FT's next stage of digital transition

Andy Dickinson has drawn my attention to a leaking of details of a reorganisation of the FT newsroom.

The document states that

The priority for the organisation is to tilt the workflow towards the online content and to streamline the newspaper process.

In a question and answer document presumably for employees it says that

Despite the changes made at the company back in 2006,the world has not stood still and that catering for the online customer is now a priority.

The plan is for no more redundancies from those announced in Jan and in response to questions about whether this will mean an increased workload for journalists,the paper says that there will be some contraction on the print side with second edition pages being reduced.

As to the vexed question on subbing the document says that

we do need to move away from treating copy editing as a single demarcating in the traditional newspaper process.ie that subbing is done as far up the process as possible

The challenge of the digital news room

Karl Schneider from Reed Business information writes a very good piece on his blog about the transformation to the digital newsroom mentality.

Whilst we've done a lot of work with our writers over the past couple of years, helping them to transform themselves into digital journalists, so far we haven't talked very much about the future for the people who work on our production desks.

he writes

One of the challenges he continues

is to help today's magazine production staff to make the transition to these new online roles.

1.For publishers, it will take a commitment to providing the training and the space to lean these new skills.

2.For production desk staff it will take a genuine willingness to re-learn their craft, sometimes giving up cherished roles and practices.

If you want to be a journalist-aim for doneness

An interesting post (Ht-Martin Stabe) from Yahoo News

News organizations are burning out reporters by demanding that they use more and more different types of technology to tell their stories, leading journalists said at a National Press Club forum at the University of Missouri Monday.

According to the piece,technology appears to be adding little to the economic model (except perhaps reducing staff numbers)of the newspaper.

This was one particular comment

You don't have a choice," she said. "If you want to be a journalist today, you just have to work harder and more efficiently. You aim for perfection until your deadline, and then you aim for doneness. You just gut it out."

Of course it is an argument that has been heard many times.

My take,it is not going to be uninvented,yes it can enhance a piece of information,greatly in some respects but the story is the main selling piece

Twittering and mashups of the local elections

Paul Bradshaw

is experimenting with the uses of digital media in following today's local and mayoral elections.

Paul explains that he has created a Yahoo Pipes Mash up which is attempting to cover the day's news

Also courtesy of Paul see how people are twittering on Boris and on Ken

Beeb goes digital for local elections

Over at the BBC editors blog,Craig Oliver previews tomorrow nights agenda

An elaborate network of opinion formers, activists and analysts collide online producing fact, rumour, and mood not found anywhere else.

For the first time the blogosphere will be represented

Emily Maitlis who'll be sifting the chatter online with the help of some of the UK's most committed political bloggers; Iain Dale, Luke Akehurst and Alix Mortimer.
They'll be using their contacts to provide us with immediate reaction from the parties to the night's results. Our website colleagues will be providing a special webpage with the best of each of their blogs - all hosted by Ms Maitlis at "Emily's Election

".

A digital journey

Via Robin Hamman

A good example of how digital media techniques can enhance a story.Here the BBC World service site makes a good use of blogs,mash up,twitter and photos to illustrate an environmental story as journalists travel through Bangladesh

How the digital newsroom has not come to East Manchester

According to the economist this week

EVEN the least fogeyish of politicians have been flummoxed by the internet. Tony Blair, champion of all things modern, paid no end of lip service to the potential of new media as prime minister but was comically technophobic himself. Still, the internet plays a role in huge areas of British public life: party politics, punditry and government itself. But web aficionados lament a yawning gap with America, and with the most go-ahead corners of Europe.

I have been working on an assignment for the digital newsroom module this week and chose to cover the local elections in my ward of Newton Heath.As part of the project we had to write a critical analysis and here is part of my submission.

Digital society and thereon digital news is dependent on people, for the most part unpaid engaging with and using the technology at their disposal for dispersing and discussing information

.........I continue and please excuse my ramblings

There are two fairly obvious points to be made at this juncture. Firstly because of the nature of the majority of the contributors to the medium, it has to be a popular subject. People are only going to contribute if they are interested. Secondly the medium has to be available.
I will return to the first point shortly but let us bear in mind the locality of the story. Read the feature part of my article and you will see that the area is considered one of the most run down areas of Manchester. An unnamed councillor described it as an area of depravity.
I have no figures to hand but I wouldn’t mind surmising that internet use is much lower than most other areas; educational skills are probably below standard. Thus the digital chatter will be and was considerably lower. The residents of an affluent suburb with a problem with their council will form action groups, set up forums, write blogs, join social network interest groups and bombard the comment section of their local online paper in an attempt to get their message across.
Now the first point, the issue itself.Local elections are rarely well reported unless there is a particular local issue or candidate that attracts coverage.The nationals leave well alone apart from high level analysis and speculation about its effect on the national parties.
Given the budgets that local councils are responsible for and the fact their decisions will impact far more on an individual than national politics. In Greater Manchester the balance of power will determine whether the city follows London in introducing a congestion charge. Yes you have guessed, there are many forums about that.
An issue for the local press perhaps but a search of the Manchester evening news revealed just two articles written up to the date of this piece. One of them incidentally about a father and son standing against each other.
As for loggers’ search of technocrati reveals just two people that blog about local politics in Manchester.One,Dave Ottewell for the Manchester evening news an the other Chris Paul ,an amateur blogger with leanings to the Labour party.
A quick search of the candidates revealed little more. Only the Lib Dem contender, Damien O’Connor has a blog of any description and that had not been updated for over one month and yet he is standing in a close race.
Yes all the parties have local sites, some have published their local manifestos and this helped in the research for the articles.
According to Internet World stats, 1.319 billion people use the Internet world wide according to Internet World Stats. Writing in the Harvard International Review, philosopher N.J. Slabbert, asserted that “the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use”
Paul Bradshaw talks of a world where we have gone from information scarcity to information overload in a century and where the ordinary person, provided that he has the tools and technology to do so, (and that is an important qualification) has gone from needing

“The news industry for information, to one where they can access - and produce - it themselves”

However the interest has to be there.
In America, independent sites such as the Huffing ton post are armed with 1800 citizen journalists who are following the trail of the primary candidates. They are creating news. One, scooped dome remarks made by Democrat candidate Barack Obama as she filmed his speech in Pensylvania,his comments made the national networks.
However there is little doubt that the local elections in the UK are being afforded the same sort of coverage, bar the contest for the London mayor.
Again a technocrati search for Newton Heath reveals an array of trainspotters You Tube videos taken at the railway sheds and little else other than drunken youths playing up for the camera. One says that he is bored and supports Manchester United.
There is a temptation in an exercise like this to let the medium drive the story .
Mindy McAdams makes the point that

“The story is THE story. If it is strong then it will work, the fundamentals of journalism should not change.”
I couldn’t agree more. It would have been very easy to abandon this venture on the basis that there was little in the way of online resource. There has been minimal coverage of the local elections as mentioned.
So my blog can perhaps be seen as a torch bearer for reporting on the local elections in East Manchester.After all it is creating the digital content that is sadly missing from the broadband wires at present.
And that perhaps brings us around to Paul Bradshaw’s model and that my work will be the starting alert for developing news stories in the model for the digital news room.

Tools from the digital newsroom

If you are a journalist under pressure to write 40 page leads and 132 nibs by lunchtime then it may well be worth reading online journalism.co.uk where Paul Bradshaw who seems to crop up more and more on this vlog writes of some of the tools that you can use besides just googling.

It is refered to as "Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering". and is the art of using Rss and Social media to search for stories and leads

1. Blog and site feeds/Social RSS readers
2. Technorati feeds, fans and tags
3. Twitter and twitter tools
4. Bookmarking site feeds, networks and tags
5. Social network feeds
6. Google Alerts/'similar pages'
7. YouTube feeds/related videos

LEP's investment in new media pays off

Uclan's relationship with the Lancashire Evening post has been a close one,it seems that the journalism department is constantly running various courses for training in the new media so it is hartening to see that it seems to be paying off.

According to the site HOW DO

Eighteen months after the LEP became the UK’s first fully convergent regional newsroom, editor Simon Reynolds has hailed the development as a great success – but now believes the tougher challenge is how to best manage the huge amount of response.

Reynolds goes onto say

“It’s now become just a part of our business. To be honest, I’m surprised at just how quickly we’ve all adopted and adapted to the new digital age.”

and

Reynolds is cautiously optimistic for the future of newsprint but he also strongly believes that “print media companies will make it (the digital transformation) and succeed before and better than most other sectors.”