digitization of city hall files brought backby reporters, to research supporting an investigativenews story, to the ease with which editorial staff search the archives and use the internet.

A CEIO’s responsibility would be to ensure that nodata or documents coming within the newsroom’sgrasp slip away without being evaluated for incorpora-tion into the editorial knowledgebase. Under the CEIO’sguidance, the news organization would build up com-petitive databases of authenticated searchable informa-tion and pre-staged content packages that can directlysupport news coverage efforts and feed the varied par-allel production processes.

A vital aspect of newsroom information to be ware-housed and mined in this process is the knowledge andexpertise generated during coverage and investigationof news topics.

Consider that at most newspapers today, despite allthe interviews, documents, photographs, source namesand contact information, background briefings, alter-native story angles, additional story ideas, online sta-tistical resources, critiques, evaluations, comments,reader reaction, emails, faxes and voicemails generatedwhile prosecuting a story over a period of days ormore, typically the only things the newsroom will haveto show for all its activity a month or year later aresome inches of searchable text in the archive, a storedpicture and perhaps a PDF of the published page.

News resourcing would make provisions to not loseor forget any of this information – particularly not theideas for future coverage efforts, or the lessons learnedabout how to cover this and similar topics, or thebackground documentation, and/or the identities of the sources. News resourcing would capture every-thing practical into what might be called an editorialknowledgebase – a multifaceted repository of intellec-tual newsroom assets accessible by everyone on thestaff anytime and anywhere it might be needed.

There will certainly be a requirement for somehighly capable technological tools to automate asmuch of the collection as possible so that journalistsdon’t get buried in data entry tasks, and to help editorsspot the trends and tap the expertise contained in theirconstantly growing store.

News resourcing to develop such editorial knowl-edge assets is essential to every news organization’ssurvival and prosperity in the digital information era.With rich and diverse databases of topical multiple-media material under its control, the media companycan establish an unassailable advantage over anywould-be media competitor that lacks such an asset ofspecialized information. The newsroom will be able toposition itself to be able to provide unparalleled con-text to any news story, to identify community trendsand interests imperceptible to less informed enterpris-es, and then to capitalize on that knowledge with re-sponsive news services and innovative informationproducts.


News resourcer is key information chief

By Geoff LoCicero, IfraNewsplex News Resourcer

Charles Bierbauer, dean of USC’s College of Mass Com-munications and Information Studies, likes to call the po-sition the “news sorcerer.” It’s an apt description for ajournalist who is supposed to be able to conjure informa-tion from the ether, or over an Ethernet. Officially, it’snews resourcer, one of four new positions envisioned byKerry J. Northrup, founder of the IfraNewsplex at USC, for converged newsrooms that are providing content inmultiple media.

In short – this is the nut graph for those more com-fortable in print, or the 30-second sound bite if you preferbroadcast – the news resourcer and news resourcing staffare journalists who specialize in information skills, not unlike a journalist with expertise as a graphic artist orphotographer. It’s the best of journalism – writing, editing,news judgment – combined with the best of librarianshipand information management – super searching, tech-nology, training and content/knowledge organization andinfrastructure.

As news operations increasingly adopt the role of 24/7information providers they need a better system to furtherinformation management, accessibility, sharing, archivingand retrieval. In short, they need a chief information offi-cer, a no-brainer of a position for most savvy businesses.Of course, given mainstream media’s aversion to change,we may need to consider the title news enforcer in order todrag curmudgeonly journalists kicking and screaming intothe 21st century.

The big picture for the news resourcer’s role is howbest to deal with the wealth of information that news organizations deal with – internal archives of stories, pho-tos, graphics, video and audio; content from fee-baseddatabases such as Nexis, Dialog or Factiva, or from freedatabases that lurk in the “invisible” Web not indexed bysearch engines; the vastness of the general Web, not tomention credibility questions about much of its content;wire service feeds; live news content gathered locally; andthe finished products, whether newspaper, TV/radio broad-cast, Web site or SMS message.

A second tier of information to consider would be documents, records, faxes, press releases, messages andsimilar content. In a truly converged news operation, withbureaus, mobile units and journalists constantly on the go,wouldn’t it be efficient to prioritize and digitize such infor-mation to increase resource-sharing and accessibility?

Looking beyond the materials and content that makeup the news organization’s information, the news resourcerwould want to consider his company’s knowledge. How doyou find out the valuable knowledge – about, for example,the organization, how to cover a beat, the beat’s back-ground – that resides in people’s heads? What could thesejournalists share with others? What will be lost when theyleave? What are the many work processes, tasks and pro-cedures that go on each day in order to get the news to theconsumer? Are there standards for efficiency and consis-tency? What happens when one of the two employees whoknow how to perform Task A goes on vacation and the oth-er one calls in sick? What happens when these tasks andprocedures of a traditional news operation triple as it be-comes a converged news operation? All this valuableknowledge is lost when it’s not recognized, valued, cap-tured and disseminated.

A news resourcer must also be a technology liaison forthe converged newsroom. Remember all the audio andvideo now filling the archives? Remember all the new tasksand procedures? Whether the stereotype of the tech-im-paired journalist is accurate or not, it’s clear that as thenecessity of technology increases, and as it continues tochange, the newsroom will need support. And the most ef-fective day-to-day support will not necessarily come fromthe IT department, despite its good intentions. When teach-ing new software, hardware or other equipment, journalistsare often the best trainers for other journalists because theyunderstand their needs and perspectives.

Aside from the management and technology issues,you might say the news resourcer’s journalistic function isthe information beat. Like a good reference librarian, thenews resourcer can track down the right piece of informa-tion in a timely fashion, primarily through the news opera-tion’s own archives, various databases, the Web and pub-lic/government records. On larger news staffs, departmentssuch as business/finance, government/politics and educa-tion might have their own news resourcers who specializein those areas. The information that a news resourcer canfind will add depth and context to any report or story.

The key difference in the news resourcer concept andthe role of news librarians in even the most progressivemedia companies is that the news resourcer is clearly ajournalist, perceives himself or herself as such and is per-ceived by his or her colleagues as such. He or she is fullyintegrated into the newsroom, is proactive in driving thenews, has sound news judgment and can write and edit formultiple media. The news resourcer also brings the abilityto search and evaluate information like a skilled librarianor information specialist.




If this sounds like a knock against librarians, it’s not.In fact, it’s another example of that old line about imita-tion being the sincerest form of flattery. It’s an epiphanyabout the value of news libraries and librarians, too oftenunderutilized in the newsroom. Historically, this was truewhen news libraries were called the morgue, were tuckedfar away from the newsroom and operated strictly as serv-ice providers. Even today, though, many news librarians,even the best ones, struggle for status in the news manage-ment hierarchy, for integration and involvement into thenewsroom and for pay parity.

While most librarians would probably agree theywould like to be recognized, respected and better utilized,many still prefer to think of themselves as librarians andfind the value in the distinction or specialization. Theydon’t want to be journalists. In fact, they believe that be-cause journalists face such a demanding workload, it isunrealistic to expect them to develop the skills that manylibrarians have spent their whole careers learning. They be-lieve they can work more effectively by playing to theirstrengths and supporting the information needs of the jour-nalists. This position is certainly valid.

There is no perfect model for how best to develop aneffective working relationship between the newsroom andthe library. Most good newsrooms already have a staff witha mix of talents and skills. With the right support andnewsroom structure, journalists can learn from and devel-op skills sets from librarians, and vice versa – if theychoose. The key is for the news operation not to work inisolation but to find areas to integrate. In this respect, thenews resourcer’s job description also includes being a dem-olition expert and an engineer: blowing up silos and build-ing bridges.

Multiskilled journalism

The concept of multiskilled journalism is easily themost controversial of the Newsplex-defined roles for aconvergent newsroom. However, the term is applied in twovery different contexts.

The reference that tends to come to mind first is to individual reporters trained and equipped to gather andgenerate news content by themselves for all media – print,broadcast, online and mobile. They are sometimes referredto as backpack journalists, conjuring the image of a re-porter hiking into the middle of a remote news event, unslinging a backpack of high-tech gear including laptopcomputer, digital cameras, voice recorder and communi-cations devices, and then dispatching all manner of text, photos, video, audio, graphics and Web updates to avariety of waiting editors and news consumers.

Some journalists are upset by this concept, seeing in itvariously the watering down of journalistic quality in anyparticular medium and/or an effort by greedy media bosses to extract more work from their existing newsroomstaffs, likely without paying additional compensation.

The reality is, however, that an increasing number ofsuch multiskilled journalists is appearing in newsroomsaround the world. This reality is driven not only by an increasingly convergent media marketplace but also by the journalists themselves, who are seizing the opportunityto expand their expertise and opportunities. Such jour-nalists tend to be in demand, command a premium ontheir salary and have more flexibility in where and forwhom they work.


Nonetheless, all indications from Ifra research and ex-perience are that it is extremely unrealistic that mediamanagers either could afford or would desire a newsroomstaffed entirely by do-it-all backpackers. Considering thesignificant creative aspects of newsgathering and the factthat most journalists have strengths in particular formats,there clearly remains a vital need in the cross-media news-room for specialist text, video, audio, photo, Web andgraphics journalists.

This then leads to the second reference for the News-plex-defined role of multiskilled journalism.

It involves the understanding that all journalists work-ing in a newsroom designed for the converging market-place of print, video, online and mobile media need to beversed in the strengths, weaknesses and capabilities of allthe formats in which the newsroom handles news andbuilds stories. They all have to be multiskilled in this wayeven if they specialize in particular formats. Otherwise,they cannot be effective participants in the necessary interaction of media formats and the collaboration of edi-torial talents.

A pre-convergence analogy is that the world’s greatestnewspaper writer, if he never comes back from his storieswith suggestions for photos, is not as valuable to either thenews organization or to the news consumers as he couldbe and should be, because he apparently does not under-stand what images contribute to making a more effectivestory.

It is the role of a journalist to know the story, to knowthe audience and to create the most effective telling of thestory possible so that it equips people to make more intelli-gent decisions about their lives, their families, their busi-nesses and their communities. In the convergent mediamarket, effective journalism must be multiple-media jour-nalism, whether performed by one multiskilled journalistor by an editorial team combining its media specialties.

Multiskilled journalists are prepared to tell stories in many forms

By Dr. Augie Grant, Associate Professor, College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, University of South Carolina

The most recognizable new role in convergent news-rooms is the multiskilled journalist. This term describesreporters who are skilled at interviewing, collecting audio,video and still images, editing those images, and writingstories for delivery across multiple media.

By definition, a person who is assigned to do two ormore of these tasks is a multiskilled journalist. Focusingon these tasks, however, ignores the most important role ofthe journalist in a converged environment: To be able tolook at a story to determine what materials need to begathered for the various media that might be used to dis-seminate the story.

Consider everyday situations: The first one on the sceneof any breaking story needs to be able to capture as muchinformation as possible, including pictures, videos, inter-views, etc.—with the ability to clearly deliver the story rightaway. Freelancers have long carried this combination ofskills onto the battlefield and into remote regions, some-times being a sole witness to a story that can and should bedelivered across media. Even mundane coverage such asroutine city council meeting can be shared more widely ifone or more of the reporters attending delivers a roundupfor a radio newscast after (or before!) filing the story forthe next day’s Metro section.

The first skill of the multiskilled journalist is thereforeto look at all the opportunities a story represents for eachof the media fed by the journalist. In practice, that meansthe ability to identify all of the elements of a story, in-cluding interview sources, photographic subjects, video opportunities, etc.

The next skill is the ability to tell the story in the ap-propriate format, ranging from an inverted pyramid fornewspapers to a linear, broadcast narrative. Writing acrossmedia may be one of the most difficult skills to master, butthe task is made easier by the presence of story builders,editors, and others who can help refine the story for pres-entation.

Multiskilled journalists must also have photographicskills, with the ability to capture both still and video images. This does not mean each reporter must be an authority on photography and other technical skills, but itdoes mean that, in the absence of a photographer, video-grapher or audio engineer, the multiskilled journalist is capable of capturing the images and sounds that will helptell the story.




Time is a critical variable for multiskilled journalists.On the scene of a story, they need to know which mediumneeds to be fed first – the internet, the radio station, theTV broadcast, or the newspaper. It’s not unusual for ajournalist working for an organization such as CNN to feeda live television report, record a follow-up report, rewritethe script for the Web site, and then do a feed for a radionetwork, all in the space of an hour or two.

In my experience, the most exciting part of the rolestraining we provide at Newsplex is watching experiencedjournalists and academics who have just been introduced tomultimedia reporting take on this role, delivering picturesand sound along with text. The technical skills are absorbedand practiced almost automatically as focus remains on thestory and how to deliver it across each medium.

Few topics in convergent journalism have generated asmuch debate as the “multiskilled journalist.” This positionis sometimes referred to as the “backpack journalist” andthe “one-man band,” with each of these terms implyingthat one person can take on the roles formerly filled by twoor more individuals. (Martha Stone and Jane Stevens haveshared an interesting point-counterpoint on this subject inthe Online Journalism Review. “Backpack Journalism ishere to stay” by Stevens at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/work-place/1017771575.php and “The Backpack Journalist is a‘Mush of Mediocrity’" by Stone at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1017771634.php [6])

There are certainly a few journalists who are accom-plished photographers, but the norm is not—and will neverbe—a person who has mastered all the skills related togathering information. Indeed, many news directors/editorssay they do not expect every journalist to do everything. Onthe other hand, the norm in converged newsrooms is likelyto be that all journalists will share a basic set of technicalskills to enable them to be more effective in gathering in-formation for distribution across media when necessary ordesirable.

That brings up the issue of equipment. Electronicnewsgathering equipment, from digital cameras to laptopcomputers and cell phones is becoming more compact andless expensive, making it easier to equip all journalistswith cameras, recorders, and other tools that contribute tothe process of gathering news. Multiskilled journalistsmust know basic equipment operation and composition inorder to use this equipment, but there is not a need forthem to be masters of each craft. (It may also be arguedthat photographers and audio engineers need basic writingand interviewing skills as well!)

The lower cost and small size of the cameras and otherequipment used by these “backpack” journalists enables anorganization to equip all of their journalists so that break-ing news is more likely to be captured any time, any where.

Again, the primary concept of the multiskilled journal-ist is not the mastery of a particular set of skills but sim-ply the mindset that the information being gathered will bedistributed through a variety of media, with recognition ofthe individual elements that must be captured in order tobring the story to the consumer.

From a practical perspective, there are few job listingstoday that require all of the skills discussed above. Butwhen choosing from available candidates, hiring decisionswill more often than not favor reporters who bring addi-tional skills to the newsroom. That’s perhaps the bestreason for making sure our graduates are ready for converged newsrooms.

The multiskilled journalist is the most traditional of thefour roles in a converged newsroom that are being exploredin this series (http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/convergence/in-dex.html). Other roles are certain to be identified as con-verged newsrooms proliferate, and these four existing rolesare certain to change over time. The multiskilled journal-ist—the eyes, ears, arms, legs and voice—remains at theheart of any conception of converged journalism.

[6] Editor’s note – The viewpoint argued in this point-counterpoint by

Martha Stone, who later became Newsplex training director, was as-

signed to her and does not necessarily reflect her own opinions on

these issues.

2.3 Newsplex Convergence Monitor 26

2.3 Newsplex Convergence Monitor


More and more news organizations around the worldare implementing cross-media strategies, and looking tosee what others are doing. To support these efforts, Ifra hascreated the Newsplex Convergence Monitor to track con-vergent newshandling activities worldwide.

This research initiative is designed to fill the informa-tion void regarding cross-media operations by identifyingsuch news organizations on a global scale, categorizingtheir strategies, and spotlighting their best practices.

Participation in the Newsplex Convergence Monitorbegins with a brief profile of a company’s convergencestrategy, which can be submitted through an online inter-view available at http://www.ifra.com/website/newsplex-onl.nsf/html/index.html. The interview is short, straight-forward and takes only a few minutes to complete. After a profile is received, the information is checked by theNewsplex’ research staff and then it is released into thepublicly available Newsplex Convergence Monitor data-base.

Through an online summary and search page atwww.convergencemonitor.org, a person can examine list-ings for cross-media operations in a particular location orinvolving a particular mix of media. The basic report in-cludes estimates of the audience size for the various par-ticipating media outlets, and details whether the partici-pants in the group share news content, share staff, share aWeb site, share a newsroom, share other resources andeven market jointly. Reference online links are also madeavailable.

Overall, the registry provides a wealth of support forexecutives wanting to compare their multiple-media oper-ations to others, looking to find out what others in similarsituations are accomplishing.

At its launch in mid-2004, the Newsplex ConvergenceMonitor referenced more than 40 cross-media operationson most continents. Slightly more than half of the initialentries came out of North America, with the next largestnumber centered in Europe. There were even some fromlocations in South America, Africa and Oceana.

Newsplex research staff undertakes a program to routinely review the Convergence Monitor’s entries to re-verify and update them as required, to maintain theiraccuracy. Company contacts are provided with unique Weblinks so that they can access their entry in the databaseand update it themselves at any time. This in itself is aunique feature of the service compared to other online resources for convergent media that, for the most part, arenot operated as true research resources and therefore arenot kept up to date.

However, this online profile is just the initial level ofinquiry for the Newsplex Convergence Monitor.

Ifra, in cooperation with its academic and researchpartner in the Newsplex, the University of South Carolina(USA), reviews all new entries in the registry to determineif a convergent operation appears to merit a more detailedstudy of its approaches and accomplishments because ofparticularly interesting, innovative or unique activities. Ifso, a research team member – either Ifra staff or a researchassistant from the USC College of Mass Communicationsand Information Studies – is assigned to gather additionalinformation about those activities and to conduct personalinterviews by phone and email with involved editorial andtechnical managers.

The goal is to derive greater insight from which thenews industry might extract best practices and lessonslearned. Much of this enhanced profile is added to the reg-istry entry available for public search and review online atwww.convergencemonitor.org.

The project’s highest level inquiry about a convergentnews operation involves an on-site assessment visit togenerate a full business-school case study of the operationanalyzing organizational, technological, financial, journal-istic, environmental, marketplace and personnel aspects ofthe effort. As many as four of these are produced eachyear. This detailed analysis is filed in the registry andmade available to Newsplex Directorate members and lat-er to all Ifra members.

The first such case study analysis has been completedon the Dispatch Media Group of Columbus, Ohio, USA.Dispatch Media has undertaken a comprehensive conver-gence strategy that could well serve as a model for othermid-size media operations around the world. Regardless ofhow residents of its eight-county Metropolitan StatisticalArea choose to consume news and information, DispatchMedia has well positioned itself with a variety of integrat-ed media outlets.

For more information, either visit www.convergence-monitor.org or contact [email protected].


272.4 Convergence Monitor Case Study: Dispatch Media


I. Executive summary

Led by its flagship, The Columbus Dispatch daily news-paper, the Dispatch Media Group of Columbus, Ohio (USA),dominates the central part of the state. The eight-countyMetropolitan Statistical Area comprises 1.6 million people,725,000 of whom are residents of Columbus, the nation’s15th largest municipality. Regardless of how that popula-tion chooses to consume its news and information, Dis-patch Media is well positioned with a variety of mediaoutlets:> The Columbus Dispatch, a 132-year-old institution

with circulation of approximately 250,000 daily and370,000 Sunday

> WBNS 10TV, a CBS affiliate and the market’s newsleader in broadcast TV

> Ohio News Network (ONN), a 24-hour statewide cableTV news operation that reaches 1.5 million households

> 1460-WBNS/The Fan, an all-sports AM radio stationthat caters to fans’ rabid devotion to the exploits ofOhio State University’s athletics programs

> 97.1 / WBNS-FM, a music-oriented radio station> ThisWeek Community Newspapers, a group of 21

weekly suburban papers with a combined circulationof more than 325,000

> Columbus Parent, a free monthly parenting magazinewith a circulation of 60,000 whose core readership rep-resent two highly coveted demographics, women andthe 20-40 age range

> Accompanying websites each property maintains thatcross-promote and share resources. The main Dispatch.com has between 3.5 million and 3.9 million pageviews per month on news pages.

With the lessening of U.S. Federal CommunicationsCommission anti-trust regulations and with an eye towardan increasingly fragmented marketplace, Dispatch Media’sproperties have reinvented the company in the past threeyears by transforming themselves from ultra-competitiveisolationists to cooperative collaborators that maintaintheir editorial independence and competitive spirit but em-brace the sharing of resources and constant internal com-munication. If the Dispatch’s various outlets were in silosbefore, they have been called together for the media equiv-alent of a rural barn-raising, in which their communalgoal is to build better journalism. Despite the lack of a uni-versal technological infrastructure, the impracticability ofa central media facility – only the TV, radio and the bulkof the weekly operations share their own buildings – animproving-but-unresolved cultural divide and an under-staffed online operation, Dispatch Media is in many waysa textbook example of cooperation and convergence.

First, its decision to embrace convergence was basedon a realization that traditional media consumption hasbeen turned on its head in the past decade by the wealth ofinformation sources available to news consumers. So thecompany has positioned itself to be the market’s providerof choice by leveraging all its properties and providing itscustomers the news they want, when they want it and howthey want it.

Secondly, it does not see convergence as a cost-cuttingstrategy, though it does believe it can save money byavoiding redundancies and better using its collective re-sources (some 470 news personnel).

Thirdly, though there is no formal written agreement,Dispatch properties work under an arrangement in whichthey openly share their story ideas. In general, the proper-ty that initiates the story controls how it will be played.The arrangement is built on trusting one another andavoiding surprises that would undermine that trust.

Finally, Dispatch Media puts journalism ahead of allother considerations. It is happy to reap the benefits ofcross-promotion, marketing and advertising, but sees theseas by-products that will naturally follow from providingfirst-rate news. Dispatch Media achieved buy-in from itsemployees not by forcing convergence but by showing theopportunities and success stories that can come with increased cooperation and communication.

2.4 Convergence Monitor Case Study:Dispatch Media, Columbus, Ohio (USA)

2.4 Convergence Monitor Case Study: Dispatch Media28Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

To help break down cultural barriers, WBNS produced"day-in-the-life" segments for both its own operation andThe Dispatch's to educate broadcast staff about print, andvice versa. A Convergence Handbook and an intranet helpprovide important details about how each property runs,contact information and phone numbers. As a result, Dis-patch Media can point to the following synergies:> Reporters from the weekly newspapers and from both

the broadcast and cable television stations routinelywrite for The Dispatch.

> Print reporters appear on television, often via a Dis-patch newsroom camera, and help report for TV pack-ages, one of which was nominated for a regionalEmmy award.

> A print photographer occasionally shoots video pack-ages.

> TV photographers’ video is regularly converted to cap-ture a print-quality still image, and they regularly car-ry digital still cameras on assignments.

> WBNS and ONN share personnel and video feeds.> ONN simulcasts broadcasts from The Fan via an in-

radio studio camera.> Dispatch Interactive streams live video of news confer-

ences online, updates the web for breaking news andmaintains an interactive, Olive Software-producedelectronic edition of The Dispatch.

> Even the FM radio station has asked for a regular seg-ment that will feature a Dispatch entertainment writerto preview coming weekend attractions.

The key facilitator in the operation is Jon Schwantes,the corporate director for news convergence. Mike Curtin,president and associate publisher of Dispatch Media, saysthe most important step in the convergence process was“bringing Schwantes in. Convergence was somethingsomebody did in (his) spare time before. We’re all busypeople in this game. Until Schwantes came in, there wasno point person, nobody running the show, distributingthe ball, making sure there was a game plan.”

II. A dynamic change agent

Schwantes began his role at the corporate level in September 2002 after having worked most recently in Indianapolis, Indiana, as associate editor/director of newspartnerships for the Dispatch-owned WTHR-TV and theseparately owned Indianapolis Star. In addition to being aveteran news reporter and editor for both The Star and TheIndianapolis News, Schwantes had more than 10 years ofTV experience as an on-air panelist and host before takingthe convergence helm in an arrangement in which the twocompanies split his salary.

Then Schwantes played host to a group of DispatchMedia managers who came to Indianapolis for a fact-finding visit. “After we left, we realized we needed a con-vergence editor to realize and maximize potential,” saidJohn Cardenas, WBNS news director. Schwantes was hiredshortly afterward. “We brought Jon over and that trulystarted the opening of the floodgates,” Cardenas said. Or,as Thomas Griesdorn, vice president and general managerof Dispatch Broadcast, said, “Jon Schwantes stepped inwith his magic dust and wand.”

Respect for Schwantes as a journalist was of primaryimportance in establishing a convergence leader. “Thething that captured our attention was that first and fore-most he was a newsman,” Curtin said. “To the group onthe newspaper side, he was a serious journalist, if you will.I don’t mean to imply anything by that. But the paper isthe mother ship, the reservoir of the community’s history,so it’s important to get buy-in here, and you can get itmuch easier if they see one of their own. Schwantes hadcredibility; he had been a city editor, a statehouse reporter,an ‘ink-stained wretch,’ if you will. He also knew TV fromhaving worked in the WTHR newsroom. He’s a fairlyunique animal.”

Schwantes has an infectious enthusiasm and offers awarm greeting to all, regardless of whether he’s checkingin at WBNS or ONN, or sitting behind his cluttered desk inThe Dispatch newsroom. Like a proud father searching forhis children’s latest photographs, he digs around his deskto show off tear sheets of pages in which television orweekly newspaper reporters had bylined stories in The Dis-patch. All are accompanied by a logo for the participatingnews partner and a promo to the partner’s related content.He stays informed, and keeps others informed, throughconstant cell phone communication.




Schwantes downplays his role, but not the culture he’shelped create. “Rather than having one person being theclearinghouse, I’ve tried to facilitate early on and makesuggestions about what types of stories that would lendthemselves to repurposing and collaboration. It doesn’thave to go through me or any convergence desk.” He en-courages phone calls, e-mails, the sharing of each proper-ty’s story lists, which requires staff to make the extra effortsince Dispatch Media has no central technological infra-structure or content management system to increase com-munication and resource-sharing. “We’re using the humandynamic to overcome technological shortcomings. Ourphilosophy is that when it’s something that can be e-mailed, faxed, whatever, humans can make it work.”

While Schwantes is a one-man convergence hub, thefacilitator, his influence has spread to the grassroots level.“It’s part of our culture, even when Jon’s not here,” saidBen Marrison, editor of The Dispatch. “You’ll hear peoplesaying, ‘Did you call Channel 10, or did you check withThisWeek?’ It’s going on without him, and that’s a sign ofsuccess.”

That mindset wouldn’t have been possible beforeSchwantes’ arrival. “Jon’s like a swim coach,” said Curtin,the company’s president. “When you go to the pool, some-times it takes a long time for a lot to go in. Over time, aperiod of hours, most are in the pool one way or another.There’s a process to things, a natural adoption curve,whether it’s a swim party or media convergence. A lot whothought they’d never be in the pool are in the pool.”

III. Looking outside-in: The path to convergence

There’s clearly a top-down convergence agenda at Dis-patch Media, but it’s a subtle, well-paced approach thatwins over supporters one at a time, usually by playing tothe most basic of human – and business – interests:“What’s in it for me?” It’s also a strategy based on betterserving the news consumer. “Basically we’re giving peoplethe information they want and need, when they want it,and in the format they want it,” Schwantes said. “Becauseof our array of properties in print, broadcast, radio and on-line, we’re able to give them unparalleled coverage anddepth of coverage.”

Curtin points to the fragmentation of the media marketas a leading influence. “Everybody’s losing market share,”he said. “We want to show the market here we’re doingbetter journalism, that we’re the provider of choice. Wewant to make viewers out of readers, readers out of view-ers, readers and viewers out of listeners.”

Schwantes says a mix of research, focus groups, anec-dotes and common sense has led Dispatch Media to con-clude it is largely accomplishing those goals. “There’s nota lot of specific research to show there’s a quid pro quo,”he said. “Some research has indicated that X percentageare more likely to pick up a paper and read the story ifthey had seen it on the air and it whetted their appetite. Infocus groups, where folks were asked about the concept ofteaming up to provide news, people found it to be a goodthing that gave them better depth in news reporting, bettervariety.”

To get internal buy-in, Schwantes dangled a carrot infront of each of the Dispatch properties. “Originally westarted with the online operation, which not too manyyears ago was an island,” he said. “They understood thedifficulties. We went to them and said, ‘You’re dealing withtext, audio and some still images. What if we gave youvirtually unfettered access to video?’ A light bulb goes offand they see what’s in it for them. Then they become usersand champions of convergence.” The WBNS helicopter wasa powerful lure as well. “The first, most obvious examplewas the Channel 10 helicopter,” Curtin said. “The newspa-per doesn’t have one. We’d never hopped a ride on the hel-icopter until a few years ago, even though, at times, aerialphotographs are in demand.”

Using the helicopter to break down barriers actuallypre-dates Schwantes’ arrival. “Without even a convergenceeditor, we knew there were some things we could be do-ing,” said Cardenas, the WBNS news director. “When thepaper would hear about a story, they would say, ‘Are youflying? Can we go up and take stills?’ We made it SOP(standard operating procedure) on breaking news.” AsGriesdorn, the broadcast VP/GM, said, “Hell, we have anextra seat, and it’s not costing us any extra fuel. And nowthey’re (print photographers) getting the story from an aer-ial point of view.”

All Dispatch management who were interviewed forthis case study agreed that convergence helps save on re-sources and avoid redundancies but is not a cost-cuttingmove. “I think some people in our organization think itcould be a headcount reduction strategy, but we’ve feltfrom the outset that (such an approach was) wrong, andit’s apparent now that it’s wrong,” Curtin said.

Griesdorn illustrates the issue by pointing to coverageof another important franchise in the Columbus market:high school football. He says in past years, staff from anumber of the Dispatch properties would show up to coverthe same important game. “Now we spread people out.Rather than sending four to cover one game, we send themout to four different games. We put the helicopter up andinclude the print photographer and reporter now. At timeswe’re not smart in the way we go about collecting ournews. With convergence, we can do so much more and wecan be so much faster. So I don’t think it’s a strategy todownsize or eliminate.”


Along with staffing efficiencies, face-to-face coopera-tion among reporters is also more common. Schwantes re-lates several instances in which TV reporters were first onthe scene of a breaking news event and shared informationwith their late-arriving print counterparts, who had notwitnessed key details or had missed the opportunity for in-terviews. “A print reporter who in the past might havelooked down his nose at the TV reporter found himselfvery much benefiting from his (the TV reporter’s) journal-istic efforts,” Schwantes said. “We tried to build it verymuch from the grassroots, with photographers, reporters,editors seeing the benefits. We tried to create a cultureshowing that type of success. It increases your Rolodex.It’s more eyes and ears in the field.”

Marrison, The Dispatch editor, agrees. “The successcomes when people benefit from it,” he said. “If you’re areporter needing information and you get it from one ofthe affiliates, you’re a true believer. It goes both ways,daily, with information going back and forth. That’s whenpeople appreciate the value of having a huge team, one bigteam. We have one big newsgathering operation. …”

IV. Journalism comes first

Dispatch Media’s approach stresses journalism first andforemost and has never forced the issue of convergence. “Itbegan very informally, mostly top-down management, en-couraging staffers to think across platforms,” Curtin said.“Jon was smart enough not to be forcing people intorooms they didn’t want to go into. He allowed them to dis-cuss with him the potential of walking into those rooms.Slowly but surely, the obvious becomes apparent to people.Most of what we’ve done hasn’t been for the sizzle but forthe steak of good journalism.”

The deliberate, non-threatening style works best, ac-cording to Marrison. “You have to do it one by one, personby person,” he said. “When one of your most grizzled vet-erans appears on TV and comes back and says, ‘Hey, thatwas fun,’ and he hears feedback from those who saw himon TV, you’ve converted him into a believer, or at leastsomeone who’s not opposed. The lesson and wisdom wecan impart on others is not to force anyone; they will hateit and do it poorly. Wait for the right time and see how itworks. Otherwise they’ll go kicking and screaming.”

Curtin says the company has tried not to get caught upin the convergence hype, preferring to feel its way throughat its own pace. It also focuses on strong journalists ratherthan multitaskers. “A lot of media organizations were far,far out in front of us in creating convergence teams, inter-net teams, figuring out how to be a convergence leader,”he said. “We didn’t think in those terms, as being a leader.We wanted to know how we can make our individual op-eration stronger by working collaboratively on somethings.”

Curtin tells of a former reporter who interviewed at apaper in Florida and was asked if he’d be willing to carry acamera and microphone and be a “convergence” reporter.“To me that’s just (backwards),” Curtin said. “To me, thatdoesn’t ask, ‘Is this guy a good journalist, can he write, ishe a sound journalist we want to employ?’ The question isto do the best journalism we can do and then figure outhow to transcend the platforms we’re owning and operat-ing. I hope the day never comes where we’re willing to ask(during an interview) someone to carry microphones and acamera. That puts the cart before the horse.”

By taking a measured approach, Curtin says, DispatchMedia still often gets to have it both ways: quality journal-ism and convergence. “It’s a gradual process, osmosis. Saythere’s somebody who’s been here 35 years, an old-guardreporter, the state’s leading expert on capital punishment.And as Ohio brings back executions, it makes sense to askthat person to do a panel discussion show on Channel 10,a roundtable. (He’s) the walking encyclopedia on capitalpunishment. That’s a real life example: Alan Johnson. Hesaid, sure, he’d be willing to do it. But if he’s not willing todo it, were’ not going to say, ‘We’re not going to employyou.’ We want him working at the paper whether he’s will-ing to go on TV or not.”

Curtin says Dispatch Media ultimately emphasizesplaying to writers’ strengths in their own medium, butSchwantes also expects them to see the bigger picture. “Agood writer is a good writer, and a good writer for a news-paper is different from a good writer for TV and radio,”Curtin said. “There are different talents and we respectthat. We can repurpose content, but that is secondary ortertiary. The minute we lose focus on putting out the bestdamn paper or broadcast we can, we fail.” Schwantesagrees, saying, “We’re not necessarily sending people outwith the idea they will service every platform. But (conver-gence) is basically now part of the job description. Partand parcel of the job is thinking to file for the web, whatkind of audio and video potential there is, what kind of in-teractive database can we put on the web to be useful tothe story.”

Schwantes warns against a common danger: converg-ing for the sake of cross-promotion and marketing. “I fearthat many of those that have sprung up under the name of‘convergence’ are cross-promotion vehicles primarily. Theyswap out promotional content, the usual and most obviousbeing a ‘Tomorrow’s Headlines Tonight’ segment that is a30-, 45- or 60-second recitation of some highlights of to-morrow’s paper in hopes of someone picking up the paper.Then there’s a certain portion of newsprint, maybe a quar-ter of a page, devoted to what folks can see on the air. Butthe success comes from focusing on the journalism first.We recognize the value of cross promotion and marketingbut see that as a byproduct of journalistic collaboration,almost icing on the cake.”




V. Competition and trust

Curtin has been at The Dispatch for 31 years and hasseen the evolution from competition to convergence: “Iwas indoctrinated into a newsroom that viewed Channel10 as a competitor as much as (Channel) 6 or (Channel) 4.We didn’t help them in any way. We ran all the (Dispatch)media businesses as separate entities.”

Aysu Basaran, executive producer of special projects atWBNS, was previously producer for the 11 p.m. newscast:“I wanted to make sure every story I had was in the paperthe next day. That’s how I gauged my success. It was verymuch a competitive environment. We wouldn’t help themand they wouldn’t help us. Things have turned aroundcompletely.”

But there is still pride among all the reporters to getthe story first. “Even though we are converged with Chan-nel 10, I don’t like for them to beat me, I don’t like forthem to notify me about something, and neither does any-one here,” said Jodi Andes Nirode, a reporter at The Dis-patch who was nominated for a regional Emmy, alongwith her WBNS counterparts, for the broadcast portion ofa joint investigative project.

The middle ground between convergence and competi-tion is forged by trust. Though there are no written agree-ments, mission statements or goals – other than “to be theprimary news and information source in Ohio and be-yond,” Schwantes said – the arrangement works becausethere is an understanding that the newsroom that had thestory first will dictate its use. “The key lesson is to knowwhat the rules are,” Marrison said.

“We have to build trust with our internal audience justlike with our external audience,” Schwantes said. “We dothat by not violating that trust and not breaking storiesprematurely. Everyone puts their cards on the table interms of stories and budgets. The more times we put sensi-tive content on the table and see it’s being handled re-sponsibly, it builds trust and makes it easier in the future.The worst thing you can to in that situation is to withholdinformation about a story from your brethren. The worstway is for the broadcast property to pick up the paper andlearn about a story, or for the paper to watch a story on TVor hear about it.”

There are times, Schwantes and Cardenas agree, wherestories will be embargoed. But usually there’s a healthymix of competition and courtesy on breaking news. “We’llcall and say, ‘We’re breaking the story,’ ” Cardenas said.“‘It’s just a head’s up to let you know so you can get a legup.’ There are no hidden agendas, no secrets. No oneshould be surprised.”

In instances where there is a question about who hadthe story first, Marrison said, The Dispatch usually defersto WBNS because it faces more competition from the othernetwork affiliates while there is no major daily print com-petitor in the Columbus market. “The newspaper betterneeds to understand the importance of a sweeps week ormonth, and TV better needs to understand the importanceof what Sunday (editions) mean to us,” Marrison said.

VI. Battling culture

“We realized early on at both Columbus and Indiana-polis that (culture) was the biggest hurdle to overcome,”Schwantes said. “It’s quite natural: there are differentmeasures of success, different rhythms in news cycles, dif-ferent languages. There were suspicions, animosities, fears.It’s very much human nature.” So in the early stages ofconvergence in Indianapolis, Schwantes gave his print andbroadcast colleagues the chance to vent about stereotypes.He provided questionnaires in the broadcast newsroomasking for phrases that come to mind about the TV sta-tion’s new print partner. The answers were predictable:boring, traditional, staid, comprehensive. The print newsroom also came up with likely descriptions for itsbroadcast counterpart: shallow, sleazy, salacious, cheesy,blow-dried.

While Schwantes was trying to overcome those percep-tions in Indianapolis, management in Columbus was tryingto do the same thing. News staffs from The Dispatchtoured the WBNS newsroom, and vice versa. “We decidedto try to understand each other’s business by hostingmeet-and-greet convergence luncheons, if you will,” Car-denas said. “We invited Dispatch reporters and editors hereand catered a lunch.” Going further, WBNS produced a“day-in-the-life” video about how its own newsroom oper-ates and screened it for Dispatch staff, then produced asimilar video on how the newspaper operates and showedit to the TV staff. “It was a nice way, an orientation ofsorts, to just meet a few people and get to know each other,” Basaran said. “I know it sounds silly, but it helps,especially when the next day you see that person out on a story.” To increase communication and understanding, aConvergence Handbook was created and distributed. It includes details about each Dispatch property, its dead-lines, and staff contact information and photographs.

Still, there are mixed reviews on the status of the cul-tural divide. “Part of what makes it hard is that there are alot of talented people in television, but for every story youget that’s well researched and well reported, the next nightyou turn on the news and they’ll literally be waving pom-poms about the next OSU (Ohio State) game,” said DannyGoodwin, copy desk chief at The Dispatch. “There’s thatdisconnect between the paper and TV, always a little dif-ferent mission. Most of us know there’s a certain entertain-ment element to what they do: to look pretty, to reach out,to appeal, to be a booster when they should. I’m surethey’ll say we’re prima donnas, and that’s fair.” Howeverhe added, “I’m not unhappy with the convergence that hasevolved here. It’s been more positive than negative, some-what surprisingly so, from my point of view.”


The Dispatch’s Nirode and her WBNS colleagues werenominated for an Emmy – American television’s highestaward – for the project on the excessive personal use ofcity-owned vehicles. At the same time, she admits she wasagainst convergence and thinks the brevity of a typicalbroadcast news report is too shallow. “Honestly, I was oneof the ones firmly against it. In general, I don’t care muchfor the TV medium because I feel they oversimplify, there’snot much depth and not enough research. So I had no in-terest in going on TV and still don’t have any interest ingoing on TV. I’ve gained respect for some in the business,but some, I still believe, are talking heads – I’m sorry. Thesame thing is true – some on the print side think they’reworth a lot more than they are and think they’ve gone farenough (in reporting) but in reality could continue to dig.It definitely goes both ways.”

Nirode is also quick to point out that she enjoyswatching TV news with more substance: 60 Minutes,Nightline, PBS. “I love reporters who go in-depth onstories. I just don’t like 6 o’clock quick-hit news. My prob-lem is a reporter showing up on scene and getting reportsfrom a cameraman. Covering crime, I’ve seen it a numberof times. Somebody shows up at a scene, stands there andsmiles at an accident where someone died. It seems callous, and they didn’t put too much work into it.”

VII. Crossing over media: The “shooters”

Interestingly, Dispatch photographer Doral ChenowethIII, sees time differently when he compares shooting stillphotographs and video. In his case, the print medium isthe quick hit. "Their clips are measured in seconds and youhave to shoot a lot of video to get 20 seconds of qualityproduct," he said of broadcast cameramen. "That’s one ofthe biggest cultural things that I’ve encountered. I'm justused to trying to capture the moment, five-hundredths of asecond -- that’s really all I need. With TV, you’re shootingand shooting and shooting and getting different angles tobuild a package."

Chenoweth should know. The 15-year veteran has car-ried a Canon GL2 with mini-DV cassettes on every assign-ment for two years, and is the only Dispatch photographerto do so. "I have a philosophy that I'm a newspaper pho-tographer first, and if I happen to get video, so much thebetter," he said. "We're very much in the infancy of con-vergence." He hopes the dual-platform experience will payoff in future assignments, but he acknowledges some ofhis colleagues see convergence more as a burden than anopportunity. "Many see it as distracting and detractingfrom their newspaper work," he said.

He says he uses his own news judgment to decidewhether a story deserves video and, if so, whether thevideo is then appropriate for broadcast or the web.Chenoweth lets WBNS handle post-production work forbroadcast video, with Schwantes again acting as an inter-mediary. "It's all done by Channel 10," Chenoweth said ofthe editing. "The few times I’ve done it, I've shot raw videoand delivered it to Channel 10. Jon facilitates writing thevoiceover script for the story we’re writing ... and maybemassages it for TV in format they can work with."

Chenoweth is comfortable using iMovies to edit videointo QuickTime movies for the web, time permitting. On arecent day, he shot photos and video of an Eucadoranwoman who travels to her homeland twice a year to im-port crafts to sell in Columbus. As he prepared to work onthe video, however, he was sent to a spot news story, adrowning. "I'm off work in 60 minutes, so I'm not sure I'llbe able to pull it together," he said after returning. "If not,I'll just let the web video go and concentrate on the news-paper work."

With more time, he can produce video for features. Anupcoming project is on a local bus driver, a woman who isa published poet and dying of cancer. "I listened to herread her poetry and thought, 'This is fabulous.' The news-paper will write a nice story but won’t be able to run oneof her poems like that, so I said, 'Let’s heave her read herpoem, and I'll put a video camera on her.' It's just a value-added piece for our website."

Like time constraints, technology is often an obstacle.Chenoweth says he would like to learn Macromedia Flashso he can produce online photo slideshows withvoiceovers. "That’s where the strength of the web is mostutilized," he said. "You look at some of the Flash packageswith sound that some photographers are producing.They're powerful pieces. But we don’t have any Flash ex-perts here. ... It's so complicated, I can't get my armsaround it."

TV cameramen also have carried digital still cameras,and their photographs -- or still frames from their video --have run in a variety of formats. Chenoweth says WBNSoften provides headshots of suspects in police custody ordefendants appearing in court, and that photos usually runas secondary photos on section fronts or on inside pages."We appreciate the work they do," he said. Schwantes sayssome photos even have run four or five columns as sec-tion-front centerpieces.




VIII. Crossing over media: The reporters

Reporters also regularly cross media. Many Dispatchwriters make regular appearances in broadcast segments,especially the movie critic, the restaurant reviewer, thegardening writer and sports staff. There is also a cameramounted in The Dispatch newsroom for talkbacks.

There is limited formal training for print staff beforethey go on air. “A lot is sort of trial by fire,” Schwantessaid. “There’s more coaching on an individual basis, espe-cially if it’s a feature on an ongoing basis. We do on-the-job training, critiquing after the fact.” There is usuallysome preparation, or at least conversation, between a pro-ducer or anchor and the print reporter before the segment.“We want to make sure they’re on the same page, knowwhere the discussion may go,” he said. “Some have done itso much and are so comfortable with the medium, theywill go on and take questions as they come and are verycomfortable doing so.”

If there is an area in which Dispatch Media is pushingthe envelope, it is in publishing broadcast reporters’ by-lined stories in The Dispatch. Schwantes believes no paper,or at least no paper in a similar market size, is as prolificin turning broadcast stories into print. Schwantes sayssuch stories are not edited any differently or more exten-sively than regular staff or wire copy. “I can’t really thinkof instances where stories have been killed,” he said. “Theyhaven’t been so much killed as sent back for elaboration orrewrite, restructuring. But with no more degree or frequen-cy than what occurs with content generated by Dispatchreporters themselves.”

Yet Roger McCoy, a WBNS investigative reporter andthe most published broadcast-in-print writer, saysSchwantes’ editing should result in a double byline inmany instances. “Jon is a great facilitator to help TV re-porters learn how to rewrite for print,” Cardenas said.“They joke, saying he ends up writing it for them, but forthe most part he probably does. He takes the TV versionand gets more information. The TV reporter takes a stab atit, and Jon probably serves as the editor who cleans it up.”Nirode, the Dispatch reporter, said she has never seen rawcopy from broadcast reporters but acknowledges at an in-formal “brown-bag” get-together that “Ben (Marrison)gave Jon kudos, saying he’s done wonders with theircopy.” Goodwin, the copy desk chief, also creditsSchwantes. “Frankly, he does a good job. I’ve been sur-prised by their readability.”

Schwantes says many broadcast reporters have a stylethat mirrors the energy of television. “I like the vibrancy ofbroadcast writers. They tend to be very good storytellers.They tend to write for the ear.” They also have changedtheir reporting skills to get additional details that are natu-ral pieces of print stories. “One reporter will joke, ‘I wassure to ask about ages and occupations,’ ” he said. “She’sproud to get that information.”

There is universal agreement that, in the end, the fin-ished product must, and does, meet the same exactingstandards before being published. “One piece of advice isnot to lower your standards,” Marrison said. “If a story isturned in by whomever and it doesn’t meet the standards,don’t run it.” Schwantes says forcing a bad story is point-less. “We gain nothing by putting content in paper thatdoesn’t meet our standards and leaves the readers withmore questions. It hurts our credibility.”

IX. Television benefits

The weight of convergence and the credibility The Dis-patch affords WBNS also provide greater influence and ac-cess. “What writing in print and being in broadcast givesyou is more eyeballs, more clout,” said McCoy, the WBNSreporter. “People who didn’t see the report on TV saw it inThe Dispatch. And from the accountability of interviewinggovernment officials, our phone calls get returned faster,people get information for us more readily. They knowthere will be more accountability because more people willbe reading and viewing.”

In another example, Basaran, the WBNS special proj-ects producer, was lining up city council and board of edu-cation candidates to come in for interviews that would bearchived on the web and complement the TV’s electioncoverage and the paper’s graphic on the candidates’ viewson key issues. “A candidate who might otherwise have saidno feels more pressure to come in and answer questionsbecause there’s more than one media organization in-volved,” she said. The payoff was deeper, layered coveragethat included 112 video clips on Dispatch.com.

McCoy has seen the impression he can make by ex-panding his content from broadcast to the paper and theweb. “I still think it’s a print-dominated world,” he said. “Ithas a more lasting impact for the most part. People havethat paper in their hand. When it’s broadcast, it’s here andgone. The strength of broadcast is the emotional, visualstrength. Each medium, logically, has its distinctivestrengths. It’s taking the unique strengths and combiningthem that gives you much more dedicated impact.”

McCoy has 26 bylined stories in 2003 and 2004. Unlikethe typical one-minute-and-30-second or two-minute TVstory, many of McCoy’s print stories have run 30 to 40inches. Three of those stories have run on the paper’s frontpage and several more on other section fronts. Two of hisjoint print-broadcast investigations were nominated for re-gional Emmys: one on the statewide lack of compliance inschool fire drills and one on a $24 million control tower atPort Columbus, the airport, that had a design flaw prevent-ing air traffic controllers from seeing all of the runwaysand taxiways from a single position. The control towerstory, in fact, won the Emmy for investigative reporting.


In addition to a story on the Metro&State front and athree-part TV series, the fire drill project contained an in-teractive database on Dispatch.com that allows users tosearch for the compliance rate of their children’s schools.“We’re finding strengths where maybe we weren’t aware ofthem before,” McCoy said. “There’s added value on theweb.”

Convergence also benefits WBNS by giving it access toThe Dispatch’s rich archives. “The most obvious tool wehave is our library, an old-fashioned newspaper morguewith abundant files on the history of this town,” Curtinsaid. “Channel 10 is a regular user of our library, whichwould have been unheard of 10 years ago.” In the after-math of Ronald Reagan’s death, Schwantes called The Dis-patch library to get a list of dates during which the formerpresident had visited Columbus so that WBNS staff couldmore easily search for archived tapes.

There are other changes afoot at the WBNS/ONN facil-ity, which is located about three miles from The Dispatchbuilding:> It is moving to a non-linear digital editing system

called Grass Valley.> A new joint assignment desk is being constructed in

the WBNS newsroom. Because it is staffed around theclock, the TV assignment desk is the hub for localbreaking news alerts, especially on the police andemergency beats. As traditional emergency two-wayradio systems are phased out, Schwantes hopes to keeppace by implementing a database that will receive afeed from newer mobile data terminals located inemergency vehicles. Such a system not only wouldkeep Dispatch Media on the same technological levelwith local authorities but also, by storing the calls in adatabase, give reporters a new source of informationon local emergency dispatches, searchable by keywords or phrases such as homicide, arson or armedrobbery.

> The WBNS newsroom also hired a staffer to help keepits website, which is managed separately from DispatchInteractive, current with breaking and local news.WorldNow, a specialized web publishing service forbroadcasters, recently took over management of theWBNS site, changing the template, adding automationof non-local news feeds and providing revenue oppor-tunities through the resale of local news content andadvertising.

X. Continued cooperation

Nirode admits there are benefits to the convergedarrangement. When she was working nights as the policereporter, she says, there were occasions where she mighthave missed part of a report on the police scanner andwould double-check with her counterpart at WBNS.

“If I wasn’t sure what they (police) were talking about,or I didn’t catch the initial call, maybe I don’t know if it’s ashooting,” she said. “It makes sense to have someone elseto bounce it off of. That’s how it started.”

Cardenas, in fact, changed the structure of the WBNSnewsroom reporting system to encourage more exchangesbetween the print and broadcast colleagues. “The beat sys-tem had pretty much been abandoned in TV 15 years ago,”Griesdorn said. “John changed our culture and philosophyby migrating back to the beats, especially for afternoonand late-night reporters because that’s where the deadlineis for the paper and for our 11 o’clock news. The reporterskept running into one another but didn’t know each other.What really began paying off was when our beat reportersbegan forming alliance with The Dispatch and ThisWeekCommunity Newspapers reporters and started calling oneanother with information.”

Nirode says she is receptive to receiving informationfrom her TV colleagues, but she wants to verify it with herown sources. She recently did so during reporting of thearrest of a rape suspect who allegedly attacked 21 women.A WBNS anchor had a list of information relating to therapes and faxed it to Nirode. She didn’t have time to checkit to use for the next day’s paper. “I’ve since double-checked it and found it was accurate and I used it for amore in-depth story,” she said. “I don’t think that’s conde-scending to them.”

The Emmy-nominated package, in which she teamedwith WBNS reporters Kurt Ludlow and Lori Lipton andcameraman Bill Reagan, was long by TV standards, ap-proximately five minutes. Ironically, Nirode says the re-porting she did for the package and her accompanyingnewspaper story wouldn’t have been nearly as in-depthwithout the work of Lipton, who has since left WBNS. “Iwas working nights and part-time then, and it was hard toget data from the city. There was a lot of incomplete data,wrong data. Lori did a lot of work going back, getting datafrom them. I don’t know if I would have been able to dothat. It’s those areas where I think convergence is perfect.You can’t find one journalist who did an in-depth storywho didn’t think there was still leftover fat, more to chew,that needed more space or time.”

XI. Reporting muscle

The ultimate convergence benefit for Dispatch Media isthe sheer number of reporters they can muster who will viefor that space and time. News staff among the key proper-ties includes:> The Dispatch – approximately 250> WBNS – approximately 100> ONN – approximately 40> ThisWeek – approximately 55> Dispatch.com – approximately 14> 1460/The Fan – approximately 10

“The reason I support it, and encourage it, is because Iwant as many journalists on the ground as I can have,”Marrison said. “You take … what we have and combine itwith Channel 10 and then combine it with the number atThisWeek, and now you’ve got a force to be reckonedwith.”




Cardenas agrees, and acknowledges that a broadcastnews staff of 70 would be more typical in a market the sizeof Columbus. “This (staff of 100) is because of the commit-ment the company has to good journalism,” he said. Be-fore there was a corporate convergence model, ONN wascreated in 1996 to produce convergence among its sevenstate affiliate stations, two ONN state bureaus and a Wash-ington bureau.

In addition to his own news staff, the affiliates and bu-reau provide an additional, incalculable reporting team,according to News Director Greg Fisher. “I like to call it‘robust,’ because we have our own independent staff butalso the partnerships. It’s almost like the modern equiva-lent of expandable bandwidth. Like if there’s a breakingstory with an affiliate in Cincinnati, how do you measurethose resources? We provide great coverage for our part-ners and they can provide coverage for us.”

XII. Shining examples

The results are impressive:When a tip came from WBNS about a news conference

June 8, 2004, involving Ohio State’s athletics department,Schwantes made phone calls to ensure the newspaper’ssports staff was aware, coordinated with Dispatch Interac-tive to stream the news conference live and talked withONN producers to ensure a simulcast on the cable stationoriginating from the all-sports radio The Fan. After WBNSstaff obtained a copy of a lawsuit that led to the firing ofOhio State basketball coach Jim O’Brien, and a copy ofO’Brien’s contract, Schwantes hand-delivered the docu-ments to the newspaper, where information technologystaff scanned them and sent them to Dispatch Interactiveto be posted to the web. He worked until nearly 10 p.m. toensure that the following day’s Dispatch would contain athorough cross-promotion of those documents as well asrelated online video and audio content from WBNS, ONNand The Fan.

When the serial rape suspect was arrested on June 7,2004, ONN carried the news conference live and DispatchInteractive streamed it live on the web and later postedbackground stories about the rapes that had plagued thearea for more than a decade. The following day’s Dispatchcarried a story and referenced the archived material online.The second-day reporting included an on-the-record inter-view by Nirode with the most recent rape victim and an-other front-page story. Because the woman was willing totalk candidly about her story, Nirode asked her if shewould consent to an interview with WBNS. When sheagreed, Nirode phoned WBNS to help set it up.

The package on the 60th anniversary of D-Day includ-ed an online re-creation of the June 6, 1944, ColumbusEvening Dispatch using the Olive Software that producesthe daily electronic editions of the paper for Dispatch In-teractive.

Gulf Dispatches, a series of reports from Iraq in March-April 2004 by Senior Editor Joe Hallet and photographerTim Revell, focused on Ohio Army reservists and NationalGuard troops. In addition to print stories, Revell shot digi-tal video for WBNS and ONN that was also archived on theweb. After returning, Hallet appeared on the WBNS 11 p.m.newscasts five consecutive nights. “A great ratings spike,”Griesdorn said.

Docs Rate Docs, a seven-day series in February-March2004, expanded on a traditional WBNS project that asksareas doctors to select their favorite physician in 25 spe-cialties. This year a searchable database was added to Dis-patch.com, and a The Dispatch ran a front-page story tokick off the series, which included nightly reports onWBNS.

Free Ride, the Emmy-nominated project from Novem-ber 2003 in which Nirode reported for both the print andbroadcast.

“Prison Medicine: Costly Decisions, Dire Conse-quences” was an August 2003 joint investigation of thestate of health care in Ohio’s prisons that ran two days inThe Dispatch and aired three nights on WBNS. As a result,Ohio’s governor ordered an internal investigation, and an outside consultant credited the report with helping him make recommendations that the governor later imple-mented.

An in-depth web microsite was created around cover-age of the I-270 sniper that terrorized the Columbus areafor months in 2003-2004. It includes background stories,video, audio, graphics, charts and a timeline.

When an Ohio peace activist traveled to Iraq in spring2003 to act as a human shield, a Dispatch reporterarranged to speak with her by phone. WBNS engineers installed a digital voice recorder on the reporter’s phone tocapture high-quality audio. The resulting content includedthe reporter’s print story, audio clips on the web, and amix of audio and B-roll footage for stories on WBNS and ONN.


XIII. Online limitations

“Projects are important, but the biggest benefits comefrom daily journalism and spot news,” Schwantes said.

Yet, despite the cooperation, communication and com-bined news staff that Dispatch Media can bring to bear, itsgreatest weakness is in the platform that provides the mostimmediacy: online. “Frankly I don’t think we use it asmuch as we could,” Schwantes said. “We don’t use it withevery story. Ideally, if someone in Columbus goes out forlunch and on the way back they see, for example, policebarricades and people milling around, they should be ableto go back to their office and log on and see what’s goingon. Right now I’m not 100 percent sure that informationwill be there in real time.” In the past, any content on Dis-patch.com would be shared with websites throughout theDispatch family. But with WBNS and ONN moving toWorldNow, Schwantes says the workflow is in a “shake-down” or transition phase.

The firing of the Ohio State basketball coach was agood example of how effective Dispatch Interactive can be,but also highlighted some of the flaws of structure. An on-line sports staffer wrote the initial story, about five para-graphs, after watching the news conference on television.Other personnel began assembling a photo gallery,archived video, and a WBNS clip from the news confer-ence. Pam Coffman, editor for Corporate New Media andthe director of Dispatch.com, stayed until 8 p.m. to updatethe story, two hours past her normal shift. It’s unclear atwhat point a bylined Dispatch story went online, butthroughout the evening a wire story from The AssociatedPress was used as the lead.

The workload for Coffman’s staff, a group of 14 thatincludes some contract employees and has only four peo-ple with any newspaper experience, is geared toward theearly morning, starting at 5 a.m., when staff begins up-loading the content from that day’s paper. This schedulemakes it difficult to have adequate staffing when newsbreaks later in the afternoon or evening. Staff often has towork from home, or return to the office, which is frequent-ly the case for Jerry Tebben, assistant new media editor.“Frequently over the past year, Jerry is working late intothe night to post video clips, stopping off at Channel10/ONN to pick up tapes to digitize and then make clips,”Coffman said.

Although the online operation started out in the printnewsroom, as it grew, it was forced to move to a buildinga few blocks away in September 2001. Coffman’s intentionis to return at least one online staffer to the newsroom foras much time as possible. A staffer currently attends thepaper’s morning news meeting and lines up reporters andeditors to help post stories and/or updates on expectednews during the day. Coffman also hopes to improve hard-ware and software that staff uses from home in breakingnews situations. “I really feel strongly about breaking newson the web,” Coffman said. “It keeps people coming back.”

Nirode, for one, thinks more print-produced content onthe web is a good thing. “My co-workers will probablyshoot me for saying this, but I think we should do morework for the web. When O’Brien (the Ohio State basketballcoach) was fired, seeing it came from us relatively quickly,I think it builds allegiance. People get addicted and wantto get more.”

The question is whether readers notice or care, for ex-ample, that the story they are getting might be from theAP instead of The Dispatch. “Probably more often than notwe (the media) do tend to overrate that a lot,” said Good-win, the copy desk chief and formerly sports editor of TheDispatch. “If the local AP writer does a good job with theinitial reports and they went to Dispatch.com to get it, Idon’t think too many people are moaning, ‘Why didn’t Iget a good story?’ Obviously, if we have stuff that nobodyelse has, it helps the beat reporter to be out there with hisname on it. We want to be out there, but we have to prior-itize so that in the morning the paper is the best it can be.”

The problem, Goodwin says, is that if a print reporter isalone and trying to file for the web and the paper, it leavesno time to report. The reporter needs more help either froma dedicated web reporter of from a backup print reporterwho can write primarily for the web and also supplementthe print coverage. An additional issue is that news andsports copy editors who normally work nights are notavailable to edit breaking news during the day before it isposted to the web. “If staffing levels were to stay the same,I think you’d just have to appoint one of the higher edi-tors, an assistant ME (managing editor) if there’s breakingnews. It’s not efficient to have a copy editor floatingthroughout the day. The volume of stories wouldn’t justifyit as much as work at night. All the editors up to the maineditor are roll-up-their-sleeves editors. They do get on aterminal and edit a story. So what I’m suggesting is notthat radical.”

Schwantes is intrigued by the notion of having a des-ignated group of editors reworking content from onemedium to another: “You used to see a lot of rewrite forafternoon papers, but we don’t have the same pressures asthe afternoon papers have gone away. But because of the24-hour news cycle, you need to turn things around ex-tremely quickly. One of the best ways to do that is an indi-vidual or individuals who are skilled at taking informationfrom one or several sources and weaving that into some-thing that can be used in a variety of platforms. I doubtwe’d call it ‘rewrite,’ but you will see journalists doing thatin the future. You have to have repurposing and dissemi-nation somewhere, either literally in the field with a taperecorder, a video camera and laptop and somehow filingfor a multitude of platforms from the field. Or reportersdoing what they’ve done in the past, gathering informa-tion, feeding it back to a central repository. That probablymakes more sense in the long term in part because it stillallows journalists to excel.”




XIV. Outside perceptions

Tom Schwartz , an associate professor of journalism atOhio State University in Columbus for 22 years, says hereads The Dispatch cover to cover every day and considersit “one of the most underrated newspapers in the UnitedStates.” But when it comes to convergence, “I don’t seeany great benefit to the public by this increased conver-gence. I’m not really sure that it’s really doing a wholeheck of a lot of good in terms of the newspaper itself orthe television station, those being the two principle media.

“(There are) examples where convergence helps, but Idon’t think it’s very common and it doesn’t happen everyday. What I do I see in The Dispatch is occasional bylinesby TV reporters, but the stories tend not to be of anydepth. Maybe TV got a scoop on it, and they sort of have aTV reporter write a story instead of a print reporter, sothat’s about it. I don’t think that’s a great example of con-vergence.”

Danny Russell, editor of a Columbus alternative publi-cation, the other paper, since its inception in1990, says hesees no effect from Dispatch Media’s convergence. “There’snothing that I’ve seen about them collaborating or doingthe synergy thing that necessarily makes them better orworse than what one of their (individual) outlets do. Idon’t see it necessarily affecting the quality one way or theother.”

Though he teaches convergence as part of the curricu-lum at OSU, Schwartz admits he is not an expert and thathe rarely watches any local TV news. He sees the web as anatural common ground for convergence, “but the (Dis-patch) web people are isolated and not integrated into theTV or Dispatch (print) newsrooms.”

Schwartz believes convergence is largely a cross-pro-motion strategy by Dispatch Media, but he isn’t buying.“I’ve never taken a cue from The Columbus Dispatch tolook at the website. I’ve seen it (promotions), but I don’tcare, and I don’t think it’s added knowledge or value towhat I wind up knowing about a particular story.”

His primary concern is that convergence will result ina lack of competition. “My complaint is that here’s thenewspaper helping out the TV station and the TV stationhelping out the paper, and really they should be competi-tors. It kind of harms the competitive spirit, which en-hances the quality of journalism.”

Barb Hipsman is an associate professor and coordina-tor of the news sequence at Kent State University, locatedabout 140 miles from Columbus in Kent, Ohio. She regu-larly reads The Dispatch, both in print and online, and hasspent time at the paper during an academic sabbatical.

“Naturally you worry about (lack of competition),” shesaid. “To me convergence is a way for people to get betteraccess to better news and more in-depth news.”

She says she hears good things about convergencefrom reporters in The Dispatch newsroom. “They said peo-ple in the print newsroom felt like The Dispatch was re-sponding better to breaking news because of the influenceof TV, the collaboration with TV.” Echoing WBNS’ McCoyabout the weight of convergence, Hipsman relates otherconversations in which reporters and editors say they aremore likely to get information they need because they rep-resent more than one media.

“I’m impressed seeing bylines by broadcast reporters,”she said. “I asked a couple of the print reporters, and theysaid, ‘Well, some of the older (TV) reporters are really pret-ty savvy, they really know what they’re doing.’

“(Convergence) won’t hit every reporter or every as-signment editor, but the goal has to be that the publisherand editor expect good journalism comes first and theywon’t give up the quality of journalism. That’s what JonSchwantes is trying to do. If they have journalism at theforefront, as opposed to a business product, I think re-porters start to look at it, as well, two hands are betterthan one.”

XV. Technology and archiving

In addition to The Dispatch’s in-house camera, there isa bank of four TVs mounted on a wall in the heart of itsnewsroom to monitor the news. Each is equipped with aTivo digital video recorder so that reporters can record andreview broadcasts at their leisure. Headphones are pro-vided to avoid distractions. The conference room isequipped with a large plasma screen that can be used towatch TV or connect to laptops to display graphics or pho-tos during news meetings.

Dispatch Media has no central system linking all media, an issue that the company hopes to remedy. It hasRequests for Proposals out to four vendors, including CCI,Unisys and AMC, the latter of which currently is theprovider for the print properties’ front-end systems. The hope is that the new system will interface with ENPS,the broadcast news system that WBNS and ONN employ.

“A content management system that meets our needsacross all platforms would be wonderful,” Schwantes said.Currently content is shared in a variety of ways. Storiesand photos are e-mailed back and forth. The Dispatch hasa web interface in which a raw story can be pasted andformatted for Atex. Shawn Sines, a publishing systems engineer, is helping upgrade the newsroom to MicrosoftActive Directory, a structure independent of the front-endsystem that will allow a shared folder between The Dis-patch and ThisWeek papers. “Eventually you will be ableto drop a story on the shared so people can read it backand forth,” he said.


Semi-automated functions allow Dispatch .com to capture video from WBNS newscasts, which is then editedinto clips using an internally developed software tool.They are stored in an SQL database on an IIS server. Theediting and archiving processes will change with the TVstation’s move to WorldNow, which provides its own clip-ping software but has no built-in archive. “We’re lookingat archive solutions,” said Coffman, the online director.

Counting Dispatch.com’s current video archive on theSQL database, Dispatch Media has at least four archivingsystems, none of which interface. IBM’s NICA (Network In-teractive Content Access) is capable of archiving video andmay be used to solve Dispatch.com’s needs. Currently it’sused within The Dispatch building for photos, graphics,PDFs of pages and Dispatch text. Its key limitation, ac-cording to Victor Black, an information/intranet specialistin The Dispatch library, is its web presence. “It can handleaudio and video, but until they design a decent web inter-face, you have to use a client. You have to load it and geta user name and password,” he said. He believes someWBNS staff members have passwords and permissions, butdoesn’t think NICA is being used by them since the librarystaff never receives calls for technical support.

The broadcast and cable properties, however, use ENPSto archive their content. Schwantes was uncertain aboutthe exact system that the radio properties use but says it isan all-digital format. Neither Schwantes nor Black believesprint staff can access ENPS.

The final archive is Vu/Text, the plain-text archive ofDispatch stories from 1985 and ThisWeek stories from2002. It is available through Dewey, a property-wide intranet maintained by the library staff, and a more lim-ited version is also searchable through Dispatch.com’sarchives. The newly designed Dewey site is a powerful toolthat offers staff contact information, a variety of referencesources, a catalog of books and periodicals in the library,and a public records database that includes information onstate schools, voter registration, marriage licenses, divorcesand births.

The confusion over the specifics of archiving also ex-tends to the archiving of The Dispatch’s electronic edition,which Black and Schwantes thought were not beingarchived. Coffman, however, confirms that although onlythe most recent 10 days are available online because of licensing agreements, Dispatch Interactive is archiving allthe editions. There is no archiving mechanism to capturethe different iterations of Dispatch.com or any other web-sites as postings change throughout the day. “There’s noarchiving at all,” Black said. “But there’s not enoughunique content to make it an issue yet.”

XVI. Subscribing to the web

The paper’s electronic edition online is the outgrowthof a concerted Dispatch Media effort to view the web as afee-based service. “We were hearing actual examples ofpeople who had canceled the paper because they could getthe information for free on the web,” Marrison said. “Thelogic is if people can get it for nothing, why would theypay for it. We wanted to educated people that if you go tothe internet for information, you want the most reliableinformation and we provide it. A reasonable person wouldexpect to pay for trustworthy information.” So in Septem-ber 2002, the paper began charging non-print subscribers$4.95 a month for access to web content that is consideredoutside the areas of public interest or civic journalism. All of the joint investigative projects previously listed asexamples in this case study are in the free content area.

When people outside the print circulation area com-plained that they couldn’t subscribe, Dispatch Media em-ployed Olive Software to create its electronic edition, start-ing in July 2003. Now, for the same $4.95 per month, userscan access content both in the traditional web fashion ofclicking on links to stories or by going to the electronicedition and digitally scrolling through the paper, clickingon a story block, photo or advertisement that launches aseparate window for enhanced viewing. Unlike the rest ofthe web, the electronic edition is much more easilysearched, including advertisements and obituaries. “So nowwe do deliver” outside the circulation area, Marrison said.“In some ways it’s more usable than the print edition.”

Schwantes says that Dispatch.com audio and videocontent that is cross-promoted in print or linked to fromother Dispatch-owned websites is always free. Another distinction about that content, he notes, is that it’s not arehash of what’s in the paper but another piece of the story. “I can’t think of a single instance where we have referred people to the web and had the same content as inprint or broadcast,” he said. “The only reason to drivethem to the web is for added context, layering.”

Despite an inevitable but largely insignificant loss oftraffic from consumers unwilling to pay for content,Schwantes says, by charging for access, the paper cancount online subscribers in its circulation numbers underan ABC audit.

XVII. Mobile future

Along with its progressive approach to the web, Dis-patch Media is already thinking about opportunities formobile delivery, though Schwantes would not go intogreat detail because of competition issues. “We’re trying toprepare as best we can for any eventuality so that we canrespond with news and information,” he said. “That’s whatwe are, a news and information company.” He expects Dis-patch Media will eventually provide information to PDAsand cell phones, customizing content based on consumers’preferences. The interest in Ohio State University athletics,high school football in Ohio and sports in general createsopportunities to deliver premium content.




Griesdorn, from Dispatch Broadcast, is a true believerin media evolution. “If we are limited to the devices wehave today, we will die,” he said. “If we are barkers for themedia circus tent, whether we get them in the tent bycracking open the newspaper, delivering the newspaper ona mobile device every morning, on their computer, on anytype of personal digital receiving device that’s on one’sbelt or in one’s purse, we have to be able to sell and con-vey the message to them. Advertising and sponsorship willfollow.”

XVIII. Advertising potential

Schwantes agrees that converged advertising cam-paigns have promise. “We have people devoted specifical-ly to convergence sales,” he said. “They approach potentialadvertisers with an overall concept and theme. It’s muchmore increasingly incorporated into one pitch, one pack-age, one message.” Curtin points to the “marketing clout”of Dispatch Media. “(Advertisers) see us as one companyand so they see us in a different way. We will have somesales and revenue opportunities that we might not havehad as individual media companies.”

Dispatch Media currently uses The Bag, a targeted mar-keting vehicle that is delivered twice a week and can reachas many as 3.5 million households in 69 Ohio counties.

XIX. Lessons learned

Schwantes, the news convergence director: “To the ex-tent we’ve been successful or what sets us apart, we haveput journalism first and it’s manifested in the successfulcollaboration we see today – the number of broadcast-gen-erated stories in the paper, numbers that would surpassmost any other market in the country… Now that we havea loose infrastructure and widespread trust about howthings work, we’re able to rise to just about any challenge.”

Curtin, the Dispatch president: “I think we grew to un-derstand over the past two years that there’s a natural pac-ing for the evolution of convergence. You can’t force theissue faster than it will naturally develop. You create theconditions and environment in which it will happen.”

Cardenas, the WBNS news director: “Print reporters areexpert at being print reporters. Don’t try to make them intotelevision reporters, and the same with editors. Their expertise is in doing the form they do. So I think one ofthe lessons is don’t try to turn people into somethingthey’re not.”

Coffman, the Dispatch.com director: “Early on, I’d bein a panic because I’d see other papers of a similar size alot further ahead on the internet. It didn’t take time to seesome of that was pointless. You can’t worry quite so muchabout what the other guys are doing, simply realizing it’san investment over time – which, for a news person, iskind of a hard thing to do… The other thing, culturally, iscooperation among people. You can find great people allacross the company and can convert them into being moreweb-savvy and more interested in what’s going on withthe web. It’s all about developing relationships.”

Basaran, the WBNS producer: “I think the first thing isin just overcoming those obstacles, bringing down the bar-riers that naturally happen between broadcast and print.”

Fisher, the ONN news director: “The No. 1 lesson is thatit’s a process, not a destination. At every stage, you’re con-tinually working on how to get better, how to do more.Something that is routine today might have seemed like astretch a year and a half ago, and we’re already makingthe step toward what will be routine a year from now.We’re always working on the process, and I continue to beamazed by what can be accomplished through teamworkand convergence.”

XX. Conclusions

Dispatch Media Group has made tremendous strides inthe inevitable culture clashes that come with convergence.It must continue to nurture those relationships and work toexpand the circle of influence to gain more thorough buy-in throughout the organization.

The process starts with Schwantes’ influence and visi-bility. As he continues to facilitate success stories, and asindividuals continue to see the benefits for themselves andthe company, the convergence mindset becomes furtheringrained. The current model for handling breaking newson Dispatch.com is an obvious weakness that must be ad-dressed. Ideally, online staff should not be forced to workafter hours from home, or to return to the office to react tospot news. Dispatch Media must analyze its resources andsee if there is a solution in staffing, scheduling and newsstructure that will allow Dispatch.com not only to main-tain its level of success but also to expand it – without thecurrent limitations, however.

Innovations – such as Cardenas’ restructuring of theWBNS reporting team to return to a beat system – shouldbe encouraged. Perhaps a continuous news desk could bedeveloped as a hub for receiving and delivering contentacross platforms. This approach would help address theweaknesses of online and explore the possibilitiesSchwantes alluded to for a more modern and efficient“rewrite” process.

The added value of photo slideshows with audio andweb-only video also would enhance the online news oper-ation, provide additional recognition for photographersand offer a new complement to print/web stories that ismore meaningful and richer than a clip from a WBNS orONN broadcast. Technological enhancements and a newcontent management system will increase communicationand the sharing of content, and ease the burden of archiv-ing and retrieval.

Once technology is more ally than nemesis, however, itis important not to forget the roots of convergence, thehuman element that Schwantes highlights. People stillmake convergence work by cooperating and thinkingabout possibilities beyond their own media platforms. Bystressing journalism first, by not pressuring staff, by show-ing the opportunities and results, Dispatch Media can be amodel for other media organizations.

2.5 2004 Convergence Spotlight 40

2.5 2004 Convergence Spotlight


In the past five years, hundreds of media companiesworldwide have embarked on integration strategies fortheir media channels.

Each of those companies has approached convergenceat its own speed, with various degrees of commitment andvarious amounts of human and technological resources. Sofar, no one media company has achieved 360-degree mul-timedia convergence – the wholesale integration of all fourpoints of the convergence compass: print, broadcast, on-line and mobile.

In its ongoing review of converging news operationsaround the world, however, Ifra Newsplex has noted sever-al cases where particularly interesting accomplishmentsare being made in cross-media news gathering and pub-lishing, innovative organizational structure, cross-trainingof editorial staff, and developing the management focusnecessary to envision and communicate an integrationstrategy.

The techniques by which these newsrooms are achiev-ing high-quality, compelling, integrated journalism canserve as examples for other media organizations just nowconceiving convergence strategies.

Innovative organizational structure:Washington Post (USA) and New York Times (USA)

Perhaps the greatest challenge in any converging newsorganization is managing the cultural difficulties that ariseamong formerly competing media people who are sudden-ly forced to work together. Another challenge is designingan integrated news workflow to take advantage of thestrengths of each medium – particularly with breakingnews. The New York Times and the Washington Post havebridged these issues with one strategy: the continuousnews desk.

The continuous news desks at the Times and Post werecreated to ensure that the most current news is publishedonline as soon as possible rather than waiting for thenewspapers’ print deadlines. Times and Post leaders saythe desks became essential when they realized they neededa mechanism to get breaking news on the Web without re-sistance from overburdened print journalists on deadline.

The desks at each company operate much like whatAmerican newspapers many years ago called the rewritedesk. They are each staffed by eight seasoned journalistswho edit and post a reporter’s early takes while a story isstill unfolding, or who interview the reporter about thestory and turn those notes into a report for the web.

When the Washington-area sniper was captured at4:30 in the morning one day last October, it was the Wash-ington Post’s website that broke the story. By 7 a.m., thecoverage from print and website journalists was good, andby 11 a.m. it was excellent, said Doug Feaver, editor ofWashingtonPost.com

“(The continuous news desk is) done with a spirit ofco-authorship. The newspaper decides if it’s a story. Wedecide if it leads the site. I won’t put it on the site if thePost is uncomfortable with it,” Feaver said.

Each day at noon, the Post’s continuous news deskstaff, based in the newspaper’s newsroom in Washington,D.C., meets with top editors of the website, based acrossthe Potomac River in Arlington,Va., to talk about what sto-ries they are working on.

A byproduct of the continuous news desk is a pro-nounced shift from a monomedia to a multiple-mediamindset in the newsroom, from a once-per-day publishingmentality to the idea of publishing as soon as possible.Dan Bigman, associate editor of NYTimes.com, said thecontinuous news desk has been a catalyst for changingnewspaper journalists’ opinions about online, and viceversa.

“The continuous news desk has changed the dynamics,the culture,” Bigman said. Some reporters think it’s thebest thing that has ever happened to them. When newspa-per reporter John Burns wrote the breaking news storyabout Saddam Hussein’s capture, he was thrilled to be ableto publish the news on the web minutes after the event,rather than waiting 12 hours before the next newspaperwas published, Bigman said. Burns called the continuousnews desk 30 minutes after the capture, and 45 minuteslater the story was on the web. Newsplex rigged for broadcast.


412.5 2004 Convergence Spotlight


Now reporters on both sides realize they are membersof the New York Times Company, not just the newspaperor the website, according to Bigman: “It’s getting blurrierand blurrier.”

Expanding multimedia journalism:Aftonbladet (Sweden)

Many media companies are experimenting with newforms of storytelling including the integration of video,audio, animation, text and interactivity. The most success-ful operations balance storytelling innovation with highjournalistic standards. In the end, the journalism mustcontinue to be credible, compelling and accurate.

At Aftonbladet, an online editorial staff of 43 producesinteractive features often independently of the newspaper’sprint staff. One popular topic on the multimedia website isthe weight management club, which includes articles bydoctors and other nutrition-related information. More than70,000 Swedes have subscribed to the club. More than 100travel guides to popular destinations consist of text, photoand map content from the newspaper’s print archive, sup-plemented by the online staff and downloadable as PDFs.The guides are premium content for website subscribers.

Among the multimedia offerings is live streamingvideo of popular football matches and Flash slide shows.Aftonbladet is also experimenting with live streamingfeeds from video phones in such places as the Cannes FilmFestival.

As is the case with other pioneers, Aftonbladet.se re-groups when a multimedia project fails. Editor Kalle Jung-kvist said an hourly Web radio broadcast was not of inter-est to but a handful of listeners, so the news staffrethought the opportunity and now creates short newsbroadcasts available on demand from the Swedish radionetwork. Newspaper or online journalists make the reports.

Further, Aftonbladet has its own modest, portable TVstudio, which can be operated by one journalist. Turn onthe light, turn on the camera, and action! The journalistcan record a segment to be aired on Aftonbladet.se.

The popularity of video on the website is soaring,mostly because broadband adoption is growing in Sweden,Jungkvist said. In response, management is ratcheting upits web TV production. “For the autumn, our goal was toget better at web TV. Our second goal is to get better atmobile content,” he said.

Sample Aftonbladet’s “Webb TV” streaming video foronline at http://wwwb.aftonbladet.se/vss/streaming/tv_fonster/0,5208,,00.html, and its “Webb Radio” on-demand radio segments: at http://www.aftonbladet.se/special/radio/.

Management focus: Belo Corp.’s Dallas Morning News/WFAA/DallasNews.com/TXCN Cable (USA)

As recently as two years ago, it was a “radical notion”for the Dallas Morning News newspaper to tip off WFAA-TV Channel 8 about a breaking story. “Now it’s systematic– that’s what the business editors, sports editors and newseditors do routinely,” said Stuart Wilk, Morning Newsmanaging editor. Thinking about convergence opportuni-ties has become as natural as conceptualizing graphics andphotos for stories, he said.

“There are far fewer cultural problems than I anticipat-ed (during the converging process). Three years ago, therewas an undercurrent of antagonism. A driveway that sepa-rates WFAA and Dallas Morning News used to be a moat,”Wilk said.

The reason for the successful transition from a cultureof competition to one of cooperation is a well engineeredand very well communicated top-down management com-mitment to the cross-media integration. The strategy shiftcomes straight from Publisher Jim Moroney, who is credit-ed for envisioning the company’s multimedia future andthen guiding its rapid transition.

“Without Jim here, there would be none of this,” saidJohn Granatino, vice president of interactive sites for BeloInteractive. “He is predisposed to action.”

Despite the shift, the newspaper, TV and online opera-tions all retain a competitive spirit and focus on tellingstories in the most effective way for their own formats andaudiences. Wilk believes that while convergence is neces-sary, it is also important that each medium all stand strongindividually.

Leaders of each of the Belo operations in Dallas regu-larly meet to talk about projects and breaking news. Meet-ings at the newspaper, TV and online are attended by edi-tors from all the other media. Teams comprising all themedia work on stories and projects together. Each news-room shares its daily story coverage agenda with the othernewsrooms, resulting in a kind of composite “virtual as-signment desk.” The TIPS database includes complete sto-ries from WFAA, TXCN, Dallas Morning News and allwebsites. Each medium sends story lists several times aday, and emails stories and scripts to journalists and man-agers throughout Belo’s Dallas group.

“Sharing makes all sides stronger and allows us to re-spond faster to breaking stories,” said David Duitch, vicepresident for news at WFAA. “The No. 1 benefit to conver-gence is we get access to all of the stories they are workingon.” But he points out that not all stories from the paperplay well on TV, and vice versa: “The stories I run at 10p.m. don’t necessarily run in the paper in the morning.Some stories work better on TV.”

2.5 2004 Convergence Spotlight 42Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

Cross-training journalists:NordJyske Medier (Denmark) and BBC (UK)

One of the most important elements influencing a suc-cessful shift from a monomedia to a multiple-media focusis training journalists how to work with more than theirusual storytelling format. Many media companies world-wide are taking this commitment seriously with internaland external programs. Print and web journalists aretaught to capture audio and video. TV journalists aretaught the nuances between script writing and writingprint stories. Radio journalists are trained to think more visually to produce for print, web and TV. In some cases,journalists regardless of their original media are taught tomultitask – to tell stories using the spectrum of mediaavailable to them.

NordJyske, a multimedia news company in the northof Denmark, has embraced the idea of complete integrationand has cross-trained almost all of its journalists formerlyfrom TV, print and online. Cross-trained journalists nowidentify themselves simply as “journalists,” not print or radio reporters or TV or online producers. Only a handfulof the 248 editorial employees have eschewed the volun-tary training.

Trainers from the Danish Center for Journalism Edu-cation cross-trained the staff from the beginning of NordJyske’s convergence efforts in 2002. “We hired them because they are journalists. (The trainers) are prepared forconvergence. They were icebreakers for our journalists.They say the same things that the management says be-cause they have experience, so the reporters have faith inthem,” said Ulrik Haagerup, editor of NordJyske Medier.

The training is just the beginning of the process.Haagerup said it’s a long road before reporters feel cross-media journalism is second nature. “You have to makemistakes before you’re good at it,” he said.

The BBC is in the midst of converting its entire nation-al news staff of TV and radio journalists into “video jour-nalists” able to use a backpack full of equipment, includ-ing a video camera, digital audio devices, digital editingprograms on a high-memory equipped laptop and a satel-lite phone for transmission from anywhere in the world.The training of VJs started with a ground-breaking multi-skilling agreement between the BBC and trade unions in2002, allowing news staff members to shoot, edit and re-port their own material.

Hundreds of courses are available to journalists annu-ally inside and outside the BBC (see http://www.bbctrain-ing.com/) including Flash production, video editing, inves-tigative research on the Internet, and design principles forthe Web.

BBC Interactive, with more than 400 journalists inLondon and its UK outposts, requires some training forsome journalists, and also allows them to choose from amenu of options, if appropriate for their jobs. For example,journalists in higher ranks, who handle content for publi-cation, take an advanced law course.

"Most of the training though is done at the request ofthe journalist, who may well raise the request during ap-praisals or less formal performance interviews with theirmanager," said Mark Coyle, editorial coordinator for BBCNews Interactive, Nations & Regions. "… The BBC hasmany fine radio and television journalists, but in order forthem to work effectively for BBCi, they require systemsand editorial training in the very different demands of theonline medium. For example, we run courses on our con-tent production system, Photoshop, video and audio edit-ing, best practices in writing, legal knowledge and muchmore."

Coyle attended the Newsplex’ Roles Training for Con-verging Newsrooms program last year, where he learned touse Visual Communicator software that enables journaliststo tell stories by integrating multiple media into a singlepiece of content. Coyle then went back to the BBC andtrained other journalists to use the technology, which isnow growing in popularity among the staff.

Scenario training at Newsplex.


432.6 Mobile Publishing: Models for Wireless Convergence


Diana Harris voted in the U.S. Democratic presidentialprimary in South Carolina at about 8 a.m. on Feb. 3 andwalked out of the Quail Valley polling place in northwestColumbia to be greeted by two Newsplex reporters with aNokia camera phone. She was about to help IfraNewsplexset new standards in journalism and news technology.

The reporters from the University of South Carolina’sschool of journalism scribbled notes as Harris commentedbriefly about how the election could affect African-Ameri-cans and the economy. Then they snapped her picture withthe Nokia 3600’s integrated full-color VGA-resolutioncamera.

The journalists were part of Ifra’s Mobile Media Pro-ject, a Newsplex research effort designed to explore andevaluate cutting-edge tools and techniques in convergentnewshandling by combining the latest advancements inmobile phone and wireless internet technologies with thewell-refined skills of newspaper and television reporting.

As Harris walked away, the reporters used the phone’skeypad to input a text message summarizing the en-counter, attached the photo, and emailed it directly fromthe mobile handset to a special type of Web site called amoblog, short for mobile web log.

In all, seven teams of print and broadcast journalistsenveloped the Columbia area to report Primary Day in allits varied nuances using first- and second-generation mo-bile imaging phones and advanced GMS/GPRS networksprovided by Cingular Wireless. From before the pollsopened in the morning until after the corks and tissuescame out that night, these multiple-media journalists con-tinuously captured and upload hundreds of digital pic-tures, video-audio shorts and text summaries to the sitecalled the Newsplex/Cingular S.C. Wireless Election Con-nection, hosted by TextAmerica (http://scprimary.tex-tamerica.com/). Upon receipt, each upload was automati-cally formatted by TextAmerica’s underlying technologyand posted as a new entry on the web site, where it wasinstantly available for public viewing, comment anddownload.

The entry about Harris posted at 8:15 a.m.

At Ifra’s $2.5 million Newsplex prototype convergentnewsroom, a uniquely constituted editorial team supportedthe field journalists and oversaw assembly of the WirelessElection Connection moblog.> A newsflow editor with 10 years experience as a televi-

sion news director managed the overall process, direct-ing the reporting teams toward the ultimate goal ofproviding a distinctively comprehensive and engagingpresentation of the Primary Day story.

> Storybuilders, one with background as an AssociatedPress wire service editor, another with decades report-ing and editing for major metros, edited and catego-rized the constant flow of submissions from the mobilejournalists all the while taking additional informationfrom them over the same phones being used for news-gathering and delivery.

> And a new type of hybrid informatics journalist calleda newsresourcer, experienced in news judgment andskilled in information management augmented themoblog submissions with research and online linksadding even greater depth and breadth to the presenta-tion. For the item about Harris, the lead newsresourcerinserted a link to an online profile of the Quail Valleycommunity showing its ethnic and economic diversity.

Individually, each entry in the S.C. Wireless ElectionConnection documented a single action, statement orscene of the primary process – a voter’s comment, a sup-porter’s placard, a candidate’s claim, a detractor’s sneer,lines at polling stations, empty voting booths, people ener-gized, tired, involved, disengaged, satisfied or angry. Eachentry stands alone as a piece of micro-journalism. Collec-tively, however, the entries accumulated through the dayto form an intricate mosaic revealing the larger trends andtones of a massively complicated community news event.

In this way, the process melded some of the best attrib-utes of in-depth, wide-ranging, detail-oriented newspaperreporting and real-time, putting-you-at-the-scene, visual-ly engaging television coverage. It produced content ofpotential value to both of those traditional media, yet alsoresulted in a news presentation with a weight of its ownfor news consumers. It took its cues from the marketplaceby tapping into the increasingly popular web log formatand using the increasingly popular camera phones, yetnotched both up to a higher level of news and informationresource by applying professional editorial standards andworkflows.

The results were overwhelming to those involved in theproject. Media attention to the new type of election cover-age was considerable. Cingular Wireless put out a singlepress release about the event, and the company later foundout that this would be its third most read release in thepast year. By the time the Wireless Election Connectionshut down coverage at 11 p.m., after N.C. Sen. John Edwards was declared the winner of the primary in hishome state, TextAmerica statistics show that 379 otherWeb sites around the world were taking content from theNewsplex site. The hit counter for the 24-hour period wasover 8,500. Over the following six months, that wouldgrow to nearly 14,000. And the project has been nomi-nated for the prestigious Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism from the J-Lab Institute for Interactive Journalism.

Newsplex Convergence Guide No. 62 notes that themobile phone is developing into an ideal real-time com-panion to the newspaper. This is because news over mobile– immediate, multimedia, but limited by bandwidth andscreen size – tends to be the exact opposite of news from anewspaper, which is static and seriously time-delayed butrelatively expansive in content detail. In combination theyseem to cover the spectrum and share a key attribute in to-day’s media marketplace: the convenience of portability.


2.6 Mobile Publishing: Models for wireless convergence44Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

The Wireless Election Connection is exactly the kind ofresearch project for which Ifra conceived the Newsplex.The results of this project will factor directly back intoIfra's training and support for converging media compa-nies, as well as into Ifra’s on publishing activities.

The Wireless Evolution

Web logs are a kind of online diary or journal increas-ingly popular with individuals as an outlet for personalexpression. There are an estimated 1.8 million currentlyactive on the internet, according to Blogcensus.net, Blog-count and other sources.

The typical Web log, or blog as they are called in inter-net speak, consists of postings in chronological order, themost recent first, about whatever topic or person the sitefocuses on. Blogs are typically updated from several timesa day to once every few days. Posting are usually madefrom a computer using software that does not requiremuch if any technical skill. People browsing through blogsoften are able to insert their own comments in response tothe blogger’s.

Moblogs are a particular type of blog designed to workwith mobile phones, especially phones with cameras. In-stead of using a computer, postings are created by sendinga multimedia message or email from the phone to an on-line address tied to the blog. When the email arrives at aservice such as TextAmerica, its subject line is automati-cally turned into a headline for the new posting and themessage text becomes the posting itself. Any attached pic-ture is inserted into the posting as a thumbnail linked tothe full-size image.

A bit more expertise is required for moblogging thanregular blogging because text has to be input using thephone’s 9-digit keypad. This is a skill increasingly com-mon since the advent of SMS text messaging. The processis also aided by predictive text technology built into manyphones. The advantage of moblogging is that posts can bemade from anywhere at anytime and often within mo-ments after a picture is taken or an event happens.

Moblog popularity is growing in line with skyrocketingmobile phone sales, reaching a record 516 million handsetsin 2003, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.One in five mobile phones sold today is a camera phone,double the ratio a year ago. The second-generation ofcamera phones now available can also record video withaudio. Most mobile phone networks around the world haveor are being upgraded to higher bandwidths to accommo-date the fact that mobiles phones are being adopted as atool for more than just conversing.

News media are starting to tap these trends.“The San Diego Union Tribune's web division became

aware that San Diego residents had started to become in-volved in news gathering by posting their camera phoneimages of local news events directly to the web for othersto see,” said TextAmerica founder and Chief Operating Of-ficer Chris Hoar. “A great example of this can be seen athttp://fire.textamerica.com, where locals posted hundredsof images of the San Diego wild fires last fall.”

SignOnSanDiego executives decided they wanted to beinvolved in this type of new journalism and have since be-gun using Textamerica's commercial moblog service to so-licit camera phone images from their readers, which arethen posted on SignOnSanDiego.com, according to Hoar.

News via camera phones is not just for the web, how-ever. Just in the week after the Newsplex project:> Swedish public service television company Sveriges

Television (SVT) in its Feb. 16 evening newscast usedvideo from a camera phone taken by a passenger on aferry that had collided with a cargo ship. The videocaptured the anxiety among passengers in life jacketsgetting off the damaged ship. In order to present thelow-resolution video on the TV screen without enlarg-ing it too much, it was set into a frame as show at theright. While somewhat grainy, the overall quality wasacceptably good, especially for a breaking news story.The audio was not as important to the presentation,used as a low-volume and barely discernable back-




ground to the reporter’s voiceover and to the descrip-tion of what it shows given by the passenger who ac-tually shot the video.

> The New York Times used a camera phone picture aspart of an infographic on Page One on Feb. 18 report-ing, ironically, on the surprise 3 a.m. merger agreementbetween Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless. Therewere no photographers present for the signing. The pic-ture was taken by AT&T’s chief financial officer. Because of its low resolution, it was used small in theupper-right corner of the graphic, but was good enoughto meet Times standards and also to make the point ofthe power of mobile phones in today’s society. On amore routine basis, photographers for VorarlbergerNachrichten in Schwarzach, Austria, are all equippedwith mobile camera/video phones and are requiredupon arriving at a news scene to take and upload im-ages to the newspaper’s online portal before using theirmore traditional digital cameras, according to JochenHofer, editor-in-chief of Vorarlberg Online. This policywas started after a photographer on the scene of aRussian plane crash near Lake Constance in July 2002couldn't get his pictures sent over the local phone linesbecause the connection was poor and the files large.

“To send one picture took about 15 minutes. It was aw-ful!” said Hofer. “We knew we had to win time, because wewant to inform our users about what is happening now –not hours before. That's why we tried out MMS (multime-dia messaging system) mobiles, and we are very satisfiedwith this solution.”

“The MMS photos are sent to the online-editors. Nor-mally the photographer also makes a short call in the of-fice to tell in two or three sentences what happened. So wecan be very topical – and after half an hour, when thephotographer arrives at the Medienhaus, we get about an-other 20 pictures to publish on Vorarlberg Online,” saidHofer. “We are working with MMS pictures whenever‘something is happening’ – accident, fire, avalanche – butalso sports. The photographers get a new mobile everyyear, so the quality of the pictures sent by MMS is improv-ing steadily.”

This is only the beginning of this new aspect in news-handling. The Newsplex’ Mobile Media Project wanted topush the envelop even farther by not only putting cameraphones in the hands of trained journalists but by alsoturning the moblog into a professional news format.

“This Wireless Election Connection is an example ofhow technology and resourcefulness are blurring the linesbetween traditional print and broadcast journalism in away that is creating new forms of storytelling,” concludedRandy Covington, a veteran television executive and newsdirector who coordinated the newsflow for the Newsplexproject. He is currently an administrator at the Universityof South Carolina College of Mass Communications andInformation Studies.

The Mobile Media Project taught Ifra many thingsabout the technology and workflow for mobile publishing:

It led to development of the concept of incrementalstorybuilding to get entries corrected and posted as quick-ly as possible bit by bit. Incremental storybuilding, whichmight be one of the defining attributes of journalism rele-vant in today's news marketplace, recognizes that for to-day's increasingly real-time news consumers, while anysignificant news deserves an appropriately comprehensivetelling and explanation once the story has developed, thereare also elements of the story that should be reported asthey develop; that this incremental coverage can accumu-late and combine into a particularly valuable element ofthe eventually comprehensive report; that different contentand distribution formats will be appropriate for differentstages of the story and tempos of coverage and audienceneeds; but that there is value in having the coverage be acontinuum across the media, building on itself while dis-playing common journalistic standards for quality andcredibility.

It also led to a redefinition of the concept of story. Themoblogging technique enables the telling of a big storythrough hundreds of small stories, often stories so smallthat they were below the threshold of attention in tradi-tional newspaper and television minds. It is pointillism ap-plied to publishing. It turned out that less time was neededin training the project’s journalists how to use the cameraphones than in training them not to overlook the nuancesthat this storytelling technique now puts within theirreach. They are nuances not lost on the public, as shownby the trends in localism, community journalism and blog-ging itself.

Mobile publishing is not a standalone medium, anymore than a newspaper or television today can all by itselfsatisfy the growing demands of the expanding media generation in this information economy. News media arefinding they have to combine efforts and formats to be effectively positioned in the increasingly convergentmediasphere.

Still, all indications are that the emergence of the always-on, always-connected news and information con-sumer as a result of advancing mobile technologies is going to rewrite the business strategies and editorial work-flows for news organizations even more fundamentallythan has the wired internet over the past decade. It willforce newspapers, magazines, television and online to re-cast themselves as information service companies preparedand capable to deliver what the consumer wants, when hewants, wherever he is, over whatever device he is usingand in whatever format he prefers.

This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in “news-

paper techniques” magazine in February 2004 and that was later reprinted

by Seybold Reports.

2.7 Video in Print: Converging Newspapers and TV 46

2.7 Video in Print: Converging Newspapers and TV


For decades, many newspapers have regarded televi-sion as the enemy – a flashy but shallow medium that re-lies on pictures and sounds instead of solid reporting to at-tract an audience.

While there may be some truth to this stereotype, it ismore an indictment of the practice rather than the natureof the medium. Despite how it is used or misused, videoand audio clearly hold a strong attraction for news con-sumers. It touches people at a level that the static printedpage, even with color photos and graphics, cannot match.

Then, factor in the environment of media convergence.It is a marketplace-driven phenomenon. Yesterday’s massaudience is increasingly fragmented today. News and in-formation consumers are tending to surround themselveswith an increasingly varied mix of media, jumping backand forth between formats all day long to satisfy theirgrowing need to know. While print remains a powerfulmedium in this mix, the trend is clearly toward coexis-tence and interaction with other formats so as to be pres-ent in whatever is the consumer’s medium of the moment,particularly video.

Therefore, with new technologies making the produc-tion of video news content easier and less expensive, withthe internet and even mobile phones widely accessible formultimedia distribution, and with relaxing attitudes aboutpartnerships between publishing and broadcasting, an in-creasing number of newspapers around the world are mov-ing to incorporate audio and video into their futures inone way or another.

Typically the starting point for this move is on the internet. Web traffic is increasing exponentially. There is agrowing consensus that internet news sites should – in-deed, must – do more than repurpose existing print stories.The demand for video and multimedia content online isgrowing along with the broadband ability to access it. Thecurrent rareness of video online has even tended to makeit premium content for which some sites collect subscrip-tion revenue.

Beyond the internet is the lure of mass-market broad-casting, via terrestrial or cable, sometimes satellite. Televi-sion and radio are mature media with established produc-tion workflows and established audience consumptionhabits, not to mention established revenue models. This isleading many publishers to create combines between theirprint newsrooms and established local broadcast counter-parts, whether co-owned or not. Other publishers are look-ing to start new television and/or radio operations fromscratch where possible. Interestingly, this newspaper-TVtrend is growing despite slow or stalled legal reforms incross-ownership restrictions in many countries.

Finally, on the horizon – admittedly a closer horizon insome parts of the world than in others – is the delivery ofvideo news content over mobile phones. Although moreslowly than envisioned several years ago, 3G (third-gener-ation) networks are now starting to roll out along with ad-vanced multimedia handsets able to receive and sendrecorded or even streaming video. In many ways mobileseems to be an ideal counterpart to newspapers, offsettingmany of its weaknesses and emphasizing its strengths.Also, all indications are that the increasing emergence ofmobile news consumers is going to rewrite the future ofthe news industry even more than the wired Web has dur-ing the first internet decade. Forward-looking publishersare getting onboard early.

What all of these options have in common, naturally,is the necessity for traditionally print-focused, text-domi-nated newshandling organizations to start incorporatingthe technology, skill, management and mindset for morevisually-oriented storytelling. When an established printnewsroom and an established broadcast newsroom areasked to work together, there are also stubborn cultural is-sues to overcome from years of stereotypes, competitionand distrust.

A lot of Newsplex training in the facility’s first 18months has come to revolve around helping newspapernewsrooms figure out how to deal with these video-orient-ed issues.


472.7 Video in Print: Converging Newspapers and TV


Newsroom structure critical

A key understanding is that the starting point for suc-cessful integration of video and audio with print is nottechnology but rather newsroom structure.

Instead of thinking primarily in a production modeabout how to best fill the print news hole, the newsroomshould start by focusing on how to best cover the storyacross all available and appropriate media.

The initial news management questions become: Whatparts of this story are best told in print with its depth andcontext, versus video with its emotional and real-timestrengths? Similarly, what parts of the story benefit mostfrom interactivity, multimedia, graphics, photos, audio,email alerts, etc.? And then, how should these elements beintegrated and distributed? What should be presented dur-ing the short television report that will lead people to theexpansive newspaper story? How should the online pres-entation be crafted to add value to, rather than duplicate,the print presentation and to leverage what was broadcast?

In the ideal fully converged newsroom, these questionsare dealt with by news staff members who have cross-media roles thoroughly integrated into their jobs. Someoneis coordinating the newsflow across newspaper, TV, onlineand mobile. Someone is building an integrated presenta-tion of the story out of all the generated elements andacross all the distribution outlets. Reporters skilled in multiple media cover the story in several formats and co-operate with journalists experienced in still others, includ-ing some who are specialists in finding and organizing thewidest range of news resources.

This ideal newsroom structure as developed throughNewsplex research might still be in the future for most ofthe news industry. However, there are aspects of it alreadystarting to appear in various newsroom reorganizations.

For instance, there is now one sports editor for the co-owned Tampa Tribune newspaper and WFLA TV stationand Tampa Bay Online website in Florida, USA. This editoris responsible for sport news first, platform second.Through this topic-level coordinator, coverage of sportnews in video for TV and Web, often involving print re-porters, is made a more cohesive process.

At the Press Association in the United Kingdom, edi-tors responsible for topics of news direct an increasinglycross-trained staff of photographers, video producers andreporters depending on what they feel a particular storyrequires.

In newsrooms not ready for this level of integration, afirst step toward print-video integration often involves co-locating editors who remain separately responsible fornewspaper and television operations. By virtue of beingseated together on a joint news desk, these product-specif-ic managers at least tend to communicate more and tostart coordinating their coverage efforts and sharing re-sources. For instance, a video cameraman might be as-signed to accompany a print reporter, and the print re-porter might be asked to answer some questions about thestory on camera.

Another increasingly common structural integrationhas still photographers being trained and outfitted withdigital video cameras, often of broadcast quality. Experi-ence finds that newspaper photographers tend to be inter-ested and supportive of expanding their skills into video.Usually their video activities stop at the imaging, however.The video they shoot is usually turned over to specialistvideo producers for creating the finished video news re-ports for airing on TV and/or posting online.

Even that is changing, however.Producing video content is no longer difficult, nor nec-

essarily expensive. The latest digital video equipment islight and easy to operate. High-end editing can be accom-plished on a standard desktop or laptop computer usingoff-the-shelf software. After decades in which professionalvideo news content could only come out of an editing baycosting $100,000 or more, the barrier to entry for produc-ing video content is now at just a few thousand dollars.This revolution in video production technology is puttingthe capability within reach of more than just the dedicatedvideo specialist.

The Newsplex has put print journalists from all overthe world through a basic orientation on writing and pro-ducing video. The program often includes how to do an in-newsroom talkback about a story with a TV anchor andhow to handle a live standup from the scene of a breakingnews story.

The style of storytelling is different from a traditionalprint approach. It takes some training and some gettingused to. But it’s not difficult. And as a byproduct, even thecurmudgeons usually conclude that the craft of creatingaudio and video content is fun. One thing NewsplexLegates report over and over is that storytelling can bemore satisfying using multiple media.

Partnership for video

Partnerships between newspapers and television sta-tions are an increasingly common approach to integratingprint and video news operations.

Unfortunately, newspapers often are unhappy withwhat results. At the heart of the problem is that many suchpartnerships are based on nothing more than cross-promo-tion rather than on actually adding value to what eithernewsroom was doing on its own before the partnership.While there is nothing inherently wrong with such a marketing arrangement, the true value and benefits of anewspaper-TV combine come when there is something tobenefit the news consumer.

Another key stumbling block in successful print-broadcast partnerships is that the newspaper, in particular,often is ill prepared to negotiate the agreement. Newspapermanagers go into the process feeling at a distinct disad-vantage because of their lack of knowledge and skill inproducing video. They are unsure what they have to offerthat is of particular value to the television station. Oftenthey have no idea of exactly how the news managementprocess in television differs or is similar to their own.

Video-in-print lessons

learned at the Newsplex

> Put the newspaper-TV partnership agreement inwriting; no verbal agreements.

> TV gets the more immediate boost; the newspaper’sbenefits are longer term and should not be expect-ed from any one night’s newscast.

> Realize that TV’s lack of depth plays to the news-paper’s strength.

> The newspaper and TV need to talk about stories,not just presentation and technical issues.

> Involve more than editors; have a way for re-porters to feedback, especially about problems.

> Communicate the partnership goals and policies tothe entire news staff.

> Provide training in basic TV skills; few people arehappy learning in front of a live camera.

> Don’t force newspaper staff to go on camera ifthey don’t want to; some just are not cut out for it.

> Routinely rotate newspaper staff through the TVnewsroom, and vice versa, to improve understand-ing and coordination.

> Have a policy about how to handle scoops andbreaking stories.

> Maintain your standards.> Make it someone’s job to coordinate and liaise

between the newspaper and TV news desks, to findand promote opportunities for integrated newscoverage, to be part of every news meeting in bothnewsrooms.

> Incorporate TV expectations into hiring, job descriptions and work evaluations.

> Try new formats; the typical TV newscast is gettingpretty tired, with the anchor sitting at a desk witha graphic over his shoulder and throwing to abreathless live shot at the fire or traffic accident.

> Learn how to produce your own segments, to giveyou more control over what is presented.

> When putting video on your website, keep in mindthat people don’t go online to watch TV, so don’tgive them TV online; use video bites and use themcreatively.

2.7 Video in Print: Converging Newspapers and TV 48Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

Here are some guidelines to assist publishing houses inmaking their electronic relationships more productive:

> Ask for a lot – In most print-broadcast partnerships,the newspaper brings far more to the table than the TVstation. As a result, newspapers should expect quite abit. Among the newspaper’s greatest assets is the sizeof its reporting staff as compared to the television sta-tion’s. The newspaper also usually has much richer

background resources such as archives and even dedi-cated research staff. In working with the TV partner,have specific and clear expectations of what you wantto see on TV. Often, communication in these partner-ships is between relatively low-ranking employees andconcerns routine matters such as coordinating graph-ics. Partnerships work best when, from the very begin-ning, top executives make them a priority.

> Learn the language – The problem for many print jour-nalists in these relationships is an inability to commu-nicate. TV is a different medium with alien terminolo-gy. Ever heard of a lower third? As a result, the TV sideoften ends up with the upper hand in discussions withill-prepared newspapers. TV terminology is not thatdifficult to learn and understand. Until both sides arespeaking the same language, it is difficult to get whatyou want.

> Establish your identity – TV is a busy medium. Thescreen is cluttered, stories are short and commercialsseemingly are everywhere. Plus, viewers watch TV verypassively. It is essential that the newspaper’s role andimage not get lost in the clutter. One newspaper dissat-isfied with its TV partnership worked with the News-plex to create custom lower-third graphics that under-scored the paper’s identity. In addition, the newspaper’spositioning line is now on a wall in the background ofthe newsroom camera shot. Plus the TV station agreedto reformat the news segment to include a promo forthe next day’s paper read by the newscast anchors. Thenewspaper’s identity is now written all over the seg-ment – and so the entire partnership arrangements isviewed far more favorably by the print newsroom staff.

> Do what you do best – Most newspaper reporters andeditors are not polished TV performers. So don’t try tobe. Newspaper journalists have credibility. They reportstories with depth, history and perspective. The formatfor the newspaper’s TV contributions should emphasizeand enhance those considerable strengths.

> Remember the purpose – The goal for most newspapersis to increase circulation, not to help the TV station’sratings. Good TV segments, like good front pages, re-quire thought and planning. It is essential in construct-ing such a segment to hold something back, giving TVviewers a compelling reason to buy the newspaper thenext morning.


492.8 Newsplex Fellow


For three week in November 2003, Brazilian journalistFabiana Zanni simultaneously taught and learned at theIfraNewsplex.

As the first Newsplex Fellow, temporarily assigned byher employer – Abril Publishing – to the Newsplex train-ing and research staff, Zanni helped with preparations andproctoring of roles training for an 11-member editorialteam from Guardian Media Group Regional Newspapers inthe United Kingdom. She also leant her expertise in elec-tronic publishing to helping develop Ifra’s internationalregistry of converged media activities, the Newsplex Con-vergence Monitor.

Zanni made valuable contributions to the Newsplex’mission during her fellowship. However, she said that whatshe took away from the experience was even more valu-able, as well as surprising. She said she discovered thatjournalists around the world face the same issues she andher colleagues in Brazil are dealing with on a daily basis.

“I never had imagined how two different companies,on different continents, speaking different languages, canhave the same kind of problems and challenges about con-vergence,” she explained.

The Newsplex Fellow program offers media profession-als and academic faculty members an opportunity to ob-serve and participate in training and research under way atthe IfraNewsplex at the University of South Carolina. Fel-lows receive special instruction in multiple-media news-handling techniques and are integrated as trainers intoprofessional training sessions and as investigators in research projects. Participants return to their parent organ-izations fully versed in the cutting-edge newsroom tech-niques being developed at the Newsplex, able to share thisinformation with their peers and students.

“I consider it a fair exchange of our experience for hersupport during these three weeks, an excellent opportunityfor us to make the Newsplex experience more accessible tovarious segments of the industry that might not otherwisebe able to access our services,” said Newsplex DirectorKerry J. Northrup. “Our staff was augmented during a pe-riod in which we needed additional resources. Abril getsback someone who likely will become a key part of thatgroup's convergence strategy.”

Zanni wanted a chance to see how other media compa-nies were incorporating convergence into their work, soshe traveled to South Carolina and spent time learningconvergence at the Newsplex.

“Besides knowing that the Newsplex would have a lotof information about convergence, I wanted to get intouch with the practices, experiences and difficulties facedby other media companies around the world,” she said.

Her time at Newsplex reminded her, said said, thatjournalism goes hand in hand with teamwork, cooperation,breaking barriers and having fun. She said one of the greatexperiences she gleaned from being a Fellow was rediscov-ering the pleasure of doing her job.

And her Newsplex experiences only reinforced her be-lief that traditional media face the challenge of rethinkingtheir format and focus. More and more traditional readersare looking to new media formats for their news and infor-mation, Zanni said.

“We’re living in a period of transition, when there arestill a lot of readers that have traditional media as theirmajor fount of news,” Zanni said. “But what kind of newswill be interesting for these readers in the coming years ifthey have read it all on the Internet? What kind of infor-mation will they look for in the newspapers every morn-ing? It doesn’t mean that they are putting newspapers andmagazines away, but they are certainly looking for newand relevant content, not just the same things they sawone day before on other mediums.”

Zanni has been thinking about ways to communicatewith new media since the mid-1990s when she beganworking in Web publishing and development. She createdand implemented one of the largest Web sites for womenin Brazil, called Paralela. She also participated in the de-sign, creation, maintenance and improvement of the firstsites for several magazines in Brazil, such as Veja, Playboy,Cosmopolitan and Elle. Previously she traveled the countryas a reporter and editor for a travel guide. Zanni also haswritten for various magazines since 1993. She recently de-veloped a Web site for Abril Publishing Co. and now worksfor the company as an editor.

“My company produces content in different media:print, Web and video,” she said. “In my area, we try to putthese contents together and present them in a new and dif-ferent way. We’re also responsible for spreading new men-talities and practices concerning new media and conver-gence.”

In addition, Zanni recently began teaching about newtechnologies for communication at Cásper Líbero Universi-ty. Lately, she has been reading about the relationship be-tween children and computers and intends to develop a re-search project on the subject.

2.8 Newsplex Fellow

2.8 Newsplex Fellow50Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

Contributing to her desire to learn about convergencein other cultures, Zanni observed 10 journalists from Man-chester, England, as they immersed themselves in discus-sions about how to do their jobs convergently.

“They knew they had to move from a media-centricproduction to an audience-centric perspective,” she said.Their main goals were determining how to meet audiencedemands, crafting clever story production and overcominga fear of using new technology. “So, besides a lot of theo-ry and practical activities, we even had to learn a new kindof mathematics, where adding one plus one plus one plusone can make five, or how merging print publications withbroadcast, Internet and mobile technology can result in adifferent product, or a stronger brand.”

A key theme during her fellowship, Zanni said, wasthat convergence is more than fancy gadgets and high-tech computers. It’s about good journalism and a changein thinking.

“One of the things that caught my attention was thatthe Newsplex team always was saying that convergence isnot attached to impressive facilities and high-tech gadg-ets,” she said. “All these things are useless if you don’t dosomething with them. And that’s when the need for a bigcultural change comes in.”

Newsplex fellowships are one-week to one-month induration. Full-time employees of media companies andfull-time university faculty are eligible for the program.Fellows are selected by the Newsplex director based onsuitability of background, interests and accomplishmentsin convergent media, new media and journalism. Thenominating organization is responsible for paying salaryand travel expenses of employees selected for the program.Fellows must commit to return to work for the organiza-tion that sponsored them.

Nominations for fellowships may be submitted at anytime by letter or e-mail to Director, IfraNewsplex at theUniversity of South Carolina, SCETV TelecommunicationsCenter, 1041 George Rogers Blvd., Columbia, SC 29201USA or to [email protected]. <

Holly Fisher is editor of The Convergence Newsletter published electronical-

ly by the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Com-

munications. This is an edited and expanded version of an article originally

written for that newsletter.

Fabiana Zanni, in foreground, works with a Newsplex trainer.


513.1 Newsplex Training Methods


Most on-site and off-site journalism training today is“classroom style,” that is, a trainer at the head of the classlecturing about a training topic. Most delegates in off-sitetraining are sent to a center for a week, and come backwith ideas to implement, with little or no follow-up. Themedia company’s short-term expectation for training isthat the delegate or delegates bring back ideas to imple-ment, with no real expectations of major changes in thenews organization after they return.

Ifra takes a decidedly different approach. Instead ofclassroom-style training, the Newsplex creates a hands-onexperience, complemented by appropriate theory, discus-sion, and small-group sessions. Each day, participants geta taste of each training approach to ensure a fast pace anda deep understanding of the training material.

Hands-on training is conducive to internalizing thetraining messages about media integration. Meanwhile,theory provides a foundation for philosophies and casestudies on convergence. Discussion and small-group ses-sions provide a way for participants to apply the theoryand hands-on experience to their own situations in theirnewsrooms.

Most Newsplex training is designed for cohesivegroups of journalists and/or managers from one newsroomor a group of related newsrooms. The Newsplex’ ultimategoal is to provide training that will assist media companymanagement in achieving a move from monomedia news-handling to a multimedia strategy.

When media companies send delegates to the News-plex, usually their goal is to implement a convergencestrategy or a portion of that strategy. For example, a mediacompany may have just built a TV studio in its print news-room and now want journalists to be competent speakingin front of the camera and writing TV scripts. The compa-ny may also want these journalists, previously unaware ofhow TV works, to feel more comfortable with the cultureand the demands of this new form of storytelling. Manage-ment may further want journalists from individual mediato return from the Newsplex as competent multimedia storytellers.

IfraNewsplex intends to create “change agents” forsuch media companies. Newsplex legates, as graduates aretermed, are armed with new skills and evangelism for con-vergence. They are the perfect conduit to make changes inthe media company. The companies are encouraged to es-tablish the team of trained journalists as a convergencecommittee when they return, using them to lead brain-storming sessions, to conduct meetings to talk about suc-cessful and failed exercises in convergence, to make plansfor the future, and to serve as a sounding board for thenewsroom on convergence topics.

Newsplex convergence support projects are tailored tothe needs of individual companies through in a three-stepprocess:> An on-site editorial assessment and interaction with

top executive managers> The in-Newsplex training program custom designed

based on the on-site visit> Follow-up implementation support

During the initial assessment and recommendationsphase, an Ifra analyst will spend two to three days at themedia company to assess human and technology resourcesfor convergence, plans for multiple media integration, andthe opinions of journalists, managers and executives aboutpresent and future plans for the changes being considered.

This assessment is parlayed into a roadmap for the me-dia company’s integrated future. A written report providesspecific, detailed recommendations for training, new rolesin the newsroom, new organizational structures, physicalintegration of newsrooms, plans for culture management,and necessary technology.

Then a detailed training program, usually based on fiveintensive days in the IfraNewsplex environment, is pro-posed to address the recommendations in the assessmentand to help the company achieve its convergence objec-tives.

Each Newsplex training program is tailor-made for themedia company, based on its assessment results and itsstage in the convergence cycle. While courses will be tailored to the training goals of the home newsroom, theemphasis underlying all such instruction is on expandingthe journalists' skill sets and mindsets. They should returnto their home newsrooms with greater potential to con-tribute to an evolving news organization and enhancedcareer opportunities.

3.1 Newsplex Training Methods

3.1 Newsplex Training Methods52Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

The most often requested program is the Newsplex’signature training event, called Roles Training for a Con-verging Newsroom. It provides hands-on, realistic newsscenarios that engage participants in practicing the newroles required in a cross-media editorial operations. Forexample, delegates may work together on a train wreckscenario, in which their task as a team is to create a multi-media breaking news package on the crash.

Each participant would play a role in each scenario,variously responsible for newsflow coordination across allmedia formats, news resourcing that applies informationtools to enhance the depth and context of content, story-building to manage and integrate the varied resources andcomponents of the cross-media process, and multiskilledjournalism promoting competence in the strengths, weak-nesses and capabilities of all available and applicable con-tent formats.

Other modules of the Newsplex Roles Training eventaddress the following issues:

> Organizational structure – Newsplex delegates work inteams to build better organizational structures for theirintegrated operations, and analyze case studies aboutevolved integrated media company organizationsaround the world.

> Culture clash – All experience with the implementationof convergence in media houses shows that the No. 1issue to be overcome relates to the people involvedrather than technology or organization. In a changingeditorial environment, news staff members tend to beadverse to change and often have difficulties adjustingto new technologies, new cross-media colleagues, newworkflows and 24/7 news cycles. A part of every con-vergence strategy should be plans to manage culturalissues. Constant communication from top managementabout the convergence strategy and clear expectationsfor individual performance are essential. Newsplextraining identifies key areas of culture clashes in thedelegates’ newsrooms and explores ways to assuagethose problems over time.

> Understanding audience – News consumers are drivingconvergence with increasing demands for more newsand information content accessed over a plethora ofmedia – wireless, TV, radio, online, and even combina-tions of these while multitasking. Through interactivesessions, Newsplex participants discuss the users oftheir media in their marketplaces are challenged to de-vise better ways to reach them.

> Media integration – Newsplex training sessions en-courage journalists to view the varied formats and media through which they can communicate a newsstory as a continuum rather than a duplication of con-tent, and to build into their cross-format content a natural integration that leads consumers from onepresentation to another so that the audience is made torealize the full depth and breadth of what is being provided. On a simplistic level this can be done withpromos, links and referrals from one medium to an-other. At a more advanced level, however, story inte-gration across media can be made so seamless that theaudience naturally follows the content across formatswithout perceiving overt cross-promotion.

> Enabling technology – Newsplex delegates are givenfirst-hand experience with the latest in portable multi-ple-media newsgathering tools such as would be usedby an advanced backpack journalists; with evolvingmobile communications and wireless networking tech-nologies; with sophisticated yet simple software forcreating video and audio news content for broadcast orweb; with content and editorial knowledge manage-ment applications that aid editors in managing theirincreasingly varies resources; and with systems for im-proving coordination and collaboration among an in-creasingly diverse editorial staff.

> Investment and revenue – Convergence is an expan-sion strategy, and as such, Newsplex training helpsdelegates to focus on the research and development ofbetter organizational structures, more training, invest-ment in technologies, and in the end, better jour-nalism. There is also a component of the program forunderstanding the business implications, which aresignificant and more than justify the investments.

The third phase of a Newsplex convergence supportproject is the follow-up to training and ongoing assistancein meeting the company’s convergence objectives. News-plex staff members make themselves available to answerquestions by phone, email or site visits to assist mediacompanies in achieving a successful transition frommonomedia to multiple-media operations. Some mediacompanies have also found it valuable to send more thanone team for in-Newsplex training, in order to develop acritical mass of legates in their staffs and better ensure dis-semination and adoption of their cross-media strategy.


533.2 Training Case Study – Greater Manchester Newspapers (UK)


Greater Manchester Newspapers, a part of GuardianMedia Group Regional Newspapers, publishes the Man-chester Evening News with a circulation of 160,000 andoperates the ManchesterOnline portal, which reports 1.75million unique visitors each month. Channel M is its enter-tainment-based digital television effort that is set to in-clude news segments in 2004.

The MEN came to Newsplex with low degree of successwith its initial convergence efforts. The inaugural groupneeded to learn the basics about convergence, how to im-plement the first stages, and how to plan for future, moreadvanced stages of convergence.

“The Manchester Evening News and its associated alternative platforms – ManchesterOnline and Channel M– operate largely in isolation in separate buildings underseparate management structures. There is some co-opera-tion but staffs rarely mix or share functions and no over-all vision is apparent,” said MEN News Editor Ian Woodduring the first MEN training week in March 2003. Morethan one year later, online and newspaper are significantlymore integrated, and Channel M will have news content bymid-2004 to converge with print and online, he said.

Some of the practices in place before Newsplex train-ing were encouraging journalists to file stories for the Webwhen the news happened, and encouraging photographersto files photos for the Web well before the newspaperdeadline. The successes with these efforts were few and farbetween. Culture clash issues were rampant. Print and on-line journalists avoided each other. The Newsplex traininggave them a new perspective on overcoming multimedianewsflow and cultural hurdles.

“I would expect to see a closer working relationshipand an eventual convergence of the MEN and Manches-terOnline. But we must make sure that the MEN remainsthe senior partner because of our wealth of experience andtalent,” said Alan Wright, business design subeditor, dur-ing the first training in March 2003.

After evaluating their resources, needs and objectivesfor convergence, Ifra designed Newsplex training to coverthe basics and to help MEN organize a convergence com-mittee, made up of the participants from the newspaperand online, to go back armed with the knowledge, skilland determination to move convergence performance tothe next level.

Journalists and news department section editors partic-ipated in the weeklong project in March 2003.

Topics covered included: > The new news consumer> Identifying and reaching the Manchester audience> New roles in the converging newsroom> Strengths, weaknesses, assets and threats for each news

format> Learning Visual Communicator, a multimedia story-

telling tool> Learning Control Tower, a cross-media content man-

agement and logistics tool> Visualizing a multimedia story> Convergent journalism case studies

Managing culture clashes in the converging MEN newsroom

Tailored roles training and news scenario exercises, including a one-day exercise with a post mortem on aprint package that ran in the MEN, and a roles trainingnews scenario with the goal to create a multimedia pack-age from the same material, plus video, audio and morephotos.

Personalized convergence videos

The participants said they immediately saw the appli-cation to the case studies, discussions of practical issuesand the roles playing.

“We were all able to put together picture galleries andcreate video packages with very little tuition. It was appar-ent that print journalists have nothing to fear from theseinnovations. If we believe we are in the storytelling busi-ness, we should be willing to embrace anything whichhelps us tell the best possible stories. The demarcation be-tween words and pictures is becoming increasingly mean-ingless as advances in technology place quality photogra-phy within the grasp of most. Similarly, video and audioare simply resources at our disposal,” Wood said on thelast day of training.

Since that first training week, the group has made a re-markable impact on the cross-media culture, newsflow andjournalism for MEN and ManchesterOnline.

The first training group from Manchester returnedhome in March 2003, just days before the U.S. invasion ofIraq. Knowing the war was imminent, one of the last scenarios practiced in the Newsplex before the group leftmodeled how MEN could provide cross-media coverage ofthe story. Under plans the team developed, immediatelyupon return to Manchester, online editor Sarah Hartleywas moved from her remote office to the newspaper newsdesk. This is because the team knew that up-to-the-minutewar coverage online would be vital, and that the key wasbetter communication between the newspaper and the Webjournalists.

“It was a good exercise to use Sarah Hartley on thenews desk during the war. She was needed to process in-formation for ManchesterOnline during the first part of theday,” Wood said.


3.2 Training Case Study – Greater Manchester Newspapers (UK)54Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

After several weeks on the desk, however, Hartley’stime in the print newsroom dwindled down, and then shemoved back to the online department. “It’s been a littlefrustrating for us who believe (online staff) should bespending their time in the (print) newsroom, but that hasstopped now,” Wood said. Hartley still attends morningnews conferences at 7:30 a.m., and another Manches-terOnline staffer is located elsewhere in the print news-room transferring content from print to web, which Woodhopes will become an automatic process soon.

Despite the stops and starts, Wood believes MEN is ontrack to achieve its convergence goals. Editor Paul Hor-rocks has shown his commitment by assigning Wood, asenior manager, to focus solely on the plan for conver-gence: the newsflow, training, technologies, culture andjournalism issues.

One of the biggest plans is to integrate the multiplemedia staffs permanently. Wood is planning a super deskwith representatives from each medium who can make de-cisions to enable true convergence. On this desk, he envis-ages a “single point of authority.”

“We need a newsflow editor – someone who is think-ing through the whole process. I think we have been child-like in the way we use multimedia. We do it fast, becausewe can be fast, but not necessarily the smart or clever op-tion. We need to hang back and decide what to do. Comeand use it at the most appropriate time – where it meets itsaudience,” Wood said.

“I have a clear model in my mind – partly what welearned about at Newsplex. We need to consider our news-gathering staff as a resource, to feed the other media,”Wood said. “The principle is to have news gatherers in awhole range of forms – still pictures, video, text – that canbe made available to the range of MEN publications.”

Wood is creating a plan “to publish smarter, notfaster… Now there is a big push to dump things on theweb, but not how to use it to its best effect,” Wood said.Working smarter would include timing the release of sto-ries on appropriate media, involving all media from thebeginning when planning stories, and developing comple-mentary coverage for other media, not just duplicatingwhat is already published in the newspaper.

“We don’t want to sing from the same song sheet. Wewant to each use media for its strengths,” Wood said.

Another hurdle to scale is cultural. Wood said thereneeds to be a clear vision within the entire organization,emanating from the very top levels of the company, aboutwhat convergence is, and how to go about it. “Within ourown organization, the main stumbling block is clarity ofvision. There are different levels of understanding aboutconvergence in the different divisions. Some people thinkit will just go away,” Wood said.

This year, other plans will take their convergence strat-egy forward. Channel M will go live with news broadcasts,and there are plans for the media group’s radio station,Smooth FM, to swap and integrate news, promotionalpower and resources.

Since the first MEN training week, other changes havetaken place to escalate the company’s commitment to con-vergence. Picture Editor John Jeffay led his still photogra-phers to be cross-trained as videographers. So far, threephotographers are cross-trained. “We have a number ofsuccesses on that. We have decent quality videos on theChinese New Year celebrations and on the demolition of afootball stadium in Manchester for access online.” Photog-raphers are frequently providing online with photo gal-leries created in Visual Communicator, the multimedia tooltaught at the Newsplex.

Greater Manchester Newspapers has also sent two morenewsroom teams for Newsplex training, featuring an in-creasingly diverse cross-section of the company’s news ac-tivities. Under the company’s current training plan, by theend of 2004, more than 40 middle managers and line jour-nalists will be Newsplex legates.

At the end of the weeklong Newsplex Roles Trainingfor a Converging Newsroom program, all participants cre-ate personal videos to express their views about conver-gence based on what they have learned, and to tell theircompany’s editorial and executive managers what theyfeel needs to be done. The following are representative in-sights and understandings achieved by participants inMEN’s first training event.




> “Convergence is an organizational and cultural chal-lengeI believe efforts to implement it have been flawedbecause of an excessively technological perspectivewhich fails to consider structural issues. I am con-vinced managing the interface between the newsgath-ering operation and diverse publication platforms isthe key to successful convergence. The key to success-ful convergent newsroom management is a reform ofworkflows to incorporate new platforms (such as theweb) in the primary decision making process. (Current-ly), a linear model … channel(s) information throughthe newspaper with other platforms being treated as“bolt-on” functions. The “bolt-on” model fails to con-sider the particular needs of each medium. True con-vergence can only be achieved if this underlying struc-ture is challenged and reformed to create a centralnews management hub from where the needs andstrengths of each platform can be fully integrated intothe primary decision making process. In this way care-ful consideration can be given to the way journalisticstandards and revenue streams are best served.” – IanWood, news editor, Manchester Evening News

> “It is vital that we find ways of making convergenceappealing to staff, demystifying a process that could inthe end bring them a whole range of skills. There willbe some who will jump at the chance and others whowon't. There are certain people who will be suited tocertain different media – not everybody will be good ateverything and we need to play to individual strengths.It's important that people are offered the chance to optfor training in different areas and encouraged to seethe benefits of multiskilling. Perhaps there will only bea small number of multi-skilled journalists but thiswould be a start.” – Sarah Lester, deputy news editor,Manchester Evening News

> “I got the most benefit out of the role plays we did later in the week because it made me think about how I would cover a story in a multi-media context insteadof just a print context. In fact, I think there was scopeto include more role plays.” – Chris Ostick, assistantsports editor, Manchester Evening News

> “By far the best aspect was the role playing. Gettingpeople to do things they don’t normally do was stimu-lating and enlightening. I had to pretend I was a re-porter in Rome covering the death of the Pope for TV,the net and the paper, and it helped me see a complete-ly different side of the profession. It involved videoconferencing with my colleagues, something thatwould be integral to convergence.” – Erick Jackson,deputy features editor, Manchester Evening News

Concerning cultural issues –

> “The (Newsplex) course clearly demonstrated howjournalistic judgments were essential to create goodmulti-media packages.” – Hartley

> “… If the move to full convergence is done properly itwill strengthen the MEN brand allowing us to providenews round-the-clock. Our readers access a variety ofsources for their news – newspapers, the Internet, tele-vision and radio. We must accept that to reach thewidest possible audience we need to adapt.” – Lester

> “But there is a view that we are, in some senses, run-ning faster just to stay still. We are duty-bound to ex-ploit media to maintain a complete service to our con-sumers. More effort. Same return.” – Jeffay

Concerning technology –

> “(Convergence) would also mean a better trainingregime. Training and re-training really does need to bea rolling program on any technology we use both nowand in the future.” – Wright

Concerning business issues –

> “I made it my business to find ways convergence canmake money – so significant as we have to work with-in strict budgets which I personally believe hindersbold initiatives. We could for instance immediatelylaunch an enhanced sport service with users paying toget into this web section. I could include picture gal-leries, sound bites and larger, more in-depth articles.Also use of digital cameras, videos and digital soundrecorders by ALL staff would create syndication in-come.” – Peter Spencer, sports editor, ManchesterEvening News

> “Convergence creates a wealth of opportunities but itwill cost money. It cannot be done on the cheap.” –Wood

> “Convergence is achievable – given the right invest-ment. More tasks inevitably mean more journalists. After all, if someone is working for the paper, the web,TV, mobile phones and radio they’re going to be cover-ing fewer stories.” –Jackson

3.3 Training Case Study – Florida Times-Union (USA)56

3.3 Training Case Study – Florida Times-Union (USA)


The Florida Times-Union, flagship newspaper of theMorris Communications group and the strongest brandname for news in the Jacksonville, Fla., market, embarkedon a convergence effort with television mainly to leveragejournalism and cross-promotional opportunities.

The Times-Union has a circulation of 170,000 and itswebsite, Jacksonville.com, gets about 12 million pageviews a month. The Times-Union partnered with Gannett’sFirst Coast News, on channels 25 and 12, to share newscontent and take advantage of cross promotion amongprint, online and TV.

In 2003, the newspaper moved into a larger space in itsdowntown Jacksonville headquarters, where it added a superdesk for story assignment functions. It also created a TV studio in the print newsroom, to tape “talkbacks”with print reporters that would be aired on First CoastNews shows and be posted online at Jacksonville.com.

In May 2003, nine staff members from the Times-Union and Jacksonville.com arrived at the Newsplex forthe weeklong signature course called Roles Training for aConverging Newsroom. Their particular objectives were tooptimize their convergence efforts, to improve their part-nership with First Coast News, and to fine-tune their abili-ty to speak in front of a camera. The Times-Unions sentsome additional staff to a similar program in August 2003.

Among the modules the teams experienced were:> Identifying the audience in Jacksonville> Roles training in the new newsroom roles> Mobilizing for multimedia storybuilding> Writing for multiple media> Visualizing a multimedia story> Workflow software, multimedia storytelling hardware

and software demos> Culture clash management> Creating photo galleries, multimedia packages, story-

boards and Web shells> Multimedia project management case studies> Multimedia newsroom best practices> News scenario exercises: “Pope,” “Train wreck” and

“Blackout”> Multimedia planning processes

Both groups of journalists from Jacksonville werepoised to implement what they had learned at the News-plex.

“I’ve attended a bunch of journalism seminars over theyears, but I have to say that I’ve never seen a group ofnews people more enthusiastic than the first group we sentto the Newsplex in May. They came out of Columbia su-percharged to converge – banging on my door the firstday back, demanding that we order Visual Communicator,”said Times-Union Assistant Managing Editor John Burr,who coordinates the convergence efforts among media.

Burr purchased three copies of Visual Communicator,and some journalists bought copies for their own personaluse. Visual Communicator is a training tool used at theNewsplex that allows participants to easily integrate mul-tiple media to tell stories. Typical combinations of mediainclude photos, audio, graphics, video and narration with ajournalist on camera. Multimedia stories are now routine-ly created for Jacksonville’s website using this cross-mediajournalism tool.

“(The Newsplex trainings) really juiced the interest inwebsite and TV partnerships,” Burr said. “The first thingthe readers noticed was when we did Visual Communicatorsegments for the website. The metro editor, Marilyn Young,got very interested and she brought that interest in VisualCommunicator and the TV partnership to the newsroom.”

At first, Visual Communicator segments were simplyrecaps of newspaper stories. “Three weeks into it, we cameto the realization we needed to add value, we needed tofind an angle and add to what people were getting on thenewspapers. We looked for a new way to tell the story. Wetried to do a video that you couldn’t do in print,” Burrsaid.

Sports reporter Teneshia Wright was a catalyst for thatchange. Wright was part of the first group of Jacksonvilledelegates to the Newsplex. She learned Visual Communi-cator techniques and started creating recaps of her news-paper stories, but then started experimenting with videointerviews with players and coaches of the Jaguars footballteam before their weekly game.

“(The videos) are very popular among users. (Wright)interviews players about defense, about how they can beatthis week’s team. The fans love it, because it was an inside-the-game kind of thing,” Burr said.

During the first Newsplex training event for the Flori-da Times-Union, print journalists said they were havingtrust and cooperation problems with TV journalists at FirstCoast News. The training therefore included detailed dis-cussion about how to redraft the relationship between thetwo newsrooms so that it benefits and satisfies both sides.

Binya Applebaum, a Times-Union reporter who arrivedat the Newsplex very skeptical of whether print shouldever cooperate with television, finished his week of train-ing by creating a very detailed set of recommendations forhis editors on how to favorably restructure his newspaper’sinteraction with First Coast News. “As for our news part-ners, we want their viewers to read our paper. So we’ve gotto do a better job marketing our paper on their airwaves.That means our name should always be on screen… It alsomeans accountability, written agreements that we are pre-pared to enforce. It would be great to get video in a timelyfashion from them,” Applebaum said in his final summaryproject.

“Now the TV partnership is doing very well,” Burr saidsome months later. “We are on every night at 11 for the to-morrow’s headlines. We are averaging about 10 segments aweek on our TV partner not including tomorrow’s head-lines.”


573.3 Training Case Study – Florida Times-Union (USA)


“However, we haven’t had a lot of luck in working col-laboratively with them on stories,” Burr added. “As I talkto other (partnership managers) in Florida, there is a simi-lar pattern. The culture is so different it is hard to get themworking together. What we do is share budgets every dayby email at 11:30 a.m., and I talk to their assigning peopleafter that. Then we touch base at 4:30 in the afternoon. Inthe course of the day, we call each other if stories break.We may say we are about to post this on our website,would you be interested in something for the 6 p.m. news.We also share sources, phone numbers on breaking newsstories. The longer we do this the more we share. That hasworked out well.”

Communication and trust is vital to the partnership,Burr said.

“Hands down, communications is our biggest hurdle.We need to do a better job of disseminating informationwithin our own newsroom and with our news partners,”said Cynthia Garza, a Times-Union reporter, during theMay 2003 training.

“Much has been said about the inequalities betweenthe relationship between First Coast News and the Times-Union,” said Times-Union business writer Timothy Gib-bons in his end-of-training evaluation. “Having reportersjump to the screen can be beneficial both to the paper andto individual reporters. First, reporters must be trained inhow to make the best use of on-camera time. We need awritten agreement with our news partner laying out who isresponsible for what. And we need the television station towork with us to overcome the culture clash between twoorganizations.”

“The collaboration is so dependent on the verbal com-munication in the morning and throughout the day aboutwhat will work and what doesn’t,” Burr said. “If you askme, communication is everything. It’s all coordination. It’salso trust. You have to have people working togetherfreely, not there to screw you over when you share stories.The whole thing is communication. Without good commu-nication, you cannot react on a day-to-day basis andhour-by-hour basis. Without trust, this won’t happen.”

One new area of collaboration that has been developedis the “Roads Scholar” content cross-promotion and con-tent-sharing partnership with the TV station. A televisionand a newspaper reporter each report about road projectsin the Jacksonville area and take questions from readersand viewers, answering them in their respective media. Thestories on TV and in the newspaper cross-promote upcom-ing coverage in the other medium as well.

“Cross promotion does work, but if you ask me toprove it, I can’t,” Burr said. “I think it works better for (thenewspaper). I don’t think TV is getting a big bang out ofthe newspaper (promotion).”

Another advantage for the Times-Union is more audi-ence and more sources for reporters, Burr said. “We arereaching a whole new audience of people. Our reportersget stopped in the grocery stores (after they appear oncamera). I have to think it’s having a positive impact. Theyalso have a larger array of sources available to them.”

“The median age of their audience is 26. Ours is 52,”Burr said. “By and large it’s a different group of people. TVfor whatever reason is more conducive to people pickingup the phone and calling whoever they see on TV. And ifthey know something, they talk to them. Some print re-porters get calls out of the blue more than ever before. Thecaller says they saw them on TV and ‘Did you know thisstory…’ Any time you can hear from a wider group of peo-ple, it always helps.”

The Times-Union’s next multimedia strategy is to in-corporate radio. The idea is to provide news headlines fromthe newspaper through a partner news radio station ownedby Cox. The AM station now runs only pre-recorded, non-local news feeds from CNN. The local news stories provid-ed to the radio station would also be available online.

“The idea is to promote the newspaper’s brand outthere on as many platforms as possible,” Burr said. “Wethink the radio partnership will work hand in glove with-out our website. If we have to get breaking news out thereon the radio, by god, it will be on the website. It will beseamless. That, to me, is the biggest positive.”

After sending two groups to the Newsplex, Burr andhis staff have a positive outlook on the future of conver-gence at the Times-Union.

“Frankly, we don’t know if we’re selling more papersbecause of convergence. We’re just hoping that by gettingour name on TV and radio, we are getting our content forour website and more people coming to our website,” Burrsaid.

3.4 Training Case Study – Edipresse Publications (CH)58

3.4 Training Case Study – Edipresse Publications (CH)


Edipresse is an international media group with head-quarters in Lausanne and a publishing presence mainly inEurope, where it produces 118 titles. The group currentlyhas about 3,800 employees. It publishes popular titles, re-gional and local daily newspapers, Sunday newspapers,and a national title for Switzerland. In the magazine sec-tor, the company is present with high-quality specializedproducts for women, men, family and lifestyle.

In addition, in Switzerland Edipresse operates a region-al online portal as well as a dedicated web site for nearlyevery publication.

The company's vision is to change from a purely pub-lishing company to an information service provider.

This is the vision that led Edipresse to become the firstmedia house to join Ifra’s Newsplex initiative as a memberof the Directorate in 2001. However, after joining, thecompany went through a cycle of management changesthat caused its vision to shift several times.

Eventually, executives hired Gérard Perrier, formerlysenior publishing systems product manager for Unisys inEurope, to become director of organization and informa-tion systems for all of Edipresse Publications. Among Per-rier’s responsibilities has been to solidify Edipresse’s visionfor its convergent future and to activate the necessarychanges.

“I have to tell that the first time I heard about theNewsplex concept, while I was at the top level of mediamanagement in Unisys, I felt it would help suppliers toconvince media companies that they have to move in thisdirection,” Perrier said. “From a long time ago, I believethe (technological) system is only one leg of a global con-cept to introduce the normal convergence in producingnews. The rest, even more important, are the flow organi-zation, the practices in journalism, the space planning inthe newsroom. Looking to the Newsplex ambition, all theseaspects were covered.”

So in May 2003, Perrier led a group of top editors tothe Newsplex from three of the company’s flagshipFrench-language Swiss newspapers – 24Heures, La Tribunede Genève and Le Matin. After a four-day version of thecore Roles Training for a Converging Newsroom program,Newsplex staff escorted the group on a fact-finding visit tothe Tampa Tribune in Florida, one of the United States’most high-profile cross-media operations.

While at the Newsplex, the group participated in train-ing modules including:> Profiling and understanding the new news consumer> New newsroom roles and structure involving newsflow

coordination, storybuilding, news resourcing and mul-tiskilled journalism

> Rebuilding the newsrooms’ organizational charts andjob descriptions

> New newsroom technologies> Tools of the backpack journalist> News scenarios for cross-media management, includ-

ing “The Pope” and “Roosevelt Village”> Culture clash exercises> Case studies on multimedia content creation

Perrier said the Newsplex training occurred at just theright point in Edipresse’s evolution to crystallize the com-pany’s approach and to get the project team all thinkingand working in the same direction.

“Between evangelism and practice, the day-to-dayprocesses could be slow to change. Installing the condi-tions for change is key. This is the role of Newsplex: to de-liver the vision and put the dream; to initiate the newways of producing news, new jobs and profiles in thenewsroom and around the newsroom. But always news-room first. That's what we learned in Edipresse when wehad that first training,” Perrier said.

Armed with its Newsplex experience, the group re-turned to Switzerland to become the core of Edipresse’seditorial change project and to adapt what they hadlearned to Edipresse’s particular needs.

“Even if the convergence concept is something quiteeasy to share with different companies, the practice in or-der to put that in place is quite individual,” Perrier noted.“Nobody lays on the same operations – dailies, magazines,radio, TV, broadcast, syndication, web, mobile phone dis-tribution, PDA, etc. So we considered as key to specify ourown model in this way and to proceed step by step.”

The preconditions for achieving the desired re-orienta-tion at the Edipresse media house are now being createdwithin the framework of a two-year project. The projectconsists of the introduction of new, effective informationworkflows, reorganization of multimedia processes and re-allocation of office space for an interactive news deskorganized to serve print, the web and television.

With this major undertaking, Edipresse managementsays it is confident that it will be able to meet the chal-lenge of realizing more customer orientation and serviceunder the aspect of media convergence. In the future, theemphasis at Edipresse will be more on managing contentthan producing pages, either in print or on the web.


593.4 Training Case Study – Edipresse Publications (CH)


“For us, the project is not a survival strategy, unlikecomparable strategies being discussed at present at othermedia houses due to the currently difficult economic situa-tion on the market,” said Perrier. “We want to create thefuture, which means playing an active role on the marketand helping to shape media landscapes. This is possibleonly with well-trained and motivated personnel. And wehave found a highly innovative partner who speaks ourlanguage, a systems manufacturer who also acts as thedriving force behind the project."

Perrier acknowledges that the changes Edipresse isseeking to achieve are fundamentally in the culture andmindset of the company rather than in the technology.However, as part of its approach to change, Edipresse hasmade a deliberate decision to replace the systems previous-ly used for production of its newspapers with a new sys-tem from a different vendor. Perrier explains that a signif-icant part of the rationale is his belief that old tools fre-quently serve old ways of thinking, and that therefore it isimportant to replace tools in order to achieve the desiredparadigm change.

During their scenario-based Newsplex training, Edi-presse editors modeled news meetings in which they hadto develop and coordinate news stories in multiple contentformats for varied channels of distribution and on a vari-ety of schedules with a large number of people involvedwith different skills. Perrier said these exercises highlightthe need for the newsroom’s core technology to be gearedfor information management and content manipulationrather than just production tasks.

While the company had already been moving downthis line of thinking, after the Newsplex experience Edipresse finalized a contract for a new generation of editorial system based on knowledge and informationmanagement functionalities. Perrier expects it to supportan organization in the newsrooms of all different types ofmedia that can be both completely individualized and optimized, based on standards such as XML, CSS and SVG – a powerful cross-media publishing platform for anewsroom working in an interdisciplinary way. Perrier ex-pects that the new system will improve journalistic outputand save time in all processes through optimal communi-cation, and even have a cost benefit.

“It was most important for us to reach the first goal:installing for our newsroom’s staffs, whatever they do, asingle editorial database access and storage,” Perrier said.“Now we are evolving from the traditional concept – writeand publish – to a new flow – search and build informa-tion.”

“The central desk, from where the management of thenews distribution is done, is also a major point for the pro-ject's success,” he said. “In a few weeks from now, ournewsrooms, one by one, will move to this change: newsystem, new space environment, for introducing new prac-tices.”

“But as we have seen evidenced, the major effort forany (converging) media company involves the human cul-ture, changing the jobs and even sharing differently theresponsibilities in the staffs,” Perrier said. “That's why webelieve that installing conditions is important, demonstrat-ing and practicing is important, merging new generationsis important, also creating new products and consumingdifferently our news is important. And it's not a one-wayproject – it's also educating our readers to become conver-gent news consumers. What a challenge!”

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3.5 Training Case Study – Savannah Morning News (USA)60

3.5 Training Case Study – Savannah Morning News (USA)


The Savannah Morning News is located in south-eastGeorgia on the confluence of the Savannah River and theAtlantic Ocean. It is a much awarded, outstanding smalltown newspaper featuring very high quality journalism,great graphic design and innovative coverage of events inthe Savannah area. It is one of 27 daily newspapers ownedby Morris Communications, a member of the Newsplex Di-rectorate.

The online presence of the Savannah Morning News,SavannahNOW, started in July 1996, is also highly regard-ed and won a 2004 Digital Edge Award for Best OverallNews Site for a newspaper with circulation of less than75,000. Judges commented: “A strong ally with its printnewspaper partner, SavannahNow.com expands the newsreport with web-exclusive video, graphics, slideshows anduser-contributed content. Always a top site, Savannah-Now.com won the Best Local Online Service category inthe 2002 Edgie competition, as well as the Best News cate-gories in 2002 and 2001.”

Despite its strong editorial traditions and pre-eminentposition in its local news market, the Savannah MorningNews has been hampered by serious declines in circula-tion, falling from more than 70,000 to less than 60,000daily over the past several years. On the other hand, whileSunday circulation has also dropped in the same period, ithas been by a much milder fraction, from around 80,000to around 76,000.

Market research tells Managing Editor Dan Suwyn thatthe decline in daily circulation is not a result of defectionsfrom his newspaper to other print or broadcast outlets, oreven a loss of interest in reading local news. Rather, itseems to reflect a massive shift in news consumptionhabits within the more affluent, better-educated portion ofhis demographics.

“During a recent home expo at our civic center, a teamof circulation employees sold 46 new subscriptions inthree hours,” Suwyn explained in a centerpiece article forthe Poynter Institute. “Thirty-one of them were Friday-Sunday packages. When asked why the customers pre-ferred the weekend over the seven-day package, the sur-prising answer wasn’t cost or even ‘not enough time,’ butrather, ‘I read it at work.’”

He continued: “We saw similar results from a canvas ofa suburban bedroom community, where 21 of 50 peopletook new subscriptions and 19 of those were weekendpackages. As we asked more questions of our new sub-scribers, we discovered that ‘I read it at work’ most oftenmeant, ‘I read it online.’”

Suwyn’s conclusion is that “…our readers have formednew habits. A sizable number of our readers has decidedthe internet is the most efficient way to read local andworld news Monday through Friday, but they continue tospend significant time with the printed weekend papers.”

This conclusion is in line with research results showingthat SavannahNOW, with something over 2 million pageviews per month, is regularly used by about 25 percent ofthe newspaper print readers. That is about double the typi-cal percentage of print-online crossover for a local news-paper. Most web use is during the week, with weekend ac-cess being a mere fraction of the Monday-Friday numbers.

Still, these are not the issues that initially brought acontingent of four Savannah Morning News executives tothe Newsplex for the first time in September 2002, beforeit was even completed and opened. Instead, news man-agers were looking for ideas from the design of the News-plex for possible incorporation into their new newsroomthen just in the conceptual stages. Morris had decided torelocate the newspaper’s presses and newsroom from long-time offices in Savannah’s lovely but congested downtownhistoric district to a purpose-built facility on downtown’soutskirts, where there would be more space to grow andoperate.

As often happens during Newsplex tours and discus-sion, the Savannah executives came to understand that thephysical design and technological outfitting of Ifra’s pro-totype newsroom of the future are intimately connected tothe convergent philosophy and integrated cross-media ed-itorial workflows the Newsplex was created to research,demonstrate and teach.

Design lessons they did, indeed, take away. And whenSavannah’s new newsroom opens in mid- 2004, it willcontain significant elements of the Newsplex model envi-ronment, such as a large audio-visual news managementdisplay, wireless networking and dynamic staff arrange-ments.

However, perhaps more significant is that Savannah’sinitial, mostly architectural visit to the Newsplex was soonfollowed by a larger and more editorially minded group ofSavannah Morning News representatives, and eventually,in August 2003, by a hand-picked newsroom training teamof six.

A special three-day Roles Training program was de-signed to let the Savannah journalists and editors use theNewsplex to explore how they might restructure their edi-torial organization and better integrate print and online,plus make more use of other media opportunities such asradio, television and mobile. The program made maximumuse of the Newsplex’ intent to serve as a kind of newsroomsimulator for advanced editorial training and development.


613.5 Training Case Study – Savannah Morning News (USA)


Program’s modules included:> Introduction to the Newsplex> Identifying Savannah Morning News’ targets> Understanding the new news consumer> Roles in the multiple-media newsroom> Familiarization with news management systems, mul-

timedia content tools and cross-media newsgatheringtechnologies

> News scenarios – “The Pope,” “Strom Center” and“Train crash”

> Re-planning scenario – “Daimler Chrysler”> Roles in the multiple-media newsroom> Technologies of multiple-media reporting> Cultural issues in multiple-media newsrooms> Organizational analysis

A primary thread running through Savannah’s exercis-es in the Newsplex was the search for a central concept togalvanize the newsroom staff – or as Planning and Pro-jects Editor David Donald put it, a hook on which thenewsroom could hang the kind of changes it needed topursue. Both Donald and Suwyn said that fortunately therewas already an acceptance of change in their news-room. Change has long been institutionalized as part of the Savannah Morning News’ standard operating procedures.“We will completely revamp the newsroom organizationevery couple of years just to shake things up, to keep usfrom getting complacent, to force us to look for somethingbetter,” Suwyn said. “People who come to work here learnto expect and accept that or they’ll move on.”

Through the Newsplex scenarios, Donald and his fel-low trainees seized on the idea of injecting much morereal-time reporting, through the website, into the newspa-per’s editorial activities – of making real-time coverage acentral part of the newspaper’s mission.

They analyzed the capabilities that reporters on a re-mote news scene could gain through use of mobile andwireless technologies such as those the Newsplex uses, andconsidered how editors back in the newsroom would inter-act with immediate news content as it arrived. They ex-plored the concept of using a specially designed website asnot only the means of presenting a breaking story to newsconsumers but also for internally managing the story forthe print cycle and other media. They took the Newsplex’basic job descriptions for newsflow coordination, storybuilding and multiskilled journalism, and adapted them tofit into a hypothetical new editorial structure back in theirreal-life newsroom.

After returning home, as their new newsroom buildingwas taking shape in the suburbs, Savannah’s Newsplexlegates helped to organizational rebuild their existing edi-torial environment. New mobile equipment was purchased,some staff assignments were changed, more video andaudio content started appearing online, the integration ofnews management for print and web became more seam-less, and real-time reporting started to become a recog-nized part of the newspaper’s activities.

It all led up to the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade inMarch 2004. Media planning editor Denise M. Reagan ex-plained what happened:

“Many tourists look forward to the festivities sur-rounding St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah. Those in thenewsroom at the Savannah Morning News look forward tothe holiday in a different way: The influx of visitors is agreat opportunity to reach a larger audience, but the chal-lenge of finding new ways to cover the event fills somelongtime staffers with dread.

“After many days of preview coverage that includedspecial sections with advice for locals and visitors, March17 arrived. The newsroom and digital media departmenthad worked together to implement a live blog created bytwo people stationed at different points on the paraderoute. Reporter Dana Clark Felty set up shop outside arestaurant on Bay Street with a PC laptop and a PCS (mo-bile communications) card. Media planning editor DeniseM. Reagan parked a folding chair in front of a Starbucks atthe corner of Broughton and Bull streets where she madeuse of the coffee shop’s T-Mobile wireless Internet access.

“Starting at about 8 a.m., Dana and Denise began writ-ing blog items from their posts on a three-way instant-messaging connection with Web producer Jill Liberatoriback at the Morning News building. Jill copied the textinto a Web page that she updated about every five min-utes. You can view the blog at http://www.savannah-now.com/features/stpats/blog.shtml. Dana and Denisewrote interviews with paradegoers and shared their obser-vations of the scene. They also received and posted e-mailsfrom SavannahNOW.com readers from all over the UnitedStates and even Ireland.

3.5 Training Case Study – Savannah Morning News (USA)62Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

“The parade usually lasts about four hours, duringwhich Dana and Denise endured chilly weather and drunk-en partiers as they typed almost non-stop. The IM connec-tion had to be reestablished a few times after changing pa-rade locations or replacing batteries, but otherwise theblogging was a technical breeze.

“Meanwhile, web producers Jennifer Wozniak andTodd Hagin and photographers Steve Bisson and Carl El-more returned to the office with early photos and pro-duced several slideshows that were posted to the web whilethe parade was still going. You can see those slideshows athttp://www.savannahnow.com/features/stpats/index.shtml.

“A little after noon, the parade stood still on Bull Streetwhere Denise was blogging, now from inside Starbuckswhere it was much warmer and had a power outlet. Acrowd of people ran south toward Wright Square just oneblock away. A group of police officers quickly followed.Some of the people Denise had interviewed earlier stoppedby to say they thought a fight had started down the street.A man at a table nearby offered to go check it out and re-port back, since Denise was tied down with her equipment.

“The volunteer reporter was very good. He said a goldChrysler Sebring heading south on Bull Street as part ofthe procession had accidentally sped into the crowd gath-ered on Wright Square. He estimated 10 people were hit –official figures turned out to be eight people injured. Wereported this information in the blog by 12:25 p.m.

“Denise and Dana continued to blog about the parade,which was diverted a block away. Denise called the news-room looking for a reporter who was out covering the pa-rade. Reporter Sean Harder was assigned to the story andwent to Wright Square. Government and business assistantteam leader Mike Fabey stopped by Starbucks for coffeeand headed for the scene after Denise informed him of theaccident. Newspaper planning editor Stephen Komivesdropped in the coffee shop and went to the scene lookingfor more information.

“Stephen, Sean and Mike returned to Starbucks, wherethey typed in their story. Denise IM’d it to web producerAndie Larson who posted it by around 1 p.m. This is a ver-sion of the first story posted on the Web about the acci-dent: http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/031704/LOC_accident.shtml . A link to the accident story was posted onthe live blog as well. Reporters and web producers updatedthe story throughout the day as more information came in.Web producer Chris Bender continued to update the storyuntil midnight when the newspaper stories were posted.

“Photographers John Carrington and Steve Bissonmade it to the scene and managed to shoot pictures beforebeing pushed behind the yellow police tape. Their photoswere the first images of the scene available on Savannahmedia. Andie posted a slideshow of those photos by about1:30 p.m.

“Even Editor Rexanna Lester and Managing Editor M.Daniel Suwyn were on the scene, taking quotes and shoot-ing photos. Dan stopped by Starbucks where Denise down-loaded photos from his camera, wrote cutlines and postedthe photos on an ftp site where the digital media depart-ment could access them.

“The blog went on until 2:30 p.m. Dana, Denise andJill were exhausted by more than six hours of nearly non-stop reporting and typing.

“But things were just getting started for the reportersand editors, who now had a hard news story to report forthe next day’s newspaper and web. You can see those sto-ries at http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/031804/LOCindex.shtml.

“The live parade blog received more than 19,000 pageviews on the day of the event, 20,579 for the month ofMarch. The web-only edition of the accident story received21,000 page views on the day of the event, 22,796 for themonth.”

Some weeks after the event, when Suwyn relayed thisstory to Ifra staff, who expressed how impressed they werewith the newspaper’s performance, the managing editor re-sponded, “It’s what we learned at Newsplex.”


633.6 First-year Special Programs


Convergence is a process enveloping the entire news-room. Therefore, the majority of IfraNewsplex training andsupport activities are designed to focus on individualmedia companies and teams of their staff members. How-ever, a limited number of scheduled Newsplex training andconference offerings are open to general registration byindividual media practitioners and small groups seekingaccess to the very latest in convergent journalism tech-niques and multimedia news technology.

IfraNewsplex conducted four special programs in itsfirst year that were open to general registration and atten-dance by for professional journalists and advertising exec-utives.

Media Scenarios Project, June 2003

The Media Scenarios Project for Media Executives,organized in Dublin prior to the June World Association of Newspaper conference, drew seven media executives toexplore the future of the multiple media industry using“strategic visioning” techniques on the topics of organiza-tional culture, problem-solving, disruptive technologies,information design and business models.

With scenario planning, participants plan around long-range assumptions of possible technological break-throughs, natural disasters, political or economic surprises,industrial accidents or social disruptions that typicallywould not show up in routine industry forecasts or a 10-year business plan. Participants from European mediacompanies envisioned their own company’s situations, andapplied the exercises to imagine long-range plans to suittheir unique circumstances.

Participants learned the principles and processes ofscenario planning, how to build a strong foundation forcreating their company’s convergence strategies, and ex-plored scenarios that may impact their businesses directly.

Trainer Dale Peskin, director of the think tank New Di-rections for News, provided the delegates with theroadmap to the day’s training, called “The Visionary’sHandbook,” an interactive guide to scoping out the futuresof each media company represented.

“This is an exercise called scenario planning,” Peskinsaid as he introduced the seminar. “Journalists are in thebusiness of telling stories. That’s our unique role in civi-lization. I am a guide, a sherpa, as we climb Everest. Thecreative part is about you. We will go through the exercis-es with you.”

By the end of the 1.5 days, participants discussed thepresent and future roles of the media, the forces shapingthe future of news, a group analysis of the media audienceand understanding individual profiles of media consumers,and finally, building scenarios to prepare for inevitablechange, and arriving at competitive strategies in the faceof change.

The last exercise was to create a report about whatneeds to done when delegates return to their media com-panies, how each person can affect change, and how somethings must be left to others, including top executives andworkers at the companies.

The thrust of the workshop was to think differentlyabout the stakeholders of media—the media company, theadvertisers and the audience. Each of the delegates left theseminar with a long list of tasks to complete when they re-turn.

Roles Training for Converging Newsroom, August 2003

Eight participants spent a week at the Newsplex duringAugust to learn about the new roles in the convergingnewsroom, and how to work as a multimedia journalist inthe converging newsroom. Journalists acted out realisticnews scenarios in the new roles, on breaking stories suchas a train wreck in the city and the Pope dying.

Much of the content for the weeklong seminar mir-rored other Roles Training seminars, but this time, with adisparate group of journalists from the BBC, Augusta (Ga.)Chronicle, Florida Times-Union and Northern Illinois Uni-versity.

Following are representative samples of their insightsgained from the Newsplex program:

> “Convergence has to be realistic. Let’s not forget whywe’re here in the first place, readers, viewers and lis-teners. Management must provide clear leadership anddemonstrate the benefits to everyone of this new wayof working.” – Mark Coyle, BBCi

> “I have learned to think of other deadlines besides thenewspaper, of other ways of telling a story, of otherneeds besides getting that quote.” – Greg Rickabaugh,reporter, Augusta Chronicle

3.6 First-year Special Programs

3.6 First-year Special Programs64Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

> “Convergence can give longer life to photos, storiesand projects that would be lost after one day in thenewspaper.” – John Pemberton, photographer, FloridaTimes-Union

> “Right now, I don’t see reporters using our online de-partment to its full extent. What’s to hold a reporterback from getting a video clip of a play’s rehearsal oran audio file of a source’s funny story that may not fit into the story itself but would be a perfect additionto the website?” – Erica Cline, reporter, AugustaChronicle

> “The photographer who attended the school boardmeeting with me the other day took pictures of a veryvocal critic of the superintendent. While his picturewas interesting, it didn’t reflect the woman’s emotions.Video online could have added a 20-second byte of thestory or audio could have recorded the woman’s rants.”– Greg Rickabaugh, reporter, Augusta Chronicle

> “In newspaper lingo, we say it’s all about the 9-point.That means whatever journalists do it’s always aboutthe story. The question in this time of convergence iswhat is the best way to tell it.” – Brandy Allport, edi-tor, Florida Times-Union

> “Rethink your audience; find a way to tell your storyto different people with different needs.” – Greg Rick-abaugh, Augusta Chronicle

Adplexing, September 2003

The weeklong workshop lead media companies to de-velop their own cross-media advertising departments, aworldwide trend in its infancy, and to train next-genera-tion advertising executives to lead 21st Century staffs andgrow new revenues.

The program focused on best practices and case studiesof cross-media advertising pioneers, including Arizona Re-public/Channel 12/AZCentral’s, Tampa Tribune/Channel8/TBO.com; Chicago Tribune’s media channels and manymore, all providing inspiration for the 12 participants.

Among the topics covered included:> Organizational and management structure> Incentive plans for ad salespeople and advertisers> Collaboration and culture strategies> Cross-media advertising campaigns> Case studies about how other media companies are

succeeding with cross-media advertising initiativesearning incremental revenues of millions of dollars peryear

> How to work collaboratively on cross-media advertis-ing teams through role-play simulations

Guest trainers included Robert Acquaotta, director ofAdvertiser Relations; Mike Blinder, president, of the Blind-er Group; Leon Levitt, executive vice president/digital me-dia at The Arizona Republic; and Bennett Zucker, execu-tive director-customer services, Tacoda Systems, Inc.

Attendees were drawn from The Morning Call (Allen-town, Pa.), WFAA-TV (Dallas, Texas), Atex Media Com-mand, The Dallas Morning News, The Free Lance-Star(Fredericksburg, Va.), SNN6 TV, Heraldtribune.com and TheHerald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), Regional Newspapers On-line (Amsterdam, Netherlands); Media General (Richmond,Va.), and The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada).

Visual Journalism Day, October 2003About 50 journalists and media executives from

around the world participated in the Visual JournalismDay seminar conducted in association with IfraExpo inLeipzig, Germany. The daylong program, titled “VisualJournalism in the Era of Change,” focused on the future ofdesign, graphics and photography at media companies.

Keynote speaker Tony Majeri, innovations editor of theChicago Tribune and chief designer for the newspapermore than 10 times during his 30-year tenure, spoke aboutinnovations in design in the history of newspapers, andthe importance of good design in the retention of readers.

Former White House photography Dirck Halstead gavethe audience a spectacular photo slide show of past presi-dents on-duty and off-duty, and a glimpse into the futureof visual journalism with videography.

Other speakers included Joe Breen, presentations editorof the Irish Times, who spoke of his newspaper’s recent re-design, plus a variety of European design and photo edi-tors speaking about the future of visual journalism. <


654.1 The Newsplex Model Environment


A 14-month-long research and development effort in2001-2002 focused on advanced newsroom architecture,technology and workflow and culminated in specificationsfor the Newsplex model environment for convergent edito-rial spaces.

This is the model on which construction was based forthe 530 square meter, 5,700 square foot, IfraNewsplex atthe University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. Afterconstruction was completed in November 2003, the facilitywas donated to the university’s College of Mass Communi-cations and Information Studies under an agreement inwhich Ifra uses it for training professional news managersand their staffs from around the world who are trying toadapt their newsrooms to a rapidly changing media envi-ronment, and for evaluation of innovative methods andtechnologies for the convergent marketplace of print,broadcast, online and wireless news media.

The Newsplex model environment was developed start-ing not from the newsrooms and the news businesses theindustry has today but rather from scenarios describing thekinds of media marketplaces in which journalism and pub-lishing could operate in the future. “Publishing” is beingused here in the broadest sense of the word, referring toany distribution of journalism regardless of medium.

The scenarios were created with planning techniquesknown as the Shell Method because oil industry giantRoyal Dutch Shell was largely responsible for developingthem in the 1970s. Peter Senge later popularized scenarioplanning techniques in his management book “The FifthDiscipline.”

What characterizes scenario planning is that it focuseson imagining the future rather than extrapolating from thepast. Actually it stresses imaging multiple futures, andthen making high level plans for all of them. In this re-gard, scenario planning is distinguished from traditionalstrategic planning, which tries to divine just a single most-probable future based on current trends. Through scenarioplanning, Shell anticipated the oil embargo of the 1970s asone of many possible future scenarios, which allowed thecompany to jump ahead at a time when most of its compe-tition was suffering and trying to regroup.

An especially effective, and fun, implementation ofscenario planning is called story building, in which partic-ipants create very detailed, intricate stories describing theworld at some date in the future. Each story is wovenaround assumptions about possible technological break-throughs, natural disasters, political or economic surprises,industrial accidents or social disruptions that typicallywould not show up in routine industry forecasts and 10-year business plans.

Anyone who has viewed Ifra’s future-newsroom con-cept video “Tomorrow’s News” has seen the results of someof the Newsplex scenario planning. The video can be seenonline at the http://www.newsplex.org/video.shtml.

A number of scenarios was developed in the Newsplexresearch, a variety of visions of news media landscapesthat could be. For instance, there is:> The pervasive internet scenario that imagines a world

so thoroughly wired and wireless that virtually every-one is always on and always connected to a news andinformation source through one gadget or another.

> The media backlash scenario in which people get fedup with being bombarded with endless informationstreams and so decide to turn most of it off.

> The free newspaper scenario in which a breakthroughin digital ink technology leads to an explosion of newpapers in every market when publishing in “hard copy”becomes as easy and inexpensive as creating a Website – resulting in a collapse of cover prices for allnewspaper.


Dusk view of the northwest exterior of the Newsplex looking through its high-tech glass façade at

the lighted Newsflow Deck. This view illustrates well one of the key design goals of the Newsplex

in terms of allowing a free flow of light and communications within the facility.

From the Light Lane looking south at the administrative assistant’s alcove and stairs up to the

Multimedia Mezzanine. This view again illustrates the transparency of the “soft eggcrate” wall

panels. At far right is an informal seating and waiting area. Seen at left are wooden chairs

designed by Newsplex architect Saf Fahim, and a glass sculpture created for the facility.

4.1 The Newsplex Model Environment66Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

> A number of consolidation and cross-ownership sce-narios, such as one in which print-TV-online-wirelesscombines become the norm in almost every significantcommunity and start competing against one anotherfor regional markets.

The research perhaps even imagined the aftermath ofthe 9/11 attacks in a scenario about a stupendous series ofnews events that leads to a surge of interest in all forms ofnews access and to people becoming afraid of not beingable to find out quickly enough when the next big thinghappens.

With such scenarios from which to work, Newsplex re-search analyzed what kind of news organizations mightperform best in such future media environments. Somepatterns emerged. It appears they would be news organiza-tions that:> Can fluidly emphasize and configure any one or com-

bination of distribution media.> Have a service relationship rather than a commodity

relationship with news consumers/markets.> Place the highest priority on brand credibility and reli-

ability.> Are highly technologically endowed in information

management, communications and collaboration –production technology is less distinguishing, but dis-semination capacity is critical.

> Develop small, tight staffs for the highest value edito-rial functions, outsourcing other activities – as news-handling processes become more sophisticated, it becomes less feasible to maintain expertise in a huge newsroom.

Finally the Newsplex project explored what kind ofnewshandling environment, what kind of newsroom, existsat the core of this kind of news organization. The result isthe Newsplex model environment.

Following are the model’s key attributes:

Flexibility

Most newsrooms in the world are designed around aparticular editorial organizational model. The most com-mon model is to concentrate the editorial staff in one bigroom. Within this large room, to one degree or another,the staff will usually be segregated into distinct areasbased on topic or function. The second most common organizational model, practiced in far fewer locations, is much more explicit in this segregation, breaking the editorial staff up into separate offices of just a few indi-viduals each.

In almost all cases, a staff member is expected to workat an assigned desk in his or her assigned location when-ever in the newsroom building. It is the rare news compa-ny that makes it efficient or even possible for editorialstaff members to continue working in the building awayfrom their assigned desks, such as in a lounge, meetingroom or project space.

The Newsflow Deck, looking south toward the Editorial Alcove and, above it, the Multimedia

Mezzanine. The configuration of all furniture is entirely flexible, with a minimal number of wires

due to wireless networking and mobile communications. Like all “offices” in the Newsplex, the

Editorial Alcove, for an editorial manager, is contiguous to the main editorial areas.

This view of the Newsflow Deck emcompasses the Newswall and shows how the “soft eggcrate”

wall panels filter direct light so as to create an effective viewing environment for computers and

video screens. The Newswall serves as a focal point for editorial management in a multiple-media

environment with many more factors to manage than in traditional newsrooms. The trench matrix

on the floor allows cable and power runs wherever needed.




Ifra’s study of how news organizations perform differ-ent types of news coverage efforts at different stages in thenewshandling process found such a one-layout-fits-all ap-proach to be inappropriate. There are times when thenewsroom benefits from a large concentration of editorialstaff, in order to achieve a confluence of editorial expert-ise and news judgment. But there are also times at whichsmaller selected teams of journalists and editors should beable to assemble and work together segregated to one de-gree or another from the rest of the staff. And finally thereare appropriate times when individual journalists will perform best if allowed to work in a more or less isolatedlocation.

The Newsplex model environment provides for all vari-ations of staff association and the flexibility for staffmembers to shift from one situation to another withoutloss of efficiency.

The central newshandling area of the Newsplex is theNewsflow Deck. It represents a space where the majority ofnewsroom staff can work side by side and experience themaximum journalistic group-think.

Just off the Newsflow Deck but still, to a greater orlesser extent as required, within sight and sound of thisprimary news management location are a number of dif-ferent seating areas where smaller teams of reporters andeditors can assemble. One of these areas is separated fromthe Newsflow Deck only by a large glass table, but hasspecial seating for computer-toting mobile staff. Anotherarea is located on a slightly more removed mezzanineoverlooking the Newsflow Deck and is equipped with aninnovated touch-screen plasma display for collaboration.Still another such area was created with very informalseating off in a more isolated corner of the room, but stillwithin earshot of any breaking developments, to havemore of a lounge atmosphere.

For more isolated work, there are four Media Docksalong the north side of the facility in which journalists canessentially shut themselves off while still being within juststeps of returning to the main Newsflow Deck.

Finally, just inside the Newsplex’ front door are twostand-up workstations, called Touchdown Stations, wherefast moving reporters can rush in, touch down, log on, up-date, download, sign off and be gone without ever havingto enter the main Newsflow Deck.

Connectivity

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the Newsplex’physical outfitting is the “soft eggcrate” used to create thewalls separating most of the different work areas. Thesepanels consist of an open matrix of material that breaks upsight lines and muffles sound, but that simultaneously pre-serves an awareness of people and activities on the otherside. They are in essence walls that are not walls, and theyserve the end of keeping a journalist in the Newsplex insome level of association with all his other colleagues nomatter where he moves to work.

Work desks are able to be moved, ganged or broken upeasily to create whatever groupings of personnel are de-sired.

Technologically, this flexibility with connectivity issupported through extensive wireless computer networkingand the exclusive use of mobile phones. No journalist istied to a desk by a wired network or telephone. Only elec-trical connections for the wirelessly networked laptops im-pede complete freedom to rearrange staff whenever andhowever is most productive.

The layout of the Newsplex also ensures that what “of-fices” are provided are contiguous to the rest of the news-handling spaces rather than being isolating. Traditionalmanagers might find this undesirable since it eliminatestheir ability to shut themselves off from the rest of thestaff by closing the door and shading the windows. Butthat is the idea.

There are three office spaces in the Newsplex. The edi-torial alcove and news resourcing alcove are on oppositesides of the Newsflow Deck. Because of their continuity tothe Newsflow Deck, managers sitting in these spaces arefully engaged in the newshandling at all times. Theirspaces can even become impromptu news meeting andwork locations as necessary.

A view north along the News Resource Gallery and News Analysis Area toward the MediaDocks in

the background.

4.1 The Newsplex Model Environment68Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

The third office space, the administration alcove, is setslightly off but is still contiguous to Newsflow Deck. Andsurrounded as it is with “soft eggcrate” the administrativemanager working there remains in complete contact witheverything going on in the rest of the facility.

Light and Sound

The “soft eggcrate” panels combine with an extensivevariety of computer-controlled direct and indirect lighting,and the careful selection of materials and coloringsthrough the Newsplex, to create a very light and airy envi-ronment without seeming cavernous or industrially ware-house-like.

In particular, the open-matrix panels allow direct sun-light to filter into the main Newsflow Deck, which is ex-tremely unusual for a high-tech newsroom featuring manycomputer monitors and plasma and LCD screens. The “softeggcrate,” originally designed for use in front of large spotlamps on movie and photographic sets, diffuses the sun-light to acceptable levels and preserves the physical andpsychological health benefits associated with exposure tonatural full-spectrum sunlight.

The system continues to be evaluated and refined todeal with the sometime bright backlighting that can comethrough the “soft eggcrate” at certain times of the day atcertain times of the year.

Acoustics in the Newsplex are similarly fine-tuned sothat casual conversations do not interfere with unassociat-ed work, but with the slightest increase in volume a man-ager can get the attention of and communicate with any orall staff no matter where they are in the facility.

The “soft eggcrate” serves this end by baffling andchanneling sound, just as it does light. It is also facilitatedby museum-quality wall fabric, acoustically absorbentgranite-flaked flooring tile, and a fabric scrim mountedoverhead.

Foundation

The floor of the Newsplex is specially designed to servethe functions of both a print newsroom environment and abroadcast studio.

A newspaper newsroom typically requires a lot of net-work and power access points scattered across the floor sothat computers, phones and other equipment can beplugged in wherever desks are located. Although theNewsplex, as already described, makes use mostly of wire-less networking and communications, it still needs to al-low for the occasional wired connection and particular forconvenient access to electrical outlets. Therefore, a net-work of power plugs had to be provided in the floor. Acommon approach for this is to use a raised floor allowingwire runs in the inches of space under removable floorpanels.

On the other hand, a broadcast studio’s floor needs tobe very solid, stable and acoustically mute so that camerascan roll across it and people can walk around without in-troducing either vibration or background noise into videoand audio recordings. For this purpose, the raised floor isunacceptable.

The Newsplex developed an innovative system to satis-fy the needs for both connectivity and stability. Steeltrenches were anchored to a concrete pad in a computer-designed pattern to provide maximum flexibility for wireruns and power outlets. Then concrete was poured in thevoids between and around the trenches, flush to their top.A granite-based tile was applied on top of the concreteand made flush with the steel covers of the trenches tocomplete the installation.

Now, whatever wires are necessary can be run throughthe network of trenches, and even up and across a steelframework of beams that meet up with the trenches asstrategic points and rise 20 feet to the ceiling. Outlets areaccessible through ports in the trench covers. But camerasdollies and any other broadcast style equipment can easilyand solidly roll over the floor just like in a broadcast stu-dio.

Therefore, the Newsplex can meet its goal of beingboth a newspaper newsroom and a broadcast studio at thesame time.

The Editorial Alcove, home to the primary editorial manager, doubles as a meeting and planning

area and task location.




Collaboration

A Newswall audio-video information display at oneside of the Newsflow Deck provides the managerial focalpoint for multiple-media newshandling in the Newsplex.

The wall serves as a location where every journalistcan simultaneously view pages in production, video B-roll,photos under consideration, web pages, videoconferencesessions and broadcast feeds. In this way, the newswallserves not only to keep the entire staff informed on thestatus of stories but also to generate the valuable journal-istic group think.

At any time, anyone working on one of the speciallyconfigured wireless laptops in the Newsplex can take con-trol of the wall through a Web-browser Java interface tochange TV channels being watched on the plasma moni-tors, shift an audio or video source to the main display,start or stop a VCR or DVD player, raise or lower the vol-ume, or direct material to a digital capture connection.Also, any of the laptops, with the push of a button, candisplay their own screens on the Newswall’s central com-posite 2048-by-1536 resolution LCD monitor to share withthe rest of the staff whatever the individual is working onor has found online.

The goal is to make collaboration among the staff aseasy and seamless as possible.

Part of this specially designed AV suite is the digitalhub assembled in the news resourcing alcove. The alcovecontains the widest possible array of devices for accessingcontent regardless of the form in which it arrives at theNewsplex – whether as hard copy documents and imagesor on any type of digital storage medium such as DVD, CD,VHS, MO, CF, SM, MS, MMC, SD and the rest of the alpha-bet soup. The Newsplex infrastructure allows for very flex-ible cross-connections between equipment to facilitatetransfers, captures and recordings as needed. And an arrayof software utilities is available to open and transform virtually any data or multimedia format. The result is toremove any roadblocks to using or viewing any contentresource the staff might acquire.

Resources

Rather than sequestering hard-copy resources such asbook and documents into an inaccessible morgue awayfrom the main newsroom, the Newsplex model environ-ment surrounds the main Newsflow Deck with specialshelving to make these vital materials readily available tothe entire staff.

Developments in radio-frequency identification (RFID)technology are being monitored so that eventually the fa-cility can employ coin-sized tags to eliminate the need tocarefully reshelve such resources in order to be able to findthem again or in a hurry on deadline.

As for digital resources, they are stored on one of threeservers tied together in the Newsplex’ network by a com-pletely automated network server appliance that monitorsand manages most aspects of the facility’s IP addressing,firewall, file access, user ID, email, Web and ftp services.

Ergonomics

Ifra’s Newsplex research spent a great deal of effort developing standards for ergonomic use of laptop work-stations.

Most of the regulations on safe computing environ-ments for workers are based on the presumption of a sepa-rate keyboard, monitor and CPU. The Newsplex, however,standardized on laptop computers for their flexibility. Thisrequired studying how to meet ergonomic standards with alinked monitor and keyboard that do not allow for sepa-rate desk heights.

The results of this research are reflected in special seat-ing, carefully set desk heights, and a custom-designed angled computer pedestal and wrist pad. The pedestal wasa key development, raising the LCD screen 3.5 inches forproper viewing height while also angling the keyboard forproper wrist and finger placement.

A view across the Newsflow Deck to the News Resourcer Alcove, the digital hub of the Newsplex,

where there is equipment to enable access to any data or content file regardless of format. On

desks in the Newsflow Deck, wirelessly networked laptops are made ergonomic with angled stands

raising the screens 3.5 inches, wireless mice and oversized wrist rests.

The images on these pages were produced by architectural photographer

Bob Zucker of Corporate Photographics, New York, USA, working on behalf

of AKF Engineers, one of the primary subcontractors in the design and con-

struction of the Newsplex. These images are copyright 2004 AKF and Cor-

porate Photographics, used by Ifra with permission.

4.2 Construction Records 70

4.2 Construction Records


2002.04.04

The original space provided by South Carolina ETV for development of the

Newsplex was a room of about 5,700 square feet mostly unimproved, with

cinderblock walls, exposed wall studs and exposed ceiling. It was a com-

pletely enclosed room so that the start of construction required breaking

through the block wall to permit access for equipment.

2002.04.16

Holes were cut through the room’s ce-

ment slab floor and several feet into

the ground below for poring concrete

footings for the Newsplex’ internal

steel framework.

2002.04.19

Project Manager Greg Hughes of Con-

tract Construction, right, and Kerry

Northrup of Ifra review construction

documents spread out on the floor of

the Newsplex-to-be.

2002.05.01

Foundation pillars were poured in the

holes through the slab floor and steel

attachment plates were embedded in

those pillars as their dried.

2002.05.10

The exterior walls of the northwest corner of the South Carolina ETV

Telecommunications Center are removed in preparation for installation of

the Newsplex’ glass façade.

2002.05.22

The interior steel framework for the Newsplex is assembled, bolted and

welded into place. USC’s to-be-Dean Charles Bierbauer would eventually

call this the “box inside a box for thinking outside the box.”

2002.05.29

The interior steel I–beam framework is

nearly complete. The steel was pre-

coated with fire-retardant and pre-

painted white in fabrication. Also, ad-

ditional flanges had been added to the

I-beam edges to eventually hold stain-

less-steel cover plates.

2002.06.05

With concrete footings poured and

ready, the exterior steel framework is

bolted into place around the north and

west sides of the Newsplex.

2002.06.12

Curved steel modules for the Multime-

dia Mezzanine are installed.

2002.06.27

Initial installation of heating and air

conditioning ducts started. Ducts

shown here will service the Media-

Docks.

2002.07.10

Conduit is installed overhead for elec-

trical lighting, fire alarms and upper-

level electrical service. Ceilings in the

Newsplex are more than 20 feet high,

requiring use of scissor lifts.




2002.07.24

Upper portions of the Newsplex exteri-

or are prepared for stucco.

Inside the facility, aluminum studs are

positioned to create walls for the Me-

diaDocks, among other places.

2002.07.31

Aluminum studs are installed within

the steel framework surrounding what

will become the TechSpace for com-

puters and electronics.

2002.08.08

Interior walls on the east and south

sides of the Newsplex are covered with

sheetrock; the main entrance to the fa-

cility will be in the corner where the

scissor lift is parked.

Further preparations are made on the

upper part of the exterior façade to

prepare for application of stucco.

Steel stairs to the Multimedia Mezza-

nine are installed.

2002.08.08 continued

A computer-planned and meticulously

positioned matrix of steel trenches is

assembled and positioned on the con-

crete slab; these trenches will provide

for power and data runs without use of

a typical raised floor unsuitable for the

Newsplex’ multiple-media uses.

2002.08.21

Safety handrails are welded into place on the mezzanine steps and around

the Multimedia Mezzanine itself.


After the matrix of floor trenches is completed and anchored to the con-

crete slab under-floor, the trenches also serve as the forms for pouring

cement. Cement is used to fill each of the voids inside the trench matrix

and then is smoothed to the level of the trenches themselves. This was done

in three stages, from south to north, across the floor of the Newsplex.

2002.09.04

Aluminum stud walls go up around the

semi-circular Editorial Alcove and the

Multimedia Mezzanine above it.

2002.09.11

A view of the nearly finished floor in

what will be the Newsflow Deck, look-

ing toward the Editorial Alcove and the

Multimedia Mezzanine.

4.2 Construction Records72Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

2002.09.25

Observation windows are installed in

the east wall of the Newsplex, to allow

viewing of the Newsflow Deck from the

hallway of the South Carolina ETV

Telecommunications Center; horizontal

aluminum channels installed along the

east and south walls, seen just above

the observation windows as well as higher on the walls, are intended to

aesthetically mimic channels along the outside of the TCC so that the

Newsplex appears to be set into the corner of the building.


The tall glass entrance door is installed,

its height contributing to the overall

dimensions of the facility.

Window frames are set into the exteri-

or steel façade of the Newsplex.

2002.10.03

The Newsplex’ high-tech glass façade

is installed, using specially green-tint-

ed, highly energy efficient panes.


Remaining interior walls are

sheetrocked, including the semi-circu-

lar wall along the steps to the Multi-

media Mezzanine.

The entire ceiling of the Newsplex

along with all installed infrastructure

higher than 18 feet, 4 inches, is coated

in a specially formulated black paint to

make it visually disappear under nor-

mal lighting conditions.

2002.10.24

Several styles of lighting are installed

to provide the ideal mix of indirect and

spot illumination creating an ideal en-

vironment for editorial technology

users; shown are a sideway-casting

fascia channel light to illuminate the

walls, and down-cast halogen cable

spotlights that are completely adjustable (a third style not yet installed in

these images is an up-casting broad-beam halogen light).


High-voltage filtered power outlets are

installed at every intersection in the

matrix floor trenches.

Closely mirroring the shape of the

floor-trench matrix, an aluminum

framework is installed over the News-

flow Deck and panels of a special scrim

material in installed to support both

audio and lighting effects.

2002.10.28

Scrim installation continues while in

the background the first coat of paint-

ing starts on the exterior walls of the

TechSpace; also seen in this image are

the installed up-casting broad-beam

halogen lights that will bounce illumi-

nation off the scrim when finished.


Museum-quality material is applied to

the south (and east) interior walls of

the Newsplex. The tan color is carefully

matched to the exterior stucco of the

South Carolina ETV Telecommunica-

tions Center, just as the two horizontal

channels have been, to give the impression of the building’s exterior wrap-

ping uninterrupted around the inside of the Newsplex.

2002.10.29

After underlying sheetrock has been

painted black, sheets of industrial perfo-

rated metal are used to sheathe the

semi-circular wall around the Editorial

Alcove and the Multimedia Mezzanine.

The same material will be installed on

the interior walls of the alcove and mez-

zanine, also on the interior and exterior

surfaces of the MediaDock wall and

doors at the other end of the facility.




2002.11.01

The exterior wall and doors to the Me-

diaDocks are covered with perforated

metal.


The east and south interior walls are covered with museum quality material,

now illuminated by the a sideway-casting fascia channel lights; this view

looks south down the News Resource Gallery wall. Walls, floor trenches and

lighting are completed in the TechSpace, where electronic equipment racks

eventually will be installed.


With fans blowing, final curing is tak-

ing place on the poured concrete floor

in preparation for installation of a cus-

tom granite-infused Italian tile; in the

background the Editorial Alcove is

painted black awaiting installation of

its perforated metal sheathe.

On the exterior of the facility, applica-

tion is nearly complete of white stucco

above and below the windows, match-

ing the exterior exposed white steel I-

beams.

2002.11.04

Installation begins of the Lighttools

“soft eggcrate” wall panels.

2002.11.11

Two station workstations, called Touch-

down Stations, are assembled near the

Newsplex entrance, featuring thin

client processors and thin LCD screens.

Aluminum cover plates are installed on

exposed I-beams, providing convenient

wire runs inside.


Custom-built tube-grame desks, tables

and shelves are installed in the Medi-

aDocks and elsewhere in the Newsplex;

this picture also shows that the special

granite-infused tile has been installed

on the floor throughout the facility.

Audio-visual subcontractors install the

Newswall, consisting of four LCD pro-

jection cubes flanked by four plasma

monitors.


Equipment racks and servers are in-

stalled in the TechSpace.

2002.11.12

Touchdown Stations are finished, test-

ed and operational.

Final testing of the Newswall audio-

visual management display system.

4.3 Architecture of Change74

4.3 Architecture of Change


New centuries do not have to have new ideas or newideologies unless there are physical changes that warrantthem. Once however theses changes take hold in the soci-ety, they immediately fuel social, economic and environ-mental changes. Articulating theses advances, changes inarchitectural and urban form is what invigorates andbrings to being the process of renewal.

The human condition or the ecological aspect of theseschanges also plays an important ingredient in domesticat-ing and enhancing the process of progress. Although the-ses forces are better understood and practiced in Europe,signs and winds of change are beginning to merge in theUnited States.

The end of the 20th Century produced numerous tech-nological advances warranting a global revision in ideolo-gy. Such changes began to instigate revisions, newness inarchitecture and urban form. The Software Revolution, theCommunication Revolution, the Internet and the DigitalRevolution are examples of theses changes.

A case in point is the Associated Press project “TheNews Organization of the Future.” The project was com-missioned to Archronica Architects in 1991 and was revealed for the first time to Associated Press ManagingEditors in Philadelphia in 1994. Due to the technologicaladvances at the time, the AP was concerned about the future of media and journalism. Many then claimed thatsociety would reorganize in such way that journalism aswe know it would cease to exist.

The assignment to Archronica was open ended and sowas the outcome. William Ahearn, then AP executive edi-tor and the vice president in charge of the project, pointedout that “we are not attempting to please any one with thisproject. Our intent is to reach the bottom line truth.” Spo-

ken as a journalist, Ahearn’s comments proved to be mostvaluable in architecture. Archronica at the time had largeexperience in advanced projects but had little or no expe-rience in the area of the media. It seemed that the AP’schoice in selecting Archronica was deliberate; the AP in-tended to go outside the box and select an architecturalgroup with experience in cutting-edge projects.

Never the less, the conclusion of the research and de-velopment stunned many including Ahearn and his supe-riors. The architecture of the new newsroom had no resem-blance to any current institutions. We learned that the firstprotest came from Lou Boccardi, then president and CEOof Associated Press. He declared after the presentation ofthe project that he wouldn’t spend a penny on such a ven-ture. A rift over the lack of support for advancement in theAssociated Press ended in Ahearn’s departure from the or-ganization. He now works at Bloomberg as the editor andthe Facilitator of Change.

The positive reception of the new AP typology amongeditors, reporters, staff and advanced-thinking managerswas, however, overwhelming. The prototype became anovernight global celebrity. Among those who expressedimmediate interest in the project was Singapore PressHoldings. Executives there found in the project the poten-tial for progress and consistency with their technologicalaspirations. Singapore at the time had begun planning itsnational fiber optics corridor and was looking to capitalizeon the winds of change. In the United States, the Min-neapolis Tribune expressed interest in following suite.Soon after, the Chicago Tribune joined. On the west coastof the United States, notably The Mercury News and TheOrange County Register began grasping the dimensions ofchange.

Corporate Photographics: Bob Zucker, Photographer


754.3 Architecture of Change


The typology of the Associated Press project laid theground rules for the new century. Lagged behind this ad-vancement is the majority of the financial and managerialarms of media companies. The lack of support was gener-ated by one fundamental fact. This fact was reported to theAssociated Press as part of the findings in the project. Themanagement in news organizations tends to work and interact in isolation from the rest of the organization. Despite the fact that the project had substantial economicincentives and major opportunities for growth, this arm ofthe organization remained aloof and unaware of the scaleof change. Today many have taken on the idea as simplis-tic mergers between the various media and companies.

In the interim, academia began to recognize the poten-tial, the depth of the proposed change. The first requestcame from Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU at thetime was a small virtually unknown school. On the otherhand the university was energized by their highly ambi-tious President, Eugene Truani. At the university Archro-nica was introduced to Ifra and Kerry Northrup. Ifra didnot suffer the separation syndrome found in the media industry. Günther Böttcher, then managing director of Ifra,had worked for IBM and had fully understood the dynam-ics of progress and change.

At VCU the foundation for a modernized school waslaunched. Northrup helped engineer the engine of changein the school. The notion of synergy between the media injournalism helped reinvent the architecture of the class-room and the school. The invigorating speed of reform, theavailability of technology and the will of the university resulted in what the director of the school labeled a changeof biblical proportion. A lack of funding, however, endedin delaying this project.

The University of South Carolina was the next stop onthe major innovation trail. Ifra, after VCU, saw the oppor-tunity to establish a center for research and developmentfor professional and academic research. Driven byNorthrup’s devotion and Böttcher’s encouragements, the3rd generation of the architecture of the Associated Presswas about to be born.

The architecture at VCU responded to one major ques-tion: the elimination of barriers between the various me-dia. Out of this doctrine, the Tampa Tribune in Florida wasborn. The Tribune is owned by Media General, which wasan active supporter of the VCU experiment. Ever since,Media General has expanded its operations in all mediaand captured a large market share in the Southeast of theUnited States.

The USC project brought more complex issues andchallenges. The notion of a cognitive building took thecenter stage in the design. Given that the building was ahost to multiple cultures and multiple media, how can thenthe architecture respond to the demands, the differentwork charts and media of each group. Additionally thebuilding needed to remain on the cutting edge of techno-logical advances to fulfill its mission as a training center.

After a short period of fund raising, the project beganto take shape. The collaborative process that energized therelationship between Archronica and Ifra had extended,engaging the USC College of Journalism and Mass Com-munications. Shortly after a brief encounter with the fac-ulty of USC and the staff of South Carolina EducationalTelevision, host of the Newsplex, the university merged itsjournalism school with the School of Information and Library Sciences. This merger facilitated a link and an entry for journalism into the Information Age. Suchchange was predicted at the AP research, institutionalizedas process at VCU, but materialized to its fullest potentialin South Carolina.

As example of a fundamental spatial change in theNewsplex is that the news resourcers’ information deskand the executive editor’s news desk share equal impor-tance and adjacency to the newsroom.

On the ecological and the human level, the architectureof the Newsplex took advantage of the technological ad-vances enhancing the building. Daylight and views wereintroduced to a light-sensitive work place, improving itshuman quality and performance. The architecture allowedfor physical places to facilitate seclusion, privacy and col-laborations. Theses ingredients are critical to the creativeprocess, media and journalism.

The Newsplex since has expanded its boundaries toAsia and Europe. Both projects are currently experiencingslow progress. A bright spot for global media collaborationis however born. Now four years into the new centurycomes the first anniversary for the institution. It is a glob-al research center. The diversity of the institution’s experi-ments is expected to enhance our global understanding ofmedia and information in the new century. This was thefundamental challenge for the architecture.

Saf Fahim, the Newsplex architect, is design principal of Archronica

Architects, New York, NY, USA. He is a member of the American Institute

of Architects and chairman of the AIA New York Architectural Dialogue

Committee.

4.4 Enabling Technology for Advanced Newshandling76

4.4 Enabling Technology for Advanced Newshandling


A successful convergent newsroom is about muchmore than just technology.

It is about the mindset of an editorial organization thatmust learn to work in multiple media simultaneously and inreal-time, 24/7, if it wants to be relevant and valuable toconsumers in the expanding news and information market-place. It is about new skills, workflows, resources, organi-zation and environments necessary to turn a traditionallylabored newsroom into the hub of a reinvented information-based service company. It is about journalists and managerswho can preserve their ethics while adapting to the increas-ingly numbing pace of media change and innovation.

However, technology is certainly involved. It is impos-sible to be an effective news organization today withouttechnology. And the media company that applies the besttechnology most appropriately will have a major advan-tage, will break the stories first, will find the exclusives,will differentiate itself.

The technologies of most value in this regard, then, arethose that enable journalists to report and produce an effective news story with multiple media facets, to tap into and make the best use of available information assets,to work more independently of a desk and a phone insome central location, and to communicate and coordinatewith other members of a news staff that is more mobileand dynamic.

The Newsplex has been designed in part to serve as aresearch and evaluation facility for just such news tech-nologies. Following are explanations of key elements ofthe center’s suite of hardware and software tools.

The Newsplex remains active in seeking new technolo-gies for trial and use. The goal is to keep the facility atleast six months ahead of the world’s news industry in regard to implementing and developing experience withemerging newshandling technologies.

Collaboration enhancement

One of the underlying precepts of the Newsplex modelenvironment for advanced newshandling is that editorialorganizations can benefit from better use of the collectiveknowledge and expertise in their newsrooms. It seems thattraditional newsrooms almost go out of their way to keepindividual staff members isolated from one another interms of their awareness of what stories are being pursuedand of the status of those efforts.

The Newsplex challenges this norm with a large multi-screen display system serving as an audio-video manage-ment focal point for all news staff. The newswall is used toelectronically post, among other things, photos, videofeeds, workflow status summaries and various works inprogress for the staff’s collective awareness and response.

Besides this large main monitor at the front of the cen-tral newshandling space, additional collaborative displaysof information and news resources are scattered through-out the facility. The system can also be used for videocon-ferencing and as an electronic whiteboard for editorialplanning sessions.

Resource visualization

Contemporary news managers are expected to stay ontop of an increasing array of information sources, far morethan the one or two newswires with which traditionalnewsrooms have had to contend. In place of tedious textlists that require constant scrolling and monitoring, theNewsplex employs sophisticated data visualization systemsto provide the editorial staff with more intuitive presenta-tions of its information environments.

For example, newswires can be displayed on a topo-graphic newsmap that shows major news as tall mountainsand smaller stories as lower hills or valleys, based on theamount of text, photos and other material available foreach. Related stories are grouped together on thenewsmap, like neighboring mountains, while disparatetopics are more widely separated. In real-time, an editorcan observe and respond to a story starting out as an iso-lated event and growing into a major coverage effort.

This visual analysis system can also be applied to adatabase of all incoming emails, phone messages, scannedcorrespondence and faxes from members of the public,producing a map of what topics are currently of most con-cern to those news consumers.

The newsmap and other data visualization techniquescan be incorporated into a central content managementsystem that is able to catalog and manage as wide a rangeof media format types as the newsroom might encounter.

Wireless connectivity

Flexibility is one of the primary watchwords of thecontemporary newsroom, emphasizing the ability to applypeople, their expertise and their tools in whatever size andlocation of newshandling group or team is required. Suchflexibility mandates that editorial staff members be able tomove about the newsrooms freely with their computersand communications equipment.

To that end, the Newsplex deploys wireless networkingsystems including medium- and long-range Wi-Fi 802.11as well as short-range BlueTooth, even as high-speedwired networking is also available throughout the facility.

The Newsplex functions as a microcell of mobile phoneservice integrated into the newsroom’s systems so that thestaff’s mobile handsets become primary tools not only forcommunication but also for audio, video and data infor-mation access and distribution.

Even wireless webcams serve as part of the overall en-vironment for keeping the staff in touch.

News resource “awareness”

In the fast-paced and highly resourced environment ofan information-age newsroom, it is not practical for all in-coming material to be incorporated into digital databases.Therefore the Newsplex is studying ways for books, re-ports, tapes and other documents maintained in hard-copyformat to be integrated into the facility’s “news resourcegallery” by virtue of imbedded RF-ID (radio frequencyidentification) tags.


774.4 Enabling Technology for Advanced Newshandling


These tags are about the size of a coin, almost as thinas a sheet of paper and contain a microchip that canrecord 64kb of information about the tagged item. Sensorsplanned for installation throughout the Newsplex, particu-larly next to shelves and under desktops, can then contin-uously read these tags and keep a central resource man-agement database informed about what the material is andwhere in the facility it is currently located.

Quickly need the newsroom’s copy of the city’s codesand laws? This system would be able to pinpoint that it iscurrently sitting on the editor’s desk. Finished using thatvideo from the state’s business development office? Placeit on any shelf surrounding the newsroom – no need toput it back in a particular place – and the system can tellthe next person who needs it where to find it.

A reporter rushing out of the newsroom to cover abreaking news story can log out a digital camera, audiorecorder and computer for the assignment just by walkingout of the room with the equipment in hand. Sensors atthe door will automatically record that the staff memberand the equipment left together by reading tags installedin the equipment and in the reporter’s ID badge.

Once a newsroom starts becoming “aware” of theequipment, material and people inside it, other supportservices can also be envisioned that help to streamline thenews staff’s activities.

Search and “agent” systems

It is likely that a key technological distinction betweencompeting news organizations will be the sophistication ofthe search systems at their disposal.

These systems will constantly be surfing both internaldatabases and the wider internet to identify leads on sto-ries of local interest, trends that might prompt enterprisecoverage, and material supporting an already engaged assignment. More capable systems will have a type of arti-ficial intelligence so that they can learn and react to topicsof greatest concern to the news staff.

Highly prized will be the ability for systems to differ-entiate, almost like a human, news from just general infor-mation. A great deal of effort is going into development ofsuch systems and the Newsplex seeks to incorporate thelatest techniques in this area in order to evaluate them forthe news industry.

One such system can monitor incoming and outgoingemails in a newsroom to discern which staff members arepursuing what news topics, based on contextual analysisof the email text. The system can then automatically beginsearching for and delivering to the various staff membersmaterial that might support their particular reporting in-terests.

Another system can automatically compile and updatea database of potential news sources by analyzing newscontent, press releases and other material to identify thenames of people and their associated areas of expertise.

Editorial knowledge capture

The typical newsroom today captures only the finalproduct from a newsgathering effort, the story the way itappeared in print, online or on the air. Tomorrow’s news-room as demonstrated by the Newsplex must seek to retaina much larger portion of the expertise and lessons learnedin prosecuting a story, so that this additional informationcan serve to improve editorial performance on subsequentreporting efforts.

Story ideas, additional potential angles, editors’ after-action critiques, discovered information resources andeven reader responses can provide a news staff with amuch more advanced starting point on related news topicsin the future. Such an editorial knowledgebase could easi-ly become a primary competitive and quality asset for anewsroom.

Process automation

Expectations are that news staffs will tend to becomesmaller in number than they are today as news organiza-tions seek to assemble more highly capable and highlytrained reporters and editors. This will necessitate that asmany routine and repetitive tasks as possible be handedoff to automation systems.

This trend is already in evidence through an increasingnumber of systems programmed to perform basic page lay-out and using scripts or macros to manage file movement.The Newsplex is configured to be able to evaluate anddemonstrate some of the more innovative automationtechnologies in order to promote their expanded use by thenews industry.

News management

Online, networked management of all the various is-sues associated with an active news assignment con-tributes to better staff coordination as well as the captureof editorial expertise as cited earlier.

Such news assignment management systems are start-ing to appear from industry vendors. The Newsplex incor-porates and seek to advance the state of the art in suchsystems to include data such as rights management, free-lance contracting, newsroom financial budgeting and staffscheduling.

Multipurpose newsgathering

Building on Ifra’s long-running NewsGear™ initiativeto identify and integrate the latest in mobile and multiple-media newsgathering tools, the Newsplex has been initial-ly outfitted with customized sets of equipment drawn fromNewsGear 2003 and updated in 2004.

Professional and student convergent journalists intraining at the Newsplex have this available as their pri-mary newshandling equipment.

4.5 NewsGearTM78

4.5 NewsGearTM


Ifra’s Advanced Journalist Technology Project annuallyevaluates hundreds of hardware and software products andtechnologies for application to the news industry’s evolv-ing tightly networked, multiple-media editorial environ-ment. The most innovative and practical earn Ifra’s News-Gear™ designation and become part of a demonstrationsuite presented worldwide and used in Ifra Newsplex train-ing.

The equipment in NewsGear 2003 was specially select-ed for outfitting the Ifra Newsplex at the University ofSouth Carolina with the newsgathering and processingtools needed to support the special scenario-based trainingconducted there using innovative editorial roles. It empha-sized wireless networking, lightweight desktop-replace-ment laptops, multifunction digital cameras, video and audio newsgathering capabilities, and mobile communi-cations.

NewsGear 2004 updated that original equipment selec-tion to assemble a complete package of cross-media capa-bilities into a custom technical backpack that today’s mul-ti-skilled journalist could carry into any news coveragesituation.

The backpack is demonstrated during many Newsplexprograms and elements of it have been incorporated intovarious Newsplex training modules. <


794.5 NewsGearTM


5.1 Newsplex Directorate80

5.1 Newsplex Directorate


The Newsplex Directorate constitutes an advisory com-mittee of industry representatives who oversee and supportoperation of the convergent training and research centerIfra built at the University of South Carolina, USA.

The Directorate is an essential component of the News-plex’ organizational infrastructure to help the facilitymaintain its strong connection to the news industry world-wide as well as to extend the facility’s influence with organizations and companies that can benefit the indus-try’s future.

More than that, because of its connection to the News-plex and its involvement in guiding the future of newsmedia convergence, the Directorate wields powerful influ-ence within the news industry, with other industries’ lead-ers and with the developers of critical technology. It isboth a sounding board and a bully pulpit.

Membership on the Directorate is extended by theBoard of Directors of the Ifra Centre for Advanced NewsOperations exclusively to those organizations and/or indi-viduals demonstrating a commitment to helping to estab-lish and maintain the Newsplex.

The Directorate is empowered by the Board to:> Advise the Board and Ifra on organizational and tech-

nical matters related to operation of the Ifra Newsplexat the University of South Carolina.

> Recommend priorities for the facility’s programs andservices.

> Help identify technologies and processes that the facil-ity should address in its efforts to lead the internation-al news industry and journalism academia in under-standing and mastering innovative news gathering andpresentation techniques associated with the conver-gence of print, broadcast, online and other media.

> Participate to the extent that members’ expertise meritsin the facility’s validation of technologies and news-flow processes.

> Position technologies and newsflow scenarios in theNewsplex for trial and evaluation.

> Review results of the Newsplex research and theknowledgebase compilation of expertise in next-generation newshandling methods.

> Act as a representative of the Newsplex and, by exten-sion, of the world’s news industry in discussions withtechnology developers and other companies or organi-zations to encourage innovations that could benefit theindustry’s future.

> Aid Ifra in soliciting resources for the continued opera-tion and development of the Newsplex.

In recognition of the commitment made by the Direc-torate to support and advance the Newsplex, members aregranted priority in scheduling and use of Newsplex pro-grams and services in support of their own newsroom andnews technology initiatives. Further, Newsplex programsand services are provided at cost to Directorate members.

The Newsplex Directorate is established and operates inaccordance with Article V (“Committees”) of the Bylaws ofthe Ifra Centre for Advanced News Operations, registeredin South Carolina, USA, as a not-for-profit public benefitcorporation. The NewsOps Centre is designated as a tax-deductible organization under U.S. IRS Code 501(c)(3).

Members of the Newsplex Directorate are:

Ifra

Darmstadt, Germany · Founder (2001.01.05)

Digital Technology International

Springville, Utah, USA · Founder (2001.02.28)

Edipresse Publications s.a.

Lausanne, Switzerland · Founder (2001.03.06)

South Carolina Educational Television

Columbia, SC, United States · Founder (2001.03.07)

Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten

Viby, Danmark · Founder (2001.05.28)

Guardian Media Group plc

Regional Newspaper Division United Kingdom · Founder (2001.06.19)

CCI Europe

Århus, Danmark · Founder (2001.07.06)

John S. & James L. Knight Foundation

Miami, Florida, USA · Founder (2001.09.13)

IMPRESA

Lisbon, Portugal · Founder (2001.09.28)

Archonica Architects

New York City, USA · Founder (2001.11.29)

Star Publications

Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Founder (2001-12-12)

Morris Communications

Augusta, Georgia, USA · Founder (2002-01-23)

PR Newswire

New York City, USA · Founder (2002-07-02)


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Tech Watch

Over the past six months, the Tablet PCplatform has established itself as one ofthe computer industry’s most promis-ing innovations. At first glance, there’snot much new about the technology—

in fact, computer manufacturers were offering many ofthe same features a decade ago. This time, however, aretooled user interface, modern hardware and soft-ware, large-scale manufacturing initiatives and anaggressive marketing effort from Microsoft couldenable the Tablet PC to succeed where its predecessorsfailed.

The first generation of pen computers, includingGo Corporation’s EO, Apple’s Newton andMicrosoft’s WinPad, failed for a number of reasons.The devices’ biggest problems reflected their limitedhardware and software capabilities; the Newton’shandwriting recognition software, for example, wasnotorious for mangling users’ written notes. Othercomponents, including the systems’ displays and bat-teries, also severely limited these products in real-world mobile work environments.

A lot has changed over the past ten years. Proces-sor power and storage density have increased byorders of magnitude, while LCD displays and batteriesare far more rugged, reliable and inexpensive than everbefore. As a result of these improvements, last Novem-ber Microsoft re-entered the pen computing marketwith a version of Windows XP customized for a new“Tablet PC” platform.

The write stuffThe system’s most visible feature is its handwriting-recognition software, which allows users to save theirwritten input either as images or as converted text.Microsoft’s Windows Journal software turns theTablet PC display into a lined sheet of virtual paper; inthis mode, the user can select different “ink” colors,turn the pen into a highlighter by tapping it on thescreen, or flip the pen around to make it an electroniceraser. The system also integrates handwriting recogni-tion with other Microsoft products; a user can, forexample, mark up a Word file with handwritten com-

ments, convert the comments into text and then e-mailthe revised document.

As these developments suggest, the Tablet PC’sother great advance is its vastly improved pen technol-ogy. Tablet PC displays hold an embedded grid ofwires that emit an electromagnetic field; the pen con-tains an integrated coil that resonates when it comesinto contact with the field and generates a signal. Thistechnology delivers two key benefits: The user doesn’thave to touch the screen with the pen to move the cur-sor (keeping the pen within about an inch of the screendoes the trick); and the screen won’t misinterpret pres-sure from the user’s hand or fingers as pen input. Thesecond benefit is crucial, since it allows users to resttheir hand on the screen and to use a completely natu-ral motion when they write.

Today’s modelsTablet PCs today come in two form factors: a “con-vertible” style using an integrated keyboard with a dis-play that rotates 180 degrees and folds down over thekeyboard; and a “slate” style with a removable key-board. The slate model assumes users will travel fre-

Volume 3, Number 5 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies • © 2003 Seybold Publications 7

Newsplex Gives ‘Thumbs Up’ to Tablet PC for Journalists

BY MATT MCKENZIE

Can Microsoft’s Tablet PC platform replace the pen and notepad as a reporter’s best friend? One

of the news industry’s technology-watchers has evaluated the pen-based computing system and

its potential as a news-gathering tool. His verdict: The Tablet PC, though imperfect, might very

well win over the working press.

Professional scrutiny. Agroup of editors fromEdipresse Groupe inLausanne, Switzerland(a NewsplexDirectorate memberand publisher of 85publications in 10countries in Europe)examine the Acer C100 Tablet PC during part of theirmultiple-media rolestraining in the IfraNewsplex at theUniversity of SouthCarolina. Newsplexfounder KerryNorthrup is at right.


Tech Watch

quently without the keyboard, relying entirely uponthe handwriting-recognition interface. The convertiblemodels typically offer larger displays (up to 12 inches,as opposed to a standard 10.4-inch display on mostslate models), faster processors, more storage andadditional memory.

As a result of these differences, the convertible andslate form-factors generally appeal to different mar-kets: Slates are especially popular in health care, man-ufacturing, inventory control and other situationswhere the Tablet PC serves as a virtual clipboard. Con-vertibles appeal to students, consultants, field sales per-sonnel and other professionals looking for systemssimilar to traditional laptop computers. These differ-ences may blur in the future, however, as manufactur-ers introduce slate models with both larger and smallerdisplays, and as both types of Tablet PC become lessexpensive. (Today’s models rarely sell for less than$2,000.)

In the newsroomSince launching the Tablet PC last year, Microsoft haspromoted it as a channel for delivering digital content,and a number of publishers in the newspaper, maga-zine and book markets are pursuing trial Tablet PCcontent initiatives. (The Seybold Report has mentionedsome of these earlier. For instance, see “Assessing theTablet PC’s Potential for Commercial Publishing” inVol. 2, No. 18.)

On the other end of the publishing business, how-ever, we’ve also seen significant interest in the TabletPC as a news-gathering tool. We recently spoke withKerry Northrup, executive director of the Ifra Centerfor Advanced News Operations and founding directorof the Ifra Newsplex at the University of South Caroli-na. The Newsplex is Ifra’s laboratory and skunkworksfor next-generation news-gathering devices and tech-nologies. Northrup and his staff produce NewsGear,

an annual demonstration suite of news-gathering tech-nologies. Northrup’s team included an Acer Tablet PCin the 2003 NewsGear suite to evaluate its potential asa mobile news-gathering tool. The Acer 110 series is aconvertible-format Tablet PC equipped with an 800-MHz Pentium III processor, a 10.4-inch rotatingactive-matrix (TFT) display, 256 MB of factory-installed RAM, a 20-GB (or larger) hard disk, 6x CD-ROM, Wi-Fi networking, and built-in USB 2.0 andFirewire connectors.

According to Northrup, the NewsGear team wasinitially skeptical that a first-generation Tablet PCwould be suitable for professional journalists. “TheAcer pushed the envelope in terms of what we look forin NewsGear,” Northrup said. The main issue was theunit’s keyboard, which is about 8 percent smaller thana full-size keyboard. “Even a small squeeze on the key-board becomes something journalists don’t want touse full-time,” he said. Ultimately, however, the advan-tages of the Tablet PC’s ultra-compact format and inte-grated handwriting-recognition capabilities convincedthe NewsGear team to adopt the unit as one of twoportable computers in the 2003 NewsGear suite. (Theother was a traditional Fujitsu ultra-light laptop.)

“We haven’t been disappointed,” Northrup said ofthe group’s experience to date with the Tablet PC. Ofthe two Tablet PC styles, Northrup noted, the con-vertible form-factor was the clear favorite for theNewsGear suite. “We found the slate variety less use-ful for journalists, for the same reason that we favorlaptops that include CD-RW drives. It’s more realisticand convenient than managing a bunch of separateperipherals,” he said. “If you’re on the road with aslate, you have two options: Bring the separate key-board along and keep track of it, or rely on handwrit-ing input alone. Neither option is ideal for ajournalist.”

The standard 10.4-inch LCD display offers a rea-sonable (1024x768) resolution, which Northrup saiddelivers mixed results. “You get a fine resolution thatin many ways mimics the look of ink on paper,” hetold us. “The downside is if you aren’t actually writing,you’re looking at fairly small print on the screen.” Onthe other hand, the Acer unit’s display works well out-doors in direct sunlight, and the unit’s batteries fre-quently last up to six hours. “It comes with a sparebattery, but the battery life is so good I rarely switchover on airplanes,” he said.

Good enough? According to Northrup, however, the Tablet PC’shandwriting-recognition capability is the single mostcompelling reason for journalists to adopt the technol-ogy. “The handwriting recognition is amazing,” hesaid. “I bought a Newton back in the day and tried mybest to make it work, and I was very disappointed. Theexperience you get on the Tablet PC is far superior.”Northrup added that although he uses print-style

8 June 9, 2003 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies

Desktop setup.For desk use,

Newsplex suggestssupplementing theAcer tablet with a

Logitech full-sizecordless keyboard

and cordless mouse.The tablet sits on a

Laptop Desk 2.0 fromLapWorks, whichelevates the LCD

screen 3 inches forbetter ergonomics.


975.2 Reprints


Tech Watch

handwriting, the system seems to work better withcursive writing, possibly because of the hinting on cur-sive letters.

Users who prefer not to transfer their notes intotext format are just as likely to find the Tablet PCuseful. “Even using the handwriting input as digitalpaper has real value,” Northrup said. “It keeps yournotes in a digital format—you can take notes ordrawings, save them as PDF files and e-mail them tothe newsroom or archive them for future reference.”In addition, he observed, users can select individualwords on a page of handwritten notes, convert themto text and then index them within the file as search-able keywords.

Perhaps the biggest question for many journalistsis whether the Tablet PC will change—or disrupt—their established work practices. According toNorthrup, the Tablet PC is likely to be a pleasant sur-prise in this respect. “The Tablet PC doesn’t require[journalists] to change how they do their jobs. In hand-writing mode, it’s almost a one-for-one substitution forthe paper and pen,” he said. “But in terms of what thehandwriting-recognition feature can do for you after-wards, it goes far beyond what ink on paper can do foryou.”

“I compare it to the transition from a cassette taperecorder to a digital voice recorder,” Northrup added.“As far as the journalist is concerned, one functionsexactly like the other. But when you get back to the

newsroom, the advantages become apparent: You canmove around within the recording instantly, and whenyou’re done transcribing, you can take the voice fileand hand it over to the multimedia staff.”

Northrup also observed that the Tablet PC showspromise in the newsroom as a workflow-managementand budgeting tool. “Within the newsroom, they’reuseful for editors as we move towards more digitalmanagement of news assets,” Northrup said. “Morenewsrooms are getting away from doing story budgetsin a word processor and turning toward applicationsdesigned specifically to help you manage that sort ofinformation. Editors can walk around with a TabletPC in their hand, talk to reporters and make real-timeupdates to their budgets.”

ConclusionUltimately, Northrup thinks the Tablet PC has a prom-ising future in news organizations, although the adop-tion process is likely to depend heavily upon anorganization’s existing attitude toward new technology.“You have to focus on newsrooms that are alreadymoving from desktop to laptop systems for their jour-nalists. They’re already convinced there’s a good returnon portable computers in terms of mobility and flexi-bility. If you’re already in laptop mode, the Tablet PC isa viable option today. Newsrooms won’t go exclusive-ly with the Tablet PC, but for certain people in certainsituations, it should be the preferred format.” TSR

Volume 3, Number 5 • The Seybold Report • Analyzing Publishing Technologies 9

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5.4 Convergence Dialog 100

5.4 Convergence Dialog


At the conclusion of each Newsplex roles trainingevent, participants create a “Convergence Vid” in whichthey are asked to sum up the conclusions they have drawnfrom their Ifra-led study of multiple-media news opera-tions and what recommendations they would make for ad-vancing their own newsroom and media company.

These short cross-media videos are provided to the media companies both as a record of training results andas a basis for discussions among staff and managers abouthow to structure and pursue the newsroom’s convergencestrategy.

The videos also provide a unique gauge on the effec-tiveness of Newsplex training. It is not uncommon that theinsights of Newsplex Legates highlight or crystallize issuesin new ways and contribute to reframing elements ofNewsplex training and research.

Following is a compilation of comments from the con-vergence vids of Newsplex Legates, ranging from seniormanagers to newest reporters and every level of seniorityand job specialty in between. Over the first 18 months ofoperations, Newsplex classes hosted combinations of newseditors, copyeditors, photographers, web designers, busi-ness reporters, graphics artists, regional weekly editors, ra-dio journalists, video producers, technology managers,training editors, chief executive officers, advertising salesstaff, police reporters, sports editors, station managers andmore. They came from Britain, Switzerland, Portugal, Swe-den, Norway, Finland, the United States, Spain, India, Bel-gium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Denmark and avariety of other countries. More than 170 in all.

Some of these people arrived at the Newsplex alreadyenthused about the prospects of a multiple-media futurefor their newsrooms. Others walked in the door extremelyskeptical about the value and appropriateness of what theircompanies were considering.

Even though most of these people never met one an-other, and some do not even speak the same language,their viewpoints comprise an effective international dialogon convergence. (References to specific media operationshave been removed to protect proprietary information andstrategy.)

“We already cross-reference a lot of material from theweb to the (newspaper) and vice versa, and this way ofthinking needs to be spread across the newsroom so thateach medium can promote the other. This could apply to(the TV operation) and our radio station once it goes live.”

“(The website) needs to become part of the editorialsetup within the newsroom under the control of editorialas opposed to being two distinct organizations.”

“It is imperative that we don't forget our core product,the (newspaper). The standard of journalism must be main-tained and, at the moment, I feel this is the place wherehard, self-generated exclusive stories should be broken,while being promoted on-line.”

“Having also been shown a CD-ROM produced by theChicago Tribune about September 11, I can see huge possi-bilities in that media for (our newspaper). Sportswise

alone, as well as our end-of-season reviews for (local pro-fessional sports teams), we could review the season on asponsored CD-ROM and give it away free with the paper.”

“Newsplex training has helped bring me a different,perhaps more lateral, way of thinking. As well as judginghow a story should be handled for the (newspaper). I un-derstand how a story can be organized for the website andthe almost limitless possibilities the website can offer withits lack of restriction on space.”

“We could offer a subscription service for news where,for a fee, customers are sent text message or/and emailswhen there is a breaking story. This kind of news deliverycould extend to sport, for example, a (football) servicewhere those who pay a fee would get text messages andemails about breaking stories within the club.”

“There will have to be more staff, top quality trainingand highly skilled IT (information technology) support.”

“Go slowly: There’s no blueprint, so find what worksfor the news organization and pick your spots on ‘con-verged’ stories.”

“We have to make convergence happen, maybe not allthe way. Some significant steps need, and can, be takennow if there is a degree of culture change.”

“The way forward is to be discerning, cherry-pickingwhat suits us from the Newsplex model and rejecting whatdoes not, while all the time ensuring that there is not a de-cline in journalism standards.”

Pros and cons on convergence from a picture editor:Pros – Benefits the consumer, who receives news via themost convenient medium; marks out the newspaper as apioneer; makes fuller use of the newspaper’s resources; un-locks new revenue sources such as sale of pictures via theInternet; multiskilling, an ingredient of convergence, re-veals hidden skills among workforce; convergence is goodfor the newspaper’s image; it establishes the newspaper asan authoritative source for news via media other thanprint; it exploits the newspaper’s most valuable asset – itsname and reputation. Cons – In spite of everything, thereis no clear and significant new revenue; directs resourcesaway from the print edition; requires huge changes inwork patterns and philosophy, a big juggling of roles, jobdescriptions, pay and working hours; probably requiresmore staff, much more training, new hardware and soft-ware; results in culture shock because of the natural resist-ance to change.

“The four main issues we need to address to make con-vergence a success are communication, goals, resourcesand the needs of our readers in the 21st century.”

“Close communications between the various medianewsrooms is vital. Ideally, I’d like to see (print, online andTV) reporters working together in the same newsroom. Abig step forward would be to have a member of (the on-line) staff based on the news desk full time. The websitewould then be involved in every story from its conceptionand then would be able to advise what extras we could


1015.4 Convergence Dialog


help with, such as audio and video clips, picture galleriesand background resources.”

“More advanced planning of multimedia projects isneeded. (Some past projects) were good first efforts, butwith a more clearly defined strategy and better training forstaff, they could have been much more sophisticated.Equally, we need to develop a multimedia strategy for howyou deal with major breaking news stories. It’s vital wehave a newsflow editor who considers the needs of all ourvarious media and ensures the best possible news for read-ers is provided.”

“Cross-promotion of all the various products is a keyaspect of convergence. We have to make sure our Webusers know about the newspaper, and vice versa. Strongbranding is crucial.”

“We need to ensure the quality of the newspaper andthe service we provide does not suffer. We have to beaware of diluting people’s talents to such a degree that welose our expertise. We mustn’t lose sight of what we dobest.”

“It’s only after this week of exercise and playing atbeing a TV reporter that I fully understand convergence.And that is, just to give that bit of extra thought to whatmore could be done to a story, picture or feature to keep itahead of the game.”

“For me, the visit to Newsplex has presented two vi-sions The first of these is the critical importance of lookingat our news operation from the point of view of our newsconsumer, or customer. Our news consumers are very dif-ferent; they consume their news in very different ways...Therefore the challenge we face is to ensure we are creat-ing and delivering products in a way that is appropriatefor our target audience. The second of the two visions isabout how the editorial operations… should work acrossthe three key platforms: print, broadcasting and online.”

“We should be in no doubt that the future is digital.Our future customers will live in a world of portable digitalproducts that deliver news on demand. And yet our com-mercial engine at present is predominantly fueled bynewsprint products. Therefore, the way in which we dojournalism needs to evolve in such a way as to be readyfor future technology when it arrives. But at the same timewe need to service the requirements of our present prod-ucts in order to remain competitive.”

“Hands down, communications is our biggest hurdle.We need to do a better job of disseminating informationwithin our own newsroom and with our news partners.”

“As for our news partners, we want their viewers toread our paper. So we’ve got to do a better job marketingour paper on their airwaves. That means our name shouldalways be on screen… It also means accountability, writtenagreements that we are prepared to enforce. It would begreat to get video in a timely fashion from them.’

“For the (newspaper), the most effective way (to con-verge) is to make better use of (the website). Increasing theamount of material we provide online would be a greatway to showcase the talents of our photographers and re-

porters. It would let the staff see that convergence is hereand that it is a good thing.”

“Reassure us that the newspaper’s quality won’t suffer.”“I often talk of feeling like a diplomat who has to sell

the online vehicle to my print counterparts. I really see theimportance of building an even stronger relationship between print and online. One of the most importantthings I think that our paper must take from this is theconvergence of our internal parts. While our partnershipwith (a television channel) gets the most attention, I thinkit’s imperative that we are comfortable and confident withour own tools. When I think of convergence now, I thinkof using all of our resources and mediums to add to ourproduct.”

“Much has been said about the inequalities betweenthe relationship between (our television partner and thenewspaper). Having reporters jump to the screen can bebeneficial both to the paper and to individual reporters.First, reporters must be trained in how to make the bestuse of on-camera time. We need a written agreement withour news partner laying out who is responsible for what.And we need the television station to work with us toovercome the culture clash between two organizations.”

“Convergence can give longer life to photos, storiesand projects that would be lost after one day in the news-paper.”

“The ways and methods in which we deliver newscontent is the next step in bringing enhanced exposure,immediacy and profitability to our news organization.”

“Making use of all the media resource available to getour product, our stories, out there to as many people aspossible, should be our goal. At least, that’s my goal as areporter.”

“In newspaper lingo, we say it’s all about the 9-point.That means whatever journalists do, it’s always about thestory. The question in this time of convergence is what isthe best way to tell it.”

“Our readers benefit because they can access our workonline, or on TV, in addition to the daily paper… Here’s atip for reluctant reporters: Don’t give away everything onTV. Instead tease the viewer to exclusive informationavailably only in our paper.”

“Reporters should learn to think outside our own wallsinto how else we can reach our readers. I’m fond of sayingthat the average reader is Joe Sixpack, and really I need tolook into what I cover and who cares about it. How will Iget that information to that person? With technology andpartnerships, if fleshed out properly and effectively, I willhave a lot more options than I did before.”

“Convergence can help us give readers more imme-diacy and more interaction and build rapport among thoseinvolved.”

“There’s also the perception that we’re eroding ourreader base by providing information free. In fact, thenews consumers enjoy and use both media. And the ad-vantages are numerous… We no longer have to wait 24hours to bring our customers the latest news.”

5.4 Convergence Dialog 102Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

“We need to reach consumers who don’t consume newsin the way we are use to, who don’t have newspaper read-ing ingrained as a habit.”

“Consumers already have a converged approach tonews consumption. They may wake up to read the paperand watch TV news. They may browse the newspaper’sheadlines and then get updates at work through the Webor their mobile phones. Their radio is another news sourceduring long commutes to work. So it’s only logical for usto converge our coverage. As print journalists, we have awealth of sources and knowledge that come with having adaily beat. Add the Web and we get the information outthere as soon as it hits. And toss in TV and we get toshowcase our stories before an entirely different audienceand promote ourselves and our paper in the process.”

“You’re going to have to spend money on equipmentand personnel.”

“This is an expansion. It’s not a way for the companyto save money. Set your seeds in place, but remember, youhave to water the ground for the grass to grow.”

“Let’s begin by focusing our limited resources on asmall number of important stories. If it’s a big story let’screate a micro-site. If it’s slight a smaller story, let’s focuson enhancing stories with photo galleries, audio clips andlinks to related stories.”

“In ten years’ time (if we do not change), will I still en-joy my work as much as I do now? I have my doubts. Wemust change in order to continue to produce the journal-ism that we love. By changing, we will also change ournewsrooms so that the newspaper continues to be a usefulsource of information. Why change? Because we must ad-dress our readers, whatever medium they prefer to use,without waiting for the newspaper that will become avail-able the following day at the kiosk.”

“I do not see why I should turn my back on my readersif they tell me that they want something other than anewspaper. I must write for the web, use SMS, do a littleradio and TV. Of course, we are not going to act as multi-media journalists from one day to the next. We know allabout writing, but know nothing about the Internet, speak-ing into a microphone or to a camera. In order to remaincredible, we will have to prepare ourselves and overcomeseveral obstacles. Firstly, we must avoid being cannibal-ized by business. We must listen much more closely to ourreaders, without this becoming an obsession, if not we willkill our profession. Secondly, technology can be used tomake enormous progress, but it can easily box us in, andthat cannot be the objective. Thirdly, multimedia is per-haps the future of our profession, but I do not believe thatwe can install it from one day to the next in our news-room. We have a lot to learn. Best of all, we should do ittogether and start today.”

“Society is changing, and newspapers with it. Whatmay have seemed like a mountain yesterday is fun for to-day’s young people. (My newspaper) must take care not tomiss the boat. Multimedia is reaching out to us. Simple torealize, attractive for both the consumer and for us, it isthe weapon of our journalistic know-how. Image, audio,paper, will in the future be a whole, whatever medium isused.”

“The world is changing. Newsrooms are changing andmust adapt to these changes, accompany this transforma-tion, or even better precede it. Therefore it is necessary toimagine this future and, on the basis of these reflections,combine the best solutions and best products to assure thefuture of (our media company). These solutions already ex-ist. Newsplex can at the same time lead the reflections onthe journalistic profession, test the new tools and especial-ly inspire new products and services. Convergence isawakening our imagination by using the traditional workthat we have known up to now, but will permit, further on,the production of services that frequently exist already inour newsrooms in embryonic and experimental forms. Theconvergence of multiple media aimed at serving an audi-ence that is both more demanding and fragmented callsfor reorganization, definition of new skills that will in thefuture collaborate in the newsroom, as well as a better re-action and wider view in the face of the continuous newsstream.”

“Tomorrow’s newsroom, seen from my viewpoint as acomputer scientist, is a flexible newsroom with a multitudeof new skills demanded by the new information carriers.The tools are there already. All that is missing is the peopleto use them. The challenge is more of a human than tech-nological nature. Tomorrow’s journalist will be an all-round journalist. This is what I take back with me fromthis past week at Columbia.”

“In the face of competition from companies offeringstrong content, newspapers have no choice today but toreinvent themselves to protect their market share.”

“What is convergence? More services, greater avail-ability, a relevance of the message to the channel con-cerned and to the needs of the listener, the internet user,the reader. The challenge is both ambitious and complex:We must reorganize our newsrooms to integrate this newcontinuous information flow concept, re-arrange ourpremises in accordance with these new logistics. Manage-ment will have to convince the newsrooms of the aptnessand need for this undertaking. A cultural war is on thehorizon. Once these obstacles have been overcome, it willhave to be shown that the move to convergence is prof-itable. There is no genuine alternative to this change to-day. The stroke of genius lies in implementing it, the abili-ty to combine all the teams into one common project. Thisis a daring move that can lead to the newspaper companyof the future or a bloodbath that the competition will notbe slow to draw attention to.”


1035.5 Newsplex Legates


The following organizations have graduates of News-plex training on staff, as of June 2004.

Professional Media Organizations

CanadaThe Globe and Mail, Toronto

DenmarkDSB KommunikationDagbladet BørsenDagbladet PolitikenDenmarks Radio/TVFagbladet Børn & UngeFagbladet SIDFyens StiftstidendeMorgenavisen Jyllands-PostenUnion of Danish JournalistsWeekendavisen Sermitsiaq

GermanyIfra, Darmstadt

HollandNewspapers Online, Amsterdam

IndiaRajastan Patrika, Jaipur

MalaysiaThe Star, Kuala Lumpur

NorwayAdresseavisen, TrondheimNTB (wire service), OsloRomerikes Blad, LillestrømTrønder-Avisa, SteinkjerTV Trøndelag, Trondheim

PortugalEdimpresa, LisbonExpresso, LisbonSIC TV, Lisbon

SingaporeSingapore Press Holdings

SpainVocento, Madrid

SwedenSwedish Television/WebservicesTrollhättans Tidning, Trollhättan

SwitzerlandGroupe Edipresse

United KingdomBritish Broadcasting CorporationManchester Evening NewsManchester OnlineManchester MetroOldham AdvertiserReading Evening PostRochdale ObserverStockport Express

United StatesAtex Media CommandAugusta Chronicle, Augusta, GADallas Morning News, Dallas, TXFlorida Times-Union, Jacksonville, FLFree Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VAHerald Tribune, Sarasota, FLHeraldtribune.com, Sarasota, FLMedia GeneralSavannah Morning News, Savannah, GAThe Morning Call, Allentown, PAWFAA, TV, Dallas, TX

Academic Institutions

Institutions are located in United States unless other-wise noted.

Belmont UniversityBennett College (North Carolina)Coker CollegeColumbia College (Chicago)Elon UniversityFlorida A & M UniversityFrankin Pierce CollegeMarquette UniversityMercer UniversityMichigan State UniversityMiddle Tennessee State UniversityNanyang Technological University (Singapore)Northern Illinois UniversityNorthwest Missouri StatePennsylvania State UniversityRoosevelt UniversityUniversity of Central FloridaUniversity of MississippiUniversity of South CarolinaWestern Kentucky UniversityWilliam Paterson University

5.5 Newsplex Legates

5.6 Relationships 104

5.6 Relationships


University of South Carolina, USA

The right vision, the right people and the right re-sources all came together at the right time to make TheUniversity of South Carolina College of Mass Communica-tions and Information Studies the ideal location and theperfect partner for Ifra in developing the Newsplex ad-vanced micro-newsroom demonstration, training and re-search facility.

In 2002, the merger of what are now the School ofJournalism and Mass Communications and the School ofLibrary and Information Science created new opportunitiesto engage with Newsplex. The library school brings dataretrieval and research expertise to the merger. The journal-ism school emphasizes professional skills in communica-tion, grounded in a strong liberal arts education.

In accordance with a Memorandum of Understandingsigned in 2002, Ifra designed and built the Newsplex andthen donated it to the university in return for periodic useof the facility in support of Ifra's own professional trainingand research activities. Ifra and USC jointly provide staffto the facility. The university incorporates the center intoits curriculum for the next-generation of journalists andcorporate communicators.

In its graduate-level program, the School of Journalismand Mass Communications confers the Master of Arts(M.A.), Master of Mass Communication (M.M.C.) and theDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees. Within the Master ofMass Communications program, students may elect anarea of study in Newspaper Leadership or Integrated Com-munications, if they so desire. Coursework is offered inelectronic and print journalism, advertising, public rela-tions, integrated communication and a wide range of othersubjects dealing with the processes and effects of masscommunication.

The College offers undergraduate programs leading tothe Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communica-tions degree. As undergraduates, students specialize injournalism, broadcast journalism or advertising and publicrelations.

The electronic journalism segment provides an under-standing of the theories and practices of radio and tele-vision. Studies in print journalism prepare students for careers primarily at newspapers. Required courses includereporting, copy editing and specialized writing. Both jour-nalism sequences culminate in a senior semester practi-cum. Senior print journalism majors produce a weeklynewspaper, The Carolina Reporter, as part of their prac-ticum. Electronic journalism majors produce daily TV andradio news programs. In the advertising and public rela-tions sequence, students learn how to research, plan, andimplement integrated marketing communications cam-paigns. The School's advertising and public relations teamscompete nationally. In 2002, public relations studentstopped the nation, winning the prestigious Bateman com-petition.

USC recognized early that the future of professionalnews handling will be technologically intense and acrossmedia. The College's professors have combined print andbroadcast studies and introduced advanced Web publish-ing techniques into core reporting courses. By partneringwith Ifra to develop Newsplex, the College is acceleratingthe pace of its leadership in preparing the new generationof journalists needed by the multi-dimensional news in-dustry.

The library school offers the Master of Library and In-formation Science degree as well as the Certificate of Ad-vanced Graduate Study in Library and Information Scienceand the Specialist in Library and Information Science de-gree. It emphasizes an understanding of the wide varietyof information technologies available today's learning en-vironment. Its partnership with the journalism school isfostering new opportunities to link information storageand retrieval to its dissemination through the mass media.Library school graduates are finding expanding careers insuch places as media and law archives.

In addition to its instructional programs at undergrad-uate and graduate levels, the College of Mass Communica-tions and Information Studies offers an extensive programin continuing education and maintains wide-ranging jour-nalism services benefiting both the community and theprofession. It is a leader in sponsoring scholastic journal-ism programs. Its research programs are assuming an in-creasingly important role in scholarly study.

South Carolina ETV

The Newsplex has been built within a large stagingspace provided by South Carolina Educational Television(ETV) in its 6-year-old ETV Telecommunications Centre onGeorge Rogers Boulevard in Columbia, S.C., USA. TheUS$12 million complex is one of the most modern andlargest broadcast facilities in the United States, as cited byBroadcast Engineering magazine.

SCETV's foresighted commitment has provided theNewsplex not only with expert on-site technical supportand expertise in broadcast newshandling, but also with di-rect access to a state-of-the-art communications infra-structure including digital satellite audio and video links,multi-directional microwave channels, high-definition tel-evision, an expansive over-the-air radio network, highest-speed Internet connections, and video conferencing.

As the state's public television and radio network,SCETV is regarded nationally as an innovator and leaderin the development of technology convergence for educa-tion and public media. The reach of ETV's technology in-frastructure and its expertise in multi-media make the net-work a valuable partner in Newsplex's goal of integratingnew technology into news gathering and dissemination.


1055.6 Relationships


Newsplex Affiliates

The Newsplex is more than a training facility. It is aninternational training initiative.

Newsplex Affiliates are educational and training insti-tutions around the world that share the commitment tolead journalism academia and the international news in-dustry in understanding and mastering innovative story-telling and news presentation techniques emerging fromthe convergence of print, broadcast and online media, sothat they can better serve the expanding Information Soci-ety. To this end, they have chosen to link their efforts withthose of the Newsplex to help educate a new generation ofmulti-skilled and multimedia-minded journalists, to ex-pand the careers of professional news managers and theirstaffs from around the world, as well as to evaluate thetechnologies and methods with which 21st Century newsorganizations will work.

Current Newsplex Affiliates include the Journalism Re-search and Development Centre at the University of Tam-pere in Finland; the Institute for New Media Students atThe University of Minnesota, USA; the World Editors Fo-rum, a program of the World Association of Newspapers inParis; the European Journalism Centre, based in theNetherlands; Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology; theSchool of Communication and Information at NanyangTechnological University in Singapore; the University ofHong Kong Journalism and Media Studies Centre; theCen-tre de Formation et de Perfectionnement des Journalistes,Paris; the University of Navarra, Spain; the Media Centerat The American Press Institute, in Reston, Virginia, USA;the Missouri School of Journalism at the University ofMissouri in Columbia, Missouri, USA; the Erich-Brost-In-stitut Für Journalismus in Europa, at Universität Dort-mund, Germany; and the Australian Convergent Journal-ism Special Interest Group, comprised of journalism aca-demics from James Cook University in Queensland and theUniversity of Tasmania.

Newsplex Counsels

As the most advanced implementation of next-genera-tion journalism and technology for the emerging conver-gent news industry, the Newsplex has become a naturalnexus for the world's leading media strategists and advis-ers. Many of these highly regarded and sought-after indi-viduals have committed to lend their considerable expertiseand resources to helping the Newsplex serve as a catalystfor innovation in the news industry and in journalism edu-cation.

These individuals are the Newsplex Counsels.

Through their association with the Newsplex, theCounsels help guide development and operation of theUS$2 million Newsplex prototype multiple-media micro-newsroom developed by Ifra at the University of SouthCarolina College of Journalism and Mass Communications,USA. They provide the Newsplex with valuable perspec-tives on trends, innovations and prospects influencing thefuture of news, newsrooms and news consumers. Theyparticipate in Ifra training and conference events helpingprofessional news managers and their staffs worldwideadapt their newsrooms to the convergent marketplace ofprint, broadcast, online and wireless media. They also playkey roles in Newsplex research task forces and scenarioplanning activities, as well as enhancing the University ofSouth Carolina's curriculum for educating a new genera-tion of multimedia-minded journalists.

In support of their own work with news industryclients worldwide, the Counsels receive preferred access toNewsplex services and resources.

Current Newsplex Counsels include Marta Botero ofthe INNOVATION International Media Consulting Group;Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute; Mario Garcia,president and CEO of Garcia Media, USA; Juan AntonioGiner of the INNOVATION International Media ConsultingGroup; Ulrik Haagerup, chefredaktør of Nordjyske Medier,Denmark; John C. Huff Jr, managing editor of The Postand Courier in Charleston, S.C., USA; André Jaunin ofXML-Campus in Switzerland; Robert Lockwood, an inde-pendent American consultant and newspaper designer; Dr.Stephen Quinn, author of the Focal Press book "KnowledgeManagement in the Digital Newsroom;" and Ari Valjakka,editor-in-chief of Turun Sanomat, Finland.

Newsplex Innovators

It is impossible to be an effective news organizationtoday without implementing advanced news technologies.Media companies that apply the best technology most ap-propriately will have a major advantage, will break thestories first, will find the exclusives, will differentiatethemselves from competitors, and will ensure their finan-cial as well as journalistic viability.

In support of such forward-thinking media companies,the Newsplex is being designed to serve as a demonstration,training, research and evaluation facility for next-gene-ration newshandling technologies and methods. NewsplexInnovators comprise world-class technology developers andproviders who are contributing their vision, expertise andresources to support this aspect of the facility's mission.They are industry leaders dedicated to exploring advanceduses of their services and products while at the same timebuilding a strong presence in the media marketplace.

In return for the provision of technology to the News-plex - usually including installation, support and upgradesfor an agreed period of time and under favorable financialarrangements - companies are designated Newsplex Inno-vators and benefit from their special relationship with theproject.

5.6 Relationships 106Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

The current list of Newsplex Innovators includes

> AP Broadcast, the leading provider of broadcast news-room systems in the United States with more than a40% market share. More broadcast organizations havean AP system than any other. AP Broadcast has pro-vided the Newsplex with an installation of its flagshipproduct, ENPS - an easy to use, easy to maintain sys-tem that gives users control over all resources in anewsroom. Ifra researchers are using the system to ex-plore the ways in which broadcast, print and onlinenews production systems can interact in support ofseamlessly cross-media news operations.

> AVWashington, an award-winning audiovisual systemsintegrator for the digital age. In its more than 30 years,AVWashington has earned a sterling reputation for de-signing and building superb audiovisual systems forarchitecture. It was the first and only ICIA CertifiedCompany in the Middle Atlantic states. WhileAVWashington was one of the subcontractors involvedin building the Newsplex, its design and technical ex-perts went far beyond their contract specifications tocreate the facility's Newswall, a central informationand video display and routing system that serves as aprototype for advanced newsrooms worldwide.

> Cingular Wireless, the second largest wireless carrier inthe U.S, and a joint venture between SBC Communi-cations (NYSE - SBC) and BellSouth (NYSE - BLS). Asa leader in mobile voice and data communications,Cingular serves more than 22 million voice and datacustomers across the United States. Cingular providescellular/PCS service in 43 of the top 50 markets nationwide. Cingular's Mobitex-based wireless packetdata service operates throughout the United States,covering more than 93 percent of the urban businesspopulation located in 492 Metropolitan Statistical Ar-eas (MSAs) and non-MSAs with a total population of200 million people. Cingular Wireless's all-digitalGSM/GPRS network in South Carolina provides thebackbone for the Newsplex' voice and advanced wire-less data services.

> Proxim-IT, creator of innovative collaborative andscheduling software that brings professional newsmanagers and their staffs to the next level of news-room management. With its software solution ControlTower, Proxim-IT offers a comprehensive suite of toolsto harness the newsroom's collective expertise and eas-ily handle the fast-paced scheduling needs of moderneditorial operations. At Newsplex, Control Tower actsas a newsgathering nerve centre, providing a centralportal for managing story planning, event coverage,idea development, resource management and muchmore. Built to connect users across one or severalnewsrooms while coordinating individual and collec-tive tasks, Control Tower goes beyond the scope of tra-ditional production systems, managing multiple storiesin any content format across different media outlets,programs and editions.

> Serious Magic Inc., creating the next generation of visual communication tools. The company's name wasinspired by Arthur C. Clarke's observation that "anysufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishablefrom magic." And that aptly describes the reaction ofNewsplex training participants when introduced to Visual Communicator. The award-winning desktopsoftware highly automates and simplifies creation ofsophisticated video/audio news content suitable fordistribution over a wide array of media includingbroadcast, the Web, CDs, mobile phones and email. Visual Communicator supports Newsplex print, onlineand mobile media clients in becoming accomplished invideo news production, and even broadcast clients findit very useful in their traditional realm.

> Textamerica.com, providing consumer and enterprisemobile web log (moblog)solutions on the world's mostadvanced moblog platform. Textamerica built its firstmoblog system in 2002, making it available to thepublic worldwide in the first quarter of 2003. Sincethat time, the company has developed its technologyinto the world's most flexible, unique, reliable and ad-vanced moblogging platform. And for the Newsplex,Textamerica has adapted its system into a phenome-nally capable editorial workflow for mobile publishingservices. As a result, Textamerica is the underlying sys-tem for all IfraNewsplex mobile services training andresearch projects.


1075.7 The Newsplex Staff


Newsplex Founding DirectorKerry J. Northrup

Kerry J. Northrup was the found-ing director of Ifra's Newsplex initiative and now serves as IfraDirector Editorial, applying News-plex approaches to the organi-zation's own publishing and infor-

mation distribution activities, both print and digital. Hecontinues to help guide Newsplex programs and to providedirect support to Newsplex Directorate members on theireditorial reorganization and newsroom design projects.Northrup joined Ifra in 1995 as technologies editor andlater became executive director of the Ifra Centre for Ad-vanced News Operations. He produced the vision behindthe Newsplex prototype multiple-media newsroom as ex-ecutive producer of Ifra's award-winning newsroom-of-the-future concept video “Tomorrow's News." He thenguided the design, partnerships and funding that made theconcept a reality. Northrup is an award-winning careerjournalist with extensive newsroom management experi-ence and expertise in editorial technologies. His work withIfra member newsrooms across the continents gives him aunique perspective from which to study and influencetrends in modern editorial operations. He oversees Ifra'shighly regarded Advanced Journalist Technology Projectand its annual NewsGear awards, and the Newsplex TrendsReport, a periodic electronic executive newsletter of globaltrends, strategies and innovations influencing the future ofnews, newsrooms and news publishing. His career as aprofessional journalist includes more than 15 years of ex-perience in South Carolina, Indiana, Florida, New Hamp-shire and Vermont, as well as a corporate position withGannett, the largest newspaper group in the United Statesand publisher of USA TODAY.

Director of IfraNewsplexHarald Ritter

Harald Ritter was appointed Ifra'sDirector of Newsplex Operationson June 1, 2004, to lead the trend-setting initiative into a new stageof growth and commercial devel-opment. Formerly Ifra's director ofpublications, Ritter is one of the

leading European-based experts in editorial and advertis-ing department reorganization, particularly for Germannewspapers. This business economist, engineer and editorcomes by his expertise from an extensive career in media,including appointments as managing editor of the Darmst-ddter Echo, editor-in-chief and business manager at theSpeyerer Tagespost, managing editor of the SächsischeZeitung in Dresden, head of communication and publica-tion for Adam Opel AG in Rüsselsheim and General Motorsin Zurich, and managing editor of the Badische Zeitung.

Ritter joined Ifra in 2000 as chief information officer. Ashead of IfraNewsplex, Ritter oversees the organization'sactivities and interests in the original Newsplex prototypemultiple-media news facility at the University of SouthCarolina as well as at the scenario-based Newsplex Europetraining facility being developed at Ifra headquarters inGermany, plus all IfraNewsplex consulting and supportprojects worldwide.

Director of IfraNewsplex,South CarolinaRandy Covington

Randy Covington serves as bothIfra's Director of Newsplex SouthCarolina and the University ofSouth Carolina's academic directorfor the Newsplex prototype multi-ple-media newsroom built by Ifra

for USC's College of Mass Communications and Informa-tion Studies. Covington is an acclaimed and innovativebroadcast executive with two decades of experience in ma-jor TV markets throughout the United States, besides hav-ing worked in newspapers, radio and wire services. He hasbeen actively involved in Newsplex training since 2003,helping to teach Ifra members to integrate video and audiointo their print workflows, and advising publishers on theirinteractions with TV partners and on their expansion intobroadcast operations. As news director for 10 years at WIS,the NBC affiliate in Columbia, S.C., USA, Covington wasresponsible for expanding an already dominant news oper-ation and creating new dimensions for the station in radioand on the Internet. He has also served in managementpositions at television stations in Philadelphia, Boston,Louisville and Houston. He is the recipient of a duPont-Co-lumbia citation, an Ohio State award and four local Em-mys. He was the Radio Television News Directors of theCarolinas' 1997 News Director of the Year.

IfraNewsplex Training DirectorWorldwideMartha Stone

Martha Stone is a world-knownmultimedia news expert and train-ing consultant, a prolific authoron the subject of convergence andone of the most sought-afterspeakers on issues faced by news

organizations in the Information Economy. Besides havingbeen USA Director for Innovation International MediaConsulting, she has written two books: one on multimediajournalism and the other on multimedia advertising sales.She edited the final report on the 2001-2002 MUDIA re-search project on the state of multimedia news operationsin Europe, and presented it to the European Parliament.She was co-director of the Online News Association's Dig-

5.7 The Newsplex Staff

5.7 The Newsplex Staff108Ifra Special Report 6.30 © 2004 Ifra, Darmstadt

ital Journalism Credibility Study in 2001, was a PoynterEthics Fellow for 2001, is Director of New Media for theinternational Society for News Design, and has more than20 years of writing, editing and design experience fornewspapers, magazines and online publications.

Newsplex Projects Director,University of South CarolinaJulie Nichols

Julie Nichols, projects director ofNewsplex, is the former BusinessManager of the University ofSouth Carolina College of Journal-ism and Mass Communications.Nichols has been with the News-

plex project since its start at USC. She is a member of theCollege's Newsplex Advisory Council, Dean's AdvisoryCouncil, and the Merger Steering Committee. She is also amember of the New Media Dons organization, a group ofeducators involved in university new media studies pro-grams. Prior to joining the University of South Carolina in 1999, Nichols held similar positions with the Universityof Pennsylvania and the University of California, SanFrancisco.

Newsplex Newsresourcer, University of South CarolinaGeoff LoCicero

Geoff LoCicero is the prototype ofa new type of editorial staff mem-ber pioneered at the Newsplex --the news resourcer, an informaticjournalist, a combination reporterand information technologies ex-

pert. LoCicero's background is ideal to the task. He workedas a sports writer and copyeditor for Scripps Howard NewsService in Washington, D.C.; a sports copyeditor and pagedesigner for the Birmingham (Alabama, USA) Post-Herald;and a sports copyeditor and page designer for The State inColumbia, S.C., USA. Subsequently he completed a mas-ter's degree in library and information science, and workedin several library and research capacities in South Carolinaand for the state of Georgia before joining the Newsplexstaff in 2003.

Newsplex Operations Coordinator Worldwide, IfraHeike Appel

Heike Appel is a studied librarianwho has served as Ifra's Infor-mationBroker for many years. Sheis a specialist in developing concepts to optimize project, timeand documentation management,

which has led to her work helping to implement Ifra'sNewsDesk and AdDesk structures at various newspapers.Appel is now tasked with organizational management ofNewsplex Europe and is responsible for marketing and co-ordinating its programs. She is also responsible for theNewsplex Trends Report newsletter and the Newsplex web-site. Appel produces all documentation for all NewsplexEurope projects. She carries out all interviews concerningprojects aimed at introducing NewsDesk, AdDesk andProDesk initiatives, and independently evaluates the re-sults. She also conducts research in the areas of NewsDesk,AdDesk and ProDesk organizations. She reports to the Director of IfraNewsplex and represents the director in alladministrative matters.


109Ifra Special Report 6.30

Other Ifra Special Reports dealing with:

6 General topics(as of October 2004)

6.10 ANPA/TEC ’91: Innovation despite tough times

6.11 The ISO 9000 certificate, encouragement and guarantee for a continually effective quality control system

6.12 ANPA/TEC 1992: The newspaper industry shows cautious optimism in Atlanta

6.13 NEXPO ’93 in New Orleans: still no light in sight at the end of the tunnel

6.14.1 Introduction to the basic principles of EDIFACT

6.14.2 Newspaper advertising online

6.15 Lean Production in the newspaper industry

6.16 NEXPO ’94 in Las Vegas

6.17 Environmental audits at newspaper operations

6.18 NEXPO ’95: Satisfying the short-term needs

6.19 IfraTrack: a recommendation for the interchange of status information between local and global tracking systems in newspaper production

6.20 Quality failure costs in newspaper production

6.21.1 IfraTrack 2.0 – Executive Summary: A specification for the interchange of statusand management information between local and global production management systemsin newspaper production

6.21.2 IfraTrack 2.0 – a specification for the interchange of status and management informationbetween local and global production management systems in newspaper production

6.22 The importance of legibility for modern publications

6.23 Analysis of the ad booking process

6.24 Newsroom in change

6.25 Free newspapers – an international market survey

6.26 Benchmarking Newspaper Operations

6.27 The Future of Newspaper Printing

6.28 Mobile Services

All topics of Ifra Special Reports

Should you wish to receive one or several copies of these Ifra Special Reports, contact:Ifra · Washingtonplatz · 64287 Darmstadt · GermanyPhone +49.6151.733-762 · Fax +49.6151.733-800 · http://www.ifra.com

1 Materials 2 Pre-Press 3 Press 4 Mailroom and Distribution 5 Communication 6 General

Documents

Newsplex Special Report 6.30 (English)