State of Local

One of the biggest challenges any local news organization has faced in recent years has been reorganizing the process of gathering and publishing news across a number of platforms. Local journalism now includes not just the traditional broadcast or print market, but the web, mobile, video, rss, widgets, radio and whatever else comes along.

It’s difficult to find the optimal mix of resources for each task. There are budgetary issues, and in many cases, news organizations have had to revamp their entire business model to survive.

One such reinvention was at the Manchester, U.K. newspaper the Evening News, which decided to make the paper free in central Manchester, while keeping paid-for distribution in the city’s outskirts. That move was part of a larger move to convergence of its different media outlets (which include 23 local weeklies, the flagship daily, the Channel M TV station and several radio stations).

The changes began in 2000, and the results have not only boosted the bottom line, but led to an integrated regional newsroom where all the various outlets share content, staff and other resources.

That central news hub is an interesting development, and its one that makes sense for local news outlets that have several different media businesses. According to Paul Horrocks, editor of MEN, the changes have completely altered the way that organization gathers news.

Now there are three daily editorial conferences that gather editors from all media – the main one takes place midday. They discuss their news priorities for the day, allocate resources for each platform, and determine how reporters on the ground can gather content for other platforms.Admittedly, “we still need a lot of work to improve our workflows” and are “still too print-centric,” said Horrocks, but the new system seems to be working. The editorial process isn’t yet as effective as assistant editor Ian Wood wishes it to be: currently content is generated, then selected, then checked and edited at the same time. Only after the last step can content be distributed to the different platforms. Ideally, “the editing and checking process will be separated,” said Wood, so that content can first be approved before being sent out to the different platforms, where it can be edited adequately for each medium. But this would necessitate an increase in manpower and a new content management system (CMS).

While not every veteran reporter is capable of working with a number of news platforms, Horrocks says “I don’t want to hire single platform journalists anymore.”

While MEN’s news gathering process isn’t perfect, it seems miles beyond what is the norm in most newsrooms:

So right now a print reporter on the ground might capture a sound clip (technically no extra work for him or her) that can then be used by the radio, and maybe even snap a few pictures that can suit both the online edition and Channel M. Most video is collected by Channel M’s seasoned crew, and all videos from Channel M are reverse engineered into the MEN website at the end, which means the paper’s site posts about 15 video clips daily (in some cases of breaking news, footage has even been posted on the site before the televised evening news). But trained reporters from the paper can also collect video, and the paper also uses mobile footage if the high importance of news is worthy of the lower quality.

Print reporters can conveniently go do an interview for MEN’s radio stations, within the building. Eventually the newsroom will be outfitted with broadcast capabilities too. Every paper and outlet regularly cross-promotes for other platforms by displaying logos, links to the websites and more – training the audience to convergence.

With the continuing media consolidation here in the U.S.—especially in smaller markets—this vision of a newsroom will slowly become the norm.