Media Helping Media has received a request for advice about how a national newspaper should go about introducing newsroom convergence. The person who contacted us had met resistance to change from senior staff who were producing news for the print run.

The problem is not unusual. In my experience, the dominant output area of a media house, whether it be a newspaper or a TV channel, rarely welcomes convergence.

It’s often viewed as a distraction and, at times, even a threat. So it is not unusual to find senior editors failing to embrace the steps needed to make convergence work.

It’s often met with negativity or, possibly worse, token accommodation.

What is required is for top management of the media house to set out the business imperatives.

They need to make clear that convergence WILL happen, and explain WHY convergence is essential for the media business.

They need to document WHAT it will involve, HOW it will be implemented, and WHO will do WHAT.

Convergence needs to be part of a NEW business model with a clear business plan.

There needs to be unwavering buy-in from all senior management.

Once they have totally embraced convergence, based on business logic, they need to set out clearly the steps needed to make convergence happen.

They then need to articulate that decision to all staff and make clear how all departments will be affected.

Staff concerns and fears need to be addressed. These could include the following:

• That convergence could lead to a dilution of responsibilities and erosion of status.
• How to manage different publishing cycles – daily or weekly versus ‘as soon as possible’.
• Having to learn new technologies.
• That it’s the thin end of the wedge – rather than evolution.
• That it will lead to a decline in quality.

The media house needs to become a content factory, gathering, producing, and distributing news to every platform the audience turns to for information.

All barriers need to be removed. New structures need to be put in place.

There needs to be one ‘command-and-control’ area where senior editors or news producers sit. This is often referred to as the superdesk.

Representatives from input, production, and output need to be in close proximity; they need to ‘breathe the same air’ and hear the same news calls.

They need to share knowledge and be able to discuss breaking news developments continually throughout the day.

There will be one main news meeting where senior staff, whether they are from print, broadcast, online, planning, social media, or fact checking are present.

All should attend the meeting prepared to explain and set out how each area will contribute to the production process.

Deadlines change. Output is no longer the next bulletin or edition but rather as soon as the facts have been sourced and verified.

Staff objectives will have to change. Convergence becomes a business objective.

That decision needs to filter down to become a departmental objective, a unit objective, and a personal objective for every member of staff – from the most senior to the most junior.

Convergence needs to be a central objective in all staff appraisals.

Everyone will be assessed in terms of how they contributed to the success of the business strategy.

Convergence will be different for every media house.

It needs to be tailored so that it is the perfect fit for the location, the media business and its potential, and the audience and its needs.

Every media house has to put in the work to ensure that convergence is right for them, that it’s right for the audience, and that it is right for local market conditions.

Two useful questions to ask are:

• Is the media business keeping up with changing audience behaviour?
• Is it positioned to take advantage of every content exploitation opportunity that might arise now and in the future?
• Is it informing the public debate on every device users turn to in order to access information?

Convergence is about survival and ensuring future viability.

Staff will have their doubts – that’s normal – but there’s no room for agnosticism or cynicism.

Related resources

We have more resources about convergence, how to introduce it, and the workflows and roles and responsibilities involved.

Creating a converged news operation

The uneasy but essential evolution of news

Newsroom evolution from digital denial to digital first

Basics of project development for a media organisation

Convergence, workflows, roles and responsibilities

Editorial considerations when a ‘big story’ breaks

Social media in news production and news dissemination

How to handle a breaking news situation

Updating an online news item

The post Introducing a converged newsroom strategy first appeared on Media Helping Media.

This training module was written for a journalism training course in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Those attending were seasoned broadcast journalists.

Knowing who does what, why, when, and how

I was asked to create a training module for a 24-hour TV channel in an Asian country where competition is fierce, and where being last with the news isn’t an option.

Prior to the training they sent me a wish-list of what they wanted fixed in their news organisation. The issues they wanted help with were around the issue of how to handle breaking news:

1: Speed – a faster response to breaking news alerts
2: Planning and logistics – better coordination of staff and resources
3: Improved communications – who is doing what and when
4: Organising output – roles and responsibilities
5: News management – orchestrating operations

So I shared with them the example of how a commercial international TV and digital news organisation I had worked with in the past dealt with breaking news.

1: Confirmation

A breaking news story has to be confirmed by two of the following: A news reporter, a member of the bureau staff in the area concerned, and/or any other independent sources.

2: Action

The news programme producer or senior supervisor in charge of the news desk liaises with the international and domestic desks and the interactive team.

Regional specialists are alerted. A decision is taken to go live.

3: Collaboration

The international desk and the domestic desk discuss how they can each bring different elements to the coverage.

The interactive team meanwhile start to piece together the first elements of the story.

Depending on the location, one desk covers the main story while the other desk looks for angles that help explain events to their audience.

Resources are shared wherever possible.

4: Convergence

At the same time the social media team slips into top gear and moves into a well-rehearsed routine which includes updating the online news ticker and providing regular social media updates.

Chronological live updates are created along with a live blog.

And all this from a team that is sitting in close proximity to the team producing the TV output.

They have to be breathing the same air; it is no using having them in a different room, floor, or building.

5: Depth and added value

The main news desk lines up its (regional bureau) contacts and correspondents; often this is supported by bookers who help out with research the best experts to talk to and arranging interviews.

Social media plays a major role when it comes to finding good sources and info snippets or even video and pictures related to the news story.

6: Roles & Responsibilities

In the early minutes of a breaking news story the TV anchor plays a crucial role when it comes to asking the right questions and keeping flow of the output going.

The initial news-gathering time varies and depends on good sources – which most major news organisations tend to have.

Planning, booking, research work together in order to add depth and new angles.

7: Building on Breaking News

Based on the growing set of information, the elements of a breaking news show can be built up.

They are ordered and arranged by the news programme’s producer or senior supervisor and include support from those running the live output and any specialists on the international desk specialists. T

he standard elements are interviews or reporters updates with clips, graphics, pictures, social media, witness accounts etc etc.

8: Revising & Refreshing

Then starts a continuous process of updates.

Material is arranged and re-arranged as needed by the production teams – producers, writers, graphic artists etc – the usual TV and online production specialists.

The challenge is to stay with the main story, but also to weave in fresh elements.

9: Breaking becomes developing

After a while, breaking news transitions into a developing news situation.

In exceptional cases, teams on various continents have to take over and keep the story going.

This is when the international desk becomes particularly important and busy as it then turns into a logistics and resources management exercise.

10: Developing returns to regular

Planners and editors on the main news desk discuss resources with senior management.

Depending on the state of the budget – and based on the strength of story – resources are allocated or withdrawn based on cost and the likely reach/impact.

Teams are scaled down or built up case by case.

11: Maximum ongoing exploitation

As soon as breaking news happens, planners are in action working on follow-ups, studio debates and related programmes.

Most news organisations will try to extract and exploit every piece of content for the maximum benefit of the audience and the news brand.

Nothing goes to waste, everything is reworked and reused in different output areas and for days ahead, as well as in pick of the week, month, year, etc, etc.

12: Online story development

The online news team will have set aside resources in order to build fact-files, timelines, and info graphics which, in a converged news operation, will be created in such a way as to be able to be used online and on air.

These interactive assets need to be promoted via the TV anchor in a way that encourages those who want to read about the issue in-depth to remain with brand and move from TV to the online coverage and back.

The post How to handle a breaking news situation first appeared on Media Helping Media.

Managers at most news organisations want to be able to publish content to every device their users to turn to in order to access information. This makes perfect business sense. And exploiting existing resources to their maximum in an intelligent and meaningful way is the way forward.

Of course a lot depends on available editorial resources, newsroom systems and whether journalists are able to access the assets needed to create an online news story.

The following notes are based on experiences gathered working on large-scale broadcast news websites. They cover the elements you should be thinking about adding to a breaking news story as it develops. They also sets out some rough timings, which will vary depending on whether you:

• are operating in a converged news organisation
• have centralised journalistic tools that make all the assets/elements available
• belong to a media organisation with audio/video
• have a website that aims to update around the clock
• deliver content to multiple devices.

It will also make life easier if your news organisation has:

• a strong forward planning operation
• a core editorial proposition based on issue-led journalism.

As soon as news breaks, you need to display the information on the home page of your site. This might be in the form of one line of text.

The first information you receive might come from the news wires. If that is the case, and if you have not been able to verify the details independently, you must qualify the information you are publishing with words such as “According to the wires…”. See our attribution module.

Now you need to find a second source in order to verify the information. Ideally that will be one of your own correspondents or reporters but, failing that, another source will needed.

You will also need to make calls, search online and scour the social networks for updates, adding information as appropriate once verified. You will be looking for something unique, perhaps a quote, image or audio clip from your own news resources – ideally within the next 10 minutes.

By now you should have a headline, a summary and a couple of paragraphs. You might even have an image or a video. Publish what you have and add the words “more soon” to indicate you are still working on the piece. This will encourage the reader to return for an update.

Add a quote box as soon as you find a good quote. Your content management system (CMS) might have tools for doing this but, if it doesn’t, create a small table in your text editor, add a border and write the quote inside. This breaks up the text and helps highlight an important element of the breaking news story. Always go for the most newsworthy quote in the story.

Fact boxes are ideal for displaying other important elements of the story. You might want to add the main facts as bullet points. All this can be done by creating a table and inserting it in the piece.

If you have a good CMS, and a database stocked with previous news items and other background information on the topic, you should be able to search for previously created elements such as timelines, fact boxes and people profiles.

Free tools for enriching content

There are some useful free tools for adding interactive timelines and maps to text stories. Search online for the options.

The beauty of these free online tools is that, once published, your creations can be shared by others who can embed your timelines and maps in their blogs and on their social networks. This all helps with the distribution of your information and encourages others to visit your site.

Multimedia

They say pictures are sometimes worth a thousand words. Sometimes they help to break up text. Graphics may illustrate a technical or complicated concept more easily than a written explanation.

Video and audio clips may also be incorporated in your news pages; these can add life, colour and realism. But try to summarised what the viewer/listener is likely to hear with a well-written introduction to tease them to click on the material.

Video or audio of a specific event – a building collapsing, a wave destroying waterfront properties, a recording of a call to emergency services – may well convey far more in emotion and real-life impact than even the best writer could hope to achieve.

Sometimes, a video clip itself may be the news. Consider social-media posts about a YouTube video purporting to show government soldiers who have been captured by rebels, the aftermath of an air strike, footage of a jet in flames and about to crash.

If the video clip is the news, it is foolish to write a piece about it without embedding the video clip itself.

Graphics

If your CMS links to a TV or print database, you may enable to search for shared graphics. This is a great way to  ensure you are not duplicating effort (so it saves costs), but it also is good for the brand, showing a consistency of style and message across all platforms.

Some news organisations impose a house style for graphics. This is an intelligent strategy, and all part of a converged, multi-platform content production approach. Info graphics are ideal for showing the viewer, in a simplified form, detailed and complex information that might otherwise take several minutes to read. They are useful for presenting information in a way that is simple to understand.

Backgrounders and blogs

If you are able to access the text being written by the TV, radio or print correspondent assigned to the story, you may be able to publish their report as a related story. You will also want to follow any tweets they are sending. You should have a desktop social media aggregation tool running in order to keep a track of breaking news on the main social media networks used by your audience.

Your reporters and correspondents may already blog for your news organisation and some of these will be worth linking to for background information as the story develops.

Often, when a journalist is not able to access the CMS, a microblog can be used to upload a story, complete with images and video, from a smartphone or laptop.

Audience input

Ask the audience whether they have any information or witnessed anything. Invite them to add their comments and submit their pictures. Consider adding the best to the developing story.

Special sections

If the story is on a recurring topic you may have a special section already created for that subject. For example, if your region is prone to flooding, you may have a special section on flooding. If the breaking news is about flooding, you should link to this special section where the reader will find more information.

Related stories

Most top stories benefit from having a number of related stories. These can include many of the elements discussed above. However, they may also involve various interesting angles not covered in the main story. These offer the reader a collection of items that will enhance their understanding of the topic about which you are writing. The aim is to offer the audience the most comprehensive and interesting collection of elements you can.

News assets

Another option for speeding up your news production process and creating asset-rich articles is to use online content creation tools to add images, video, audio, and links to your story. Each element can be detached from your piece and shared on the social networks. This helps spread your information more widely while also encouraging others to visit your site.

The post Updating an online news item first appeared on Media Helping Media.