Are we ready for the virtual newsroom?
Wales Business — By Katie Prescott on April 5, 2010 7:00 am
Will these new tools ever provide a substitute for time-honed journalism disciplines?
Editor, after hearing a reporter is in the hospital: “Did he get his story filed?”
Photo Editor: “The best training for this job is three kids and ADHD.”
Reporter to a source over the phone: “I’m a reporter, I don’t have any opinion whatsoever.”
Reporter showing a visitor around the newsroom: “This is the nerve center. This is where we fill up all the space we can’t sell ads for.”
City Editor to newsroom: “Look on the bright side of the swine flu pandemic: increased revenues in obituaries.”
– www.overheardinthenewsroom.com
NEWSROOMS are funny old places. As far as work places go, they’re pretty unique. A heady mix of journalists, phone bashing for stories, looking for sexy angles to make news more breaking than bland, and the pressure of deadlines stoked with caffeine and bad language. Newsrooms are fuelled by a sense of urgency, by the comedy and tragedy that comes from good stories – or by the need to make something out of nothing.
Could these nerve centres of news ever move online, and be run virtually? The concept seems sound: journalists around the world collaborating to produce content via an internet portal. Yet many journalists don’t think so. Most regard the buzz of morning editorial meetings and the competitive, collaborative spirit that they generate as essential to their work. Penny Roberts, Chief Reporter at BBC Wales, said: “There is a big place for online journalism but we could never do without the physical hub”. She believes that the creation of news, especially in broadcasting, goes beyond the reporter and that the camaraderie and idea-sharing that goes on in newsrooms is vital in the creative process. Working remotely could be quite a “lonely life” according to Huw Thomas, from BBC Radio Wales: “Broadcasters wouldn’t be able to operate effectively because the whole experience is more of a team effort”.
There are plenty of examples of journalists working remotely, most obviously foreign correspondents. And it’s important to differentiate between types of journalism. Remote collaboration can work really well for magazines or feature-based publications where writing is commissioned. But for those working on daily news, from the making of the Today programme, to local newspapers, face-to-face contact with other journalists is crucial. It helps to have a range of experienced people in different fields together in one place to bounce ideas off and test story treatments.
Arguably, in a broadcast context, it is nigh on impossible to produce news without others. But for newspapers, perhaps, it could be an option. Ed Walker, Online Communities Editor at Media Wales, does not believe the technology is good enough for an effective virtual newsroom: “There’s no substitute for the immediacy of turning round to someone with 20 years of local experience and asking their opinion”, he says. Walker argues that technology should be a tool of news gathering, rather than a substitute for it. Especially in parts of Wales where broadband coverage can be sketchy and phone signal erratic, he thinks that the idea of journalists working remotely is risky.
He may be right. Some of my course colleagues that have tried to cover Cardiff council meetings from the comfort of their bedrooms have struggled with the patchy video streaming. Blogs and social networks are key in helping journalists to grow their contacts books, source contributors and find leads, but they are streams of information that need contextualising in the offline world. A raw Twitter feed, for example, is a stream of consciousness without the journalistic process which would shape it into digestible content. Companies and individuals can of course publish their own news. But remove the journalists, and it could result in an Orwellian nightmare of information that can be manipulated for commercial or political agendas. The skill a journalist brings to the material is in sifting it, corroborating it and presenting it in an edited format to the public.
So if the mere idea of a completely virtual newsroom raises such fierce opposition from journalists, why even consider it? A recent post on a French site argues that news production should be streamlined by putting the hub of newsrooms online. This aims to stop journalists seeing online news and (for wont of a better term) offline news, differently. The problem of viewing internet news as a unique entity is changing as new journalists who have always known the internet start to work alongside the more experienced in the industry. At journalism school, we use many platforms simultaneously, updating stories online and working as part of the ‘link economy’ – interlacing stories, linking to sources and facing up to the rigorous open critique of readers’ comments.
Online journalism has clearly become an integral part of the news production process. It produces quick results and allows global collaboration. News production is a long chain from sourcing information to distributing it. But virtual newsrooms are now regarded as “news diamonds”. There is a process of news distribution that begins with a Twitter headline, then a blog with a first story draft, followed by more detail in the form of a broadcast package or feature. This is not a new way of producing news, but it again uses the internet as a tool to streamline the information for the consumer.
This is the way Reuters and other news services have always developed their news content. They start with what they call a ‘slug’, or headline, on their wires, and follow it up with more detail as it is verified. The difference now is that the internet has given smaller media organisations their own “wires” to follow suit. As the Reuters handbook puts it: “Internet reporting is nothing more than applying the principles of sound journalism to the sometimes unusual situations thrown up in the virtual world”.
Jeff Jarvis is a great champion of the tool of online journalism. He recently wrote about the algorithms used to gather news online. These are ways of gathering news which open stories up to constant revision and set them in context, like Google’s Living Stories project . These look at the “source, content analysis, timing, location, association” of news content in order to make it the most relevant and ‘new’ it can be. After beta testing Living Stories with the New York Times, Google announced it was open sourcing the code, so it is available to all media companies.
Developments such as this undoubtedly allow journalists to operate more effectively. But the concept of removing the newsroom and the people who come together to make the news is a long way off. News does not magically appear on the internet. Many of us have become used to tapping into information for free, pulling up The Guardian, BBC News and The Times Online, news we once happily paid for, and it has made us complacent about its existence. This kind of high quality news costs money. Journalists are professionals; they cannot rely on the goodwill of citizen journalists and bloggers, let alone their integrity or accuracy, to feed the news pipes. News International’s paywalls will soon be introduced and this will throw a very different light on the future of news.
This still-novel online world leaves editors with the same challenges that they have always faced – that content must be accurate, compelling and swiftly delivered. Only by achieving the highest standards for content will people be willing to pay to receive it, leaving journalists free to continue experimenting with the possibilities of working virtually. For now though, more work needs to be done on developing communication technology before we can recreate the kind of creatively organised chaos seen on a day-to-day basis in newsrooms throughout the country.
Tags: BBC, internet, Media Wales, online, Online Journalism Blog, online news
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6 Comments
Could it be because newsrooms contain dinosaurs that refuse to adapt or worse think they adapt by opening a website and giving everything away?
Their entire existence has been under attack for the last four years (and that was when the meteor first struck earth). Now their business model no longer works and they still feel they are ‘cock of the walk’ without realising they are walking alone.
The average age of their audience is 56 years old! http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/the-average-uk-newspaper-reader-is-56-years-old/article7189.html No business can survive such a loss of demographic market share and survive.
Adapt or die vs proudly singing the mantra “we do not inn-o-vate” is what will spell survival and thriving in this survival of the fittest drama.
A really interesting piece reflecting the transition point in time we are at. Technology you’re right offers a new and exciting way to gather, form, and disseminate news. What I find equally exciting and sometimes missed by, can I say an older generation, is the immediacy of the access to the zeitgeist. Whereas the role of the journalist was to find and broadcast the news. Now anyone with a Twitter account has access to all news and all opinion, truth and lie, spun and in the raw. Journalists seem to be increasingly interpreting what we all have access to. What we do all need is a new set of skills to “read” the raw feeds, tempering opinion and spin to see what’s beyond. When we reach this point what role then for journalists?
Thank you for this article.
Jeff Jarvis also wrote last month:
“Once we in media are finished with our work we allow the public to comment. We throw our product over the wall and let people react while we retreat into the castle and shut the gates so we cannot hear them. They know they are talking to bricks and so they shout and cover them with spray paint. Only we have the power to clean the mess but we’ve left the scene and so the castle walls are soon overrun with graffiti.
“This timing — which is inherently insulting to the public — comes out of our old media worldview brought to the internet. We think the internet is a medium and that we make products for it that the public consumes.
“When instead we open up to conversation earlier in our process then the conversation can become more collaborative and productive: We ask people what they know, which is a mark of respect and value. We listen to advice and requests. We end our separation from the public and join it. Waiting until we are done to listen is too late.”
We must stop looking at the internet as a medium.
But this should be linked to Arianna Huffington who said: “It’s time for our business and political leaders to help redefine morality beyond sex, drugs , and rock and roll to include lying, hypocrisy and callous indifference to those in need.”
A very interesting article Katie – well written and argued. I agree with many of your points in here – but what two entities you are comparing?
Are we saying a regional newsroom cannot be replicated by an online equivalent? Or are we looking at national broadcast outlets where teamwork is clearly vital to creating content?
It also would’ve been good to get voices from the other side of the coin in there – no one quoted in the article actually works in a virtual newsroom. Why not speak to Robert Andrews who works in Cardiff on the UK branch of paidContent – where RSS feeds are his wires? Or why not Philip John from the Lichfield Blog – which is the best thing I can think of to an online regional news outlet? It’s actually quite difficult to think of examples of virtual newsrooms – the Huffington Post has a core team of editors based in New York. Maybe we should look at hyperlocal news websites like Ventnor Blog and Parwich.org – but all these examples are run by small teams of people in one location. Perhaps Ground Report may be a good example – where the editors are scattered in the US but work together to manage content submitted by contributors across the globe. But Ground Report isn’t trying to be an international news channel – it’s offereing something very different.
Penny Roberts says reporters need newsrooms for idea sharing – but lots of idea sharing takes place via email and Google chat – and this happens in newsrooms too. It’s also important to note many journalists contributing to the team effort of news production aren’t actually in the newsroom – freelance reporters provide fantastic content which makes up a large chunk of national newspaper content – so the point about the ‘lonely life’ is more of a lifestyle choice between being a staffer or a freelancer and not really relevant to the topic.
“Technology should be a tool of news gathering, rather than a substitute for it” – I very much agree with this point. Journalists shouldn’t be the ones watching live broadcasts of council meetings – if they have the luxury of working remotely they should be the ones actually at the meeting, providing some more substantial coverage and analysis.
This brings me to my final point which I think you may have picked up on if you’d spoken to people who are working in virtual newsrooms – what you lose in physical contact with other journalists – you gain in your lightweight remote nature. Not being tied to a desk or having to answer to a newsroom makes your daily agenda incredibly flexible, allowing you to get out and about far more freely.
But before we even get into a debate about virtual newsrooms vs the real thing, we need to look at whether the online news outlets are trying to replicate what the real newsrooms offer – I don’t think they are.
From a wee while back now, but how Lifehacker, with around 3.6 million monthly readers, is put together:
“For the past three years, I’ve worked side-by-side with my three coeditors at Lifehacker.com, but we’ve never been in the same place at the same time. The members of our distributed team work hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles from each other, spanning multiple time zones and disparate work hours. Yet we work together every day.”
http://www.macworld.com/article/134608/2008/07/portableapplications.html
Having experienced both working in a newsroom and working remotely I can see both sides of the argument.
I do freelance work for two local newspapers and a local news website and I have never once stepped into their respective newsrooms. All of my work is done from my computer and I email it to my editors who then publish it. In my experience it makes a lot of sense to have this virtual newsroom as it saves time and money and can be very practical.
Having said that I prefer the feel of being in a busy newsroom and working as part of a team. The camaraderie, team work and support journalists can give each other is key to producing a good newspaper or bulletin. You’re not necessarily tied to a desk. As a reporter you can be out and about all the time and use the newsroom as a base. The only people that are “tied to a desk” are editors, sub-editors and producers and even then most work on a rota so everyone gets to report and be mobile.
I personally do not think newsrooms will ever be fully replaced by virtual newsrooms. With the recession and cut backs there will be more mobile journalists but there will always be a need for a physical newsroom.
This article explores both sides of the argument and is thought provoking, raising a lot of questions and issues, which as journalists we should be considering. It’s good that there are a lot of opinions on this topic but there is no one definitive answer.