The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If only it were that simple to steer a traditionally labored newsroom into the future. However, the organizational, technological, environmental, personnel and strategic changes that must be navigated to get from where most news organizations are today to where they need to be for journalistic and financial success in this new information economy are complicated.

More and more newsrooms around the world are starting out on the journey. But there is no clear map to follow just yet. We are starting to see our end-point destination more clearly, though. In the parlance of today’s increasingly digital world, call it dot.ink.

A computer simulation of what the future news flow deck will look like in Newsplex.
Photo courtesy of Ifra

Dot.ink is the journalistic and financial integration — or convergence, if you like — of print and digital media in a way that leverages the strength and enduring value of our proven core format with the seemingly endless potential of Internet and wireless distribution.

It realigns a one-dimensional editorial organization to tap into the growing number of always-on, always-connected news consumers who now readily interweave print, broadcast, online and wireless media into both their lives and work. Dot.ink recognizes that in today’s multiple-media world neither ink-on-paper nor Web-on-Internet nor TV-on-cable nor whatever-on-mobile is a sustainable stand-alone business model.

Instead, a dot.ink publisher (using “publisher” in the broadest sense of the word) positions himself to provide more people with the increasingly varied news and information they want, by whatever means they want it, in whatever combination of formats is most effective, to whatever level of detail they require, anytime, anywhere. Ultimately, dot.ink converts a niche media manufacturing business into a scalable cross-media service industry.

Newsplex will offer dot.ink model

Ifra is currently developing its prototype Newsplex advanced multiple-media micro-newsroom around the dot.ink concept. When finished later this year, the Newsplex will serve as a model through which the news industry can develop and gain confidence in the tools and techniques of its new multi-medium. The Newsplex is being purpose-built to forge a route that the industry can more easily follow.

In the meantime, the research and thinking that have gone into creating the Newsplex suggest some actions to prepare traditional newsrooms for the journey ahead of them:

• Appoint an editor to encourage, develop, coordinate, support and train the newsroom’s cross-media activities. Perhaps the fastest way to inject a multiple-media workflow into a newsroom is to create a position in the hierarchy specifically to promote and manage it. The most common titles for this position are convergence editor or multimedia editor. It needs to be a primary position with the publisher’s weight behind it so that suggestions for non-traditional newshandling are not easily dismissed. The risk is that having a designated multimedia editor will discourage other news managers from taking responsibility for convergence.

• Establish a central desk as the focal point for cross-media newsflow management. Most of the significant convergence efforts around the world are built around a very visible desk in the middle of the newsroom where key newshandling decision makers from the various media partners and the most critical news departments sit and work together. The most popular names given to it are the multimedia desk, the convergence desk or the superdesk. Co-locating key news managers who traditionally sit off with their own staffs in their own territories of the building has the effect of breaching organizational barriers as well as bypassing competitive non-communication. When one editor starts jumping up and down about a breaking news story, those nearby tend to notice. In addition, the desk is a constant reminder to the rest of the news staff that things are different.

• Integrate similar staff functions from different media. To the extent that there are separate print and online news staffs, sit all the reporters together, especially ones who cover the same topics, so that they start to work together and support one another rather than duplicate and compete. The same goes for interleaving print and online copy editors to promote consistent standards of quality. Even if news managers or union contracts mandate distinct positions for various media, common journalistic goals can spawn a natural and healthy interaction if given a chance.

• Introduce video, audio and animation to the newspaper Web site. Simply duplicating the static print product undervalues both the online effort and its potential benefits to the newspaper. The Internet expands the newspaper’s storytelling toolkit. Some people think it is only for such interactive news content that online news consumers are willing to pay.

• Integrate print and online infographic staffs to better tap into animated graphics technology. The graphics staff can generate cost efficiencies for both print and online workflows by creating graphics for the print edition and then adding layers of animation and sound for posting the same files online.

Go digital

• Revive the rewrite desk as a conduit for generating reports for the Web and other digital media. As an alternative to having reporters write immediately for the Web, editors can interview them and write summaries for the breaking-news media.

• Replace reporters’ analog cassette recorders with digital voice recorders to provide streaming audio news content. Reporters need do nothing different in their news gathering when recording an interview or press conference for reference. Then the Web production staff can use the digital recording to create sound bytes for posting or streaming online, referenced from the printed story.

• Train and equip photographers with digital video cameras to provide streaming video news content. Photographers tend to be among the most receptive newspaper staff members to the idea of expanding their news gathering role in support of convergence, providing they get appropriate training with their new equipment.

• Collect and post news documents online as expansions of printed reporting. Besides video, audio and animated graphics, newspapers Web sites can expand the value of the print product by providing readers with access to supporting documents and material referenced in printed articles.

• Actively develop and integrate new distribution avenues for news content. Television and radio appear to be the highest value partnerships in expanding the newspaper’s reach. They also take the most work to enter. Easier to develop are text message alerts via mobile phones, fax and fax-back sheets, e-mail summaries, telephone-accessed audiotext and of course the Web.

• Realign breaking news coverage to capitalize on the relative strengths of print and digital media. In the increasingly wired, instant-access news marketplace, the printed newspaper is less and less a medium for first awareness of a news story, but increasingly a medium for greater awareness and understanding. The challenge for today’s editors is to use all available distribution avenues in the most effective mix.

• Specifically list and discuss cross-media story requirements on news agendas and in daily news meetings. News meetings remain among the most effective newsroom management activities. News meetings and daily news agendas that fail to address stories as cross-media news events send a powerfully bad message to the newsroom.

Get a plan

• Develop a plan for covering major stories in multiple media. Every good newsroom has a plan for how it would cover a really big story that eclipses all other news. Make sure your plan deals with the big story as a coordinated multiple-media news coverage effort. Just the planning process in advance can help generate a desirable newsroom mindset.

• Incorporate multi-skill and cross-media expectations into newsroom job descriptions, performance evaluations and hiring decisions. The more convergence is talked about in the direct context of people’s work, the more responsive those people tend to be toward changes in the newsflow.

• Organize the newsflow around story handling rather than topics, sections or media. In structuring the newsroom to work across multiple media, it will eventually become apparent that the old hierarchies do not work anymore. The story is the basic building block of life in the newsroom and so should be the basic element of newsroom organization.

• Create an editorial knowledge base to preserve and exploit critiques, story ideas, contacts, documents, news gathering methods, background material, archives, news feeds and other information assets. A newsroom without a database at its core is similar to an assembly line rather than a modern news and information management environment.

Upgrade technology

• Update newsroom technology to receive and distribute faxes, phone messages and press releases digitally. The paperless newsroom, like the paperless office, is a myth. But some newsroom information assets should not be lost in piles on desks or forgotten in a reporter’s routing box. They can always be printed out later.

• Hire a chief editorial information officer to turn news resources into business assets. News organizations are among the only information-intensive businesses that knowingly and literally throw away the bulk of their primary business assets.

• Improve newsroom flexibility with technologies such as docking laptops, wireless networks and mobile phones. Hard-wiring a reporter or a editor to one particular desk limits staffing flexibility as well as diminishing productivity.

This list is not exhaustive, nor is it offered in any particular order. Some of these actions might not be effective or appropriate in some newsrooms as they reinvent themselves to maintain their relevance in the expanding information society and their viability in the burgeoning information economy.

Doing nothing, however, is no longer a sensible option.