If Newspapers Are To Remain The DNA of Our Democracies Then There Is No Choice But To Integrate Print And Digital Newsrooms With Print As The Core

Philip M. Stone June 4, 2008

The print newspaper should be the major anchor – the core -- for expansion into the digital world, global newspaper executives heard at their annual meeting this week, but that is easier said than done.

And Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO and editor-in-chief of Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende made it clear that if such integration was not forthcoming then “Newspapers as a stand-alone product don’t have a future.”

And she posed the basic question that every newspaper newsroom has to answer – are a newspaper’s web sites supplemental to print, or is print supplemental to the web sites?

The answer coming loudly from the World Association of Newspaper meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, is that the print newspaper should be the main core of everything that editorial does – print, the Internet, mobile and everything else that comes along. But that means having one integrated newsroom and that is not necessarily easy to accomplish.

As just one example of the hurdles facing such a move Jim Roberts, editor of digital news at the New York Times, said his newspaper’s integration plans had to deal with different employment contracts -- newspaper reporters were paid much higher than Web reporters – so how can you have low paid and high paid journalists doing the same job working on the same integrated desk? That brought the unions in, a scenario that WSJ.com managing editor Almar Latour and Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais both said that they, too, had to handle.  

But is it worth working out such administrative issues so that the newsroom for all platforms is integrated? Knudsen says newspapers have no choice but to do it. She didn’t say it would be easy – there would need to be new editorial content models and new business models. Deadlines would be different – basically 24 hours a day – (remember that old UPI book, Deadline every Minute)?  Those of us who were news agency reporters can now smirk at those newspaper reporters who are having to give up the luxury of just a few deadlines every day and now they will have to file everything as quickly as possible, and in different formats – text, audio, pictures and video, and, of course, maintain accuracy.  The old days are gone.

Newspapers also need to understand that their competition is no longer the local radio station, or the TV, now, as Knudsen described it, “there are many new lions out there in the jungle.”

And she used a term well worth stealing – that “newspapers are the DNA of our democracies,” and she made clear that if newspapers want to maintain a position of authority with the newer generations then newspapers must deliver content on a 24-hour daily basis in a manner the new generation accepts.

Roberts of the New York Times said that one issue in keeping web sites continually up to date is ensuring that the print edition stays fresh, too. One thing the Times is now trying is printing in the newspaper as columns some Web blog content.

And Latour of wsj.com admits that newspaper journalists have not been happy adding multimedia to their workload. As far as many of them were concerned it was just one (or two) more things to do. But what has helped turn them is that the web site keeps a listing of the top 10 most popular stories and that has not gone unnoticed by the journalists who now find it somewhat competitive to ensure their stories are on the list.

Tim Bowdler, CEO of Johnston Press, in another seminar neatly summed up what is going to have to happen. “The outcome will be an organization that puts the consumer and the customer first, ahead of a reliance on any one media channel.” His own view was that newspapers would increasingly be given away for free as digital news and information channels grew. “We want our websites to be regarded as an extension and complement to our print publications, thereby extending audience reach and advertiser offering.”

What the industry has to deal with is that how people have changed the ways they consume media -- they have less time to gather information and they have many more choices where to find the information they want, according to Sara Ohrvall, president of Research and Development for Bonnier in Sweden.

And she coined another term worth stealing – that people now are after “snack media.” with the formula that media exposure plus pressure for time equals snack media. The trouble with such snacking is that there is less loyalty to various media brands but she believes this is where newspapers can clean-up – if they maintain the completeness of the editorial product, maintain their journalistic integrity and accuracy, then they will stand out as being more trustworthy and she points to that as why people trust newspaper advertisements, for instance, more than any other media.

As Bowdler of Johnston Press put it, newspapers are going through “significant cultural change.”  The landscape is changing and “It is an irreversible tide that means, wherever situated in the world, everyone will be required to act.”