THEME: Traditional newsrooms need to be fast and agile to respond to

competition from digital startups. Yet print products also need to be

slower, more magazine like to hold onto readership and revenue. Can
these two dynamics survive in your newsroom or will print culture
continue to inhibit digital success?



I want to start off looking back a few years, in the spirit of the whole
those who cannot remember the mistakes of the past are bound to
repeat them idea.
Cast your minds back six years to 2008, where Planet Internet hums
with discovery and exploration.

Planet Internet shares, listens, talks, grows. It is exciting, fast-moving,
constantly-evolving; collaboration, information exchanges and
conversations on a global, real-time scale are intrinsic to the medium.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Planet Newsroom orbits the Print sun.
And in the black between Planets Internet and Newsroom, there are
small constellations of digital stars shouting We need to change! into
the void. If someone would just stop and listen to them, this is what
theyd have said, back in 2008



And then they would have added: We need to be a newsroom built
around digital audience. We need to provide the content that audience
wants, when it wants it, and wherever it wants to read it.
We have to understand and use social media every day, as a vital tool
of our jobs - just like we do the telephone and our notebooks. We need
to see Google as a distribution method, just like the vans that deliver our
newspapers are. Oh, I am not tweeting about my lunch, Im running
social searches to find eye-witnesses, photos and videos of that fire you
are about to find out about from doing the routine 1pm calls.
Finally, they would demand a new journalism mindset and warn:
Everyone in the newsroom must understand the world has moved on,
and we are being left behind.
Our hope for the future is to experiment, collaborate, be committed to
engagement with our communities, and understand and anticipate what
audience demands.

But heres the thing. Print is still making money, newspapers still sell,
albeit in dwindling numbers. The print demand, from readers and
advertisers, exists still.
And thats an enormous challenge for those of us involved in newsroom
culture shifts, because legacy products - from the nostalgia attached to


them to the sheer bloody amount of work required in creating them -
require a lot of resources. And it allows for a lot of recidivism.

Newsroom blockers are typical in just about any mainstream media
setup; if you can identify them, you can work over, round or through
them.
Build your business around a digital-first, audience-foremost
newsroom
Provide engaging content, when your audience wants it
Be accessible - operationally, via platforms and culturally in how
you engage and interact
Experiment, collaborate, innovate
Be committed to engagement with communities
Understand and anticipate what audience demands
Embrace social media - its your communication system, newswire,
distribution platform, contacts book, playground. Also your judge
and jury
Innovation is not restricted to the newsroom - whats your system
for managing ideas?

To build a thriving mainstream journalism model, we have to focus on
our audience (and potential audience): What do those people want to
discover, when, how they want to access it, and what do they want to
share with others?
Its about identifying need, fulfilling it, and adding value, commercially
and editorially. That doesnt mean we are founded on celebrity photos
and listicles - although a good listicle is a thing of joy - it means doing
the journalism that people care about.
Traditionally we have told people what the most important story of the
day is; nowadays, we can see what stories people value most - that
means we can make more informed judgements.


I work for in the regionals sector Trinity Mirror, a media company that
has a portfolio that includes national titles, some of the largest regional
news brands in the UK and a host of smaller daily and weekly titles. Our
distribution platforms straddle print, desktop, mobile, app, e-edition and
social media.
Each of those platforms in important and knowing our audience - and
the audience we dont reach - is of enormous significance.




Knowing your audience means you can segment it terms of geography,
demography and behaviour, layer over it reading trends, social media
use, and interaction with journalists or brands. You can make content
that engages, and the outcome is a growing, invested audience. Such
knowledge is a huge asset for commercial colleagues who can point
advertisers at the markets they want and need to hit.



In Trinity Mirror Regionals we are dismantling the traditional newsroom
culture and structure in an effort to break a platform-centric newsroom.

We consider there are three audience-need principles: Tell Me, Help
Me, Indulge Me. Our content, regardless of platform, needs to inform,
entertain, surprise, delight, enlighten, and be a champion for those we
represent - namely, the people in our regional and local communities.

When it comes to audience we want local - although its great that we
also have global reach with our brands - we want retained, and we want
engaged.
Id suggest these are not mutually exclusive goals, for any platform.



So, right now we have multiple changes happening in our company. We
have introduced Newsroom 3.1, where workflows are built around
audience data and are digital-first.
Multi-platform is the norm: Print, desktop, mobile web, app, tablet, e-
newsletter, social media
Everything must be digital-first, and responsive
There is no deadline - only audience spikes and streams
Analytics inform journalistic decisions - we use Hitwise, Omniture and
Chartbeat, as well as social metrics, to understand audience trends,
behaviour, activity and reaction. We are proactive and reactive to this
information
Our newspapers are put by a small team of people - just as our
websites used to be. Everyone else is focused on the creation of
digital content

Audiences can decide what makes the news - and can even help design
the front page, like this:






Newsroom 3.1 has created new jobs and completely new roles. It has
radically altered our operation to the extent that everyone knows they
work for digital now, except a small, dedicated print hub that produces
the print platforms.
Changing something so radically, despite the commercial and historic
pull of print, has been a journey.
Navigating barriers was very much about demonstrating effectiveness.

If you have an idea, and can demonstrate the effectiveness of it - even if
you have to test it on a little side-project platform - its a powerful lever.

Dont blindside people - the leaders in any media business are very
busy, and probably feeling somewhat exposed by the rapid shift in
power structures over the past several years. Many editors now are
acutely aware there are platforms which have their names attached to
them, which they have to trust others to operate and present in the most
effective way.


Inertia has been a terrible thing for the news industry - for decades
nothing changed, and then everything changed, including the amount of
revenue flowing into our businesses, and we just werent equipped to
deal with it on an economic, cultural or and operational basis.
Online journalism was once regarded at best as a luxury, and at worst
as helping hasten the demise of historic news brands. I think the biggest
change blocker was probably a them and us mentality that existed
between digital and print teams, because it fostered the idea that the
newsroom Nerd Herd did digital while everyone else did the heavy
lifting. It wasnt uncommon to find a journalist refusing to file breaking
news stories for online because they felt it would damage the
newspaper.
Weve travelled a long way in a relatively short time, but we can never
stop striving to do more - otherwise we will simply end up repeating the
mistakes we made in the late 20th century all over again.


Quick wins for newsroom leaders:



Positive results win hearts and minds better than any explanation
of strategy. Demonstrate outcomes, celebrate success, reward
innovation
Share the knowledge - training is the lifeblood of a digital. That
does NOT mean sending people on a course; make learning part
of newsroom culture and no one should feel left behind
Put real-time analytics at the heart of the newsroom- watching a
story soar is the biggest buzz since changing the print splash on
deadline.
Know the audience spikes - staff accordingly
Your team must understand an active, engaging social media
presence is expected, not requested. This ethos starts at the top,
regardless of what NYT execs may think.
If something doesnt work, learn from it, move on
Newsroom leaders must advocate harder for online innovation and
experimentation than anyone else in the newsroom. Your team
needs to know you believe
Smash any lingering them and us mentality between digital and
print teams
If something doesnt work, learn from it, move on. Understand not
all ideas will fly, but if you dont experiment youll never succeed in
achieving extraordinary things


Finally, to achieve culture change, I would say:

Know what you want to achieve
Give people the skills and tools to perform
Believe in it: If you dont, why should anyone else?