6th International Newsroom Summit

Technology helps

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:00:54 CST

Newsplex might be a mindset, but of course technology helps, as shown by the room packed with cameras, video cameras and even live video transmission for the second group of participants in the next room. Randy Covington, director of Newsplex Training centre South Carolina, on stage and on video.

Wedia

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:47:40 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit: "If, after the speeches on Thursday, an editor is convinced of the need to do cross-media publishing and he comes to you to ask you what he needs, what would you answer?" and "Where should the IT manager start if he is asked to present a project plan for cross-media publishing?"

S�bastien Levy, account manager for Wedia, responds: "In order to realise media convergence, it is natural to converge the tools. But it is important to bear in mind that a precondition for the effective management of print publications and the web in a way that is suitable both editorially and commercially is to have dual expertise, paper and web, as well as knowledge of how to present the contents for each support.

"From an organisational point of view, it is essential to make the newsrooms aware of the new information consumption methods. The journalistic profession is developing towards the production of contents to complement print: blogs, videos, podcasts or e-paper. In my opinion, the keywords here are versatility and reactivity.

"For an IT team, the first step is to understand the strategic objective desired by the editor. Then it is vital to make the right choice of what will be the platform for a multiple media solution: the content management system. It must be powerful, capable of further development and easy to use.

"On the technical side, the preference should be for standard technologies: XML files, relational databases, Quark/InDesign, etc.

"The project should then be divided into several stages, in accordance with the advances made by the newsroom on the following aspects :
- installation of genuine bi-media reactivity with intuitive and efficient Internet publishing tools,
- video management (web TV, contributions from Internet users, etc.),
- gathering of information on Internet community events: shows, concerts, local and community news, and
- work on selling online content: management of navigation to serve marketing and commercial objectives."

Summit TV channel

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:29:31 CST

Participant Luc Legay used to work for the French design company Rampazzo & Associates and now works on Web 2.0 development for the media industry. During the summit he created an Ifra TV "channel" on blip.tv and posted video interviews (mostly in French) of some participants and speakers.

Strains possible

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:53:17 CST

Nidheesh Tyagi, editor of Dainik Bhaskar in India, asks Skip Foster about the relationship between the desk and the reporting staff.

Foster responds, "Good question -- they started speaking to each other last week for the first time in two years...kidding! In reality the relationship was strained and can be strained on any given day.

"We had to rethink the entire way of budgeting and day to day processes...it was not easy, but you learn. Now we have reporters who have taught themselves to take video and post it online, and we have desk people who are effectively junior webmasters."

Participant's video

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:03:38 CST

Summit participant Rosanna Santonocito from the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore created this video on Friday at the conference. She used the Visual Communicator software from Serious Magic (which was acquired late last year by Adobe) to mix video footage, still images and titles, prepare a script, and record her narration.

Full house

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:30:09 CST

The conference room is again packed on this second day of this sold-out event, with 220 participants from 31 countries taking part.

Morning paper

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:11:19 CST

Summit co-chairs Laure Belot, left, and Claude Droussent review the morning's issue of L'Equipe, where Droussent is head of editorial.

Hands-on video editing

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:41:28 CST

Conferring the evening before the conference are Randy Covington, left, director of training at Ifra Newsplex U.S, and Albert Perin of Nextformation.com, a French training company. Perin will demonstrate the Visual Communicator software to conference participants and give them the opportunity to use the software to edit a video clip.

KnowledgeView (2)

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:26:21 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Ali Al-Assam, managing director of KnowledgeView, responds to the second question: "Where should the IT manager start if he is asked to present a project plan for cross-media publishing?"

EidosMedia (2)

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:23:18 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Gabriella Franzini of EidosMedia responds to the second question: "Where should the IT manager start if he is asked to present a project plan for cross-media publishing?"

EidosMedia (1)

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:22:23 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Gabriella Franzini of EidosMedia responds to the first question: "If, after the speeches on Thursday, an editor is convinced of the need to do cross-media publishing and he comes to you to ask you what he needs, what would you answer?"

Changing culture at AP

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:17:29 CST

In his presentation, speaker Tom Kent, Deputy Managing Director of the Associated Press in the U.S.A. describes how the news agency has changed its culture.

“Looking back to the end of 90s when we were successfully serving traditional subscribers, the Internet department was in another building and pretty much fenced off - which seemed to satisfy everyone," Kent says.

"We knew, however, that the Net would be a key form of delivery and that if we didn't look good on that we wouldn't survive. For that we had to link up and deliver photos, graphics, and video ready for subscribers' sites.

"We could perhaps have guessed that news would be shown in back seats of taxis or in lifts in office buildings, but would never have guessed that it would appear in a video games system as it does now in English, French, Spanish , German, and Dutch on the Nintendo Wii video games system.”

Frog analogy

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:24:28 CST

Speaker Sarah Schantin-Williams, Ifra associate consultant and partner, n-able Consulting, Austria, uses an animal analogy to illustrate her point about change management.

She asks, "What happens if you put a frog in a pan of water and turn the heat up very slowly -– what does he do? He stays there and before he knows it, 10 minutes later, he has boiled to death. Take another frog and this time boil the water first then put the frog in –- this time he jumps out immediately.

"A lot of organizations talk about new media and convergence but don't seem to realise they're coming slowly to the boil and before you know it your frog is dead."

Rolling approach

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:43:44 CST

In Friday's first presentation, Pieter Kok, publisher of de Volkskrant, the Netherlands, says, "We looked at customers' media usage during the day and saw that usage of the paper spikes morning and evening, TV spikes in the evening, and the web pretty constant.

"So, if you want to satisfy that, then you need continuous deadlines, which means moving from a single daily deadline to a rolling news apprach, and to get to that we chose convergence over separate units for each medium."

Curiosity

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:30:03 CST

Jean-Luc Iseli, left, visual editor in chief of the prestigious Swiss magazine L'Illustr�, is attending the summit out of curiosity as to what a convergent organization could mean for a magazine.

G�rard Perrier of Le Parisien is attending with a large group of editors from his publication, which recently announced it would expand its multimedia operations. Perrier, who used to work for Edipresse in Lausanne, is familiar with the integrated newsroom mindset.

Who will build your dream?

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:48:44 CST

Speaker Jonathan Halls, managing director of Talkshow Communications, U.K., says his job had largely been done by the other speakers, since they all emphasized the importance of training.

Talkshow took care of the training for the Daily Telegraph's monumental move, so the fact that Telegraph editor William Lewis stressed training so highly is a ringing endorsement of the approach.

Halls says, "I once worked in a radio station that played country music. Well, I changed that to a current affairs talkshow, which was probably the biggest challenge I'd ever undertaken.

"No matter how good my vision was, it became clear that its success wasn't down to me; it was down to my staff. You have to ask who is going to build your dream."

Invest in training!

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:35:59 CST

William Lewis editor of the Telegraph, which he calls "the best paper by a gazillion miles in the U.K.," says he came "not to preach, but to share our experiences, what we've tried, what worked, and what didn't...

"We had to convince people that change is a necessity and there is a need to become platform agnostic, but also to get management people to realize that if we didn't move now and start walking with our users into new space then we would get left behind…

"So we went round looking for the angry men and women who knew what was wrong but had never been empowered and we put together a core team of these people, moved them off-site to a new location and began to put together a plan for a multimedia approach using that team as a pilot group…

"We made errors, I thought the best people to populate the core would be the youths, who would 'get it' faster. I couldn't have been more wrong -– give me a 55-year-old any day and invest in training!"

Integrated newsroom?

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:37:45 CST

Kylie Martin is senior features sub-editor at the U.K. free paper Metro, published by Associated Newspapers.

She is attending the conference with four colleagues from the paper. Asked whether the presence of such a large group might indicate that an integrated newsroom project is in the offing at Metro, she just smiles and replies that she is interested in the presentations.

She likes what Skip Foster said, but wonders how it could apply to a national paper or to a big city such as London. She's not surprised by the "pushy" tone from the different speakers regarding the need for journalists to start getting more involved in multimedia.

Local television

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:03:44 CST

Bengt Engwall, head of editorial development at Norrk�pings Tidningar in Sweden, asks, "Can a local newspaper build up a television station and make it a success both outside and inside the company?"

The answer is yes. In 1998 the board decided to transform Norrk�pings Tidningar from a newspaper company to a media house. The board said NT shall deliver news and commercial information to the people in the Norrk�ping area in the channels that people and advertisers prefer.

The board saw that the newspaper would change a lot, media usage would change, and advertising investments would move from traditional media to new media -– including television.

The newspaper journalists are engaged as reporters, but a couple of them also film and edit.

Most of the programmes are initiated by the newspaper journalists. They use their knowledge in various subjects: sports, gardening, music, politics, and so on, and make television out of that.

Engwall says, "So far 30 of the 70 newspaper journalists have participated in television -- 40 per cent!

"Six months ago they were newspaper journalists only. Now they are television journalists! Fantastic!"

From Ouest-France

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:18:27 CST

Despite the presidential elections that will be held in three days' time, the regional newspaper Ouest-France sent a delegation of six people to the summit. Jean Huchet, left, is an editor in charge of new technologies and training, and Eric Bullet is the deputy editor for local news. Bullet heads a multimedia team that the regional newspaper recently created.

In a recent development, each of the paper's numerous local editions has a person specifically dedicated to multimedia coverage, "so the team is spread all over our territory and we have a team of three persons in our main newsroom," says Huchet.

Bullet explains, "Those new media positions are high in the hierarchy; they are the direct deputies of the local edition chiefs."

Impressed by programme

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:18:23 CST

On Friday morning, Michel Balut and Jean-Patrick Zubaloff, both from Groupe Moniteur, discuss the previous day's programme. They were impressed by the presentation by Michael Maness of Gannett. Balut also says The Shelby Star is an interesting example, showing that a lot can be done with a small team.

Afternoon session

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:45:50 CST

Summit co-chairs Laure Belot, left, and Claude Droussent open the Thursday afternoon session. Droussent introduces Skip Foster, jokingly accusing him of deserting the all-important sports department to become publisher (Droussent is head of editorial at L'Equipe, which covers only sports.)

Numerous questions

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:44:14 CST

Skip Foster, publisher of the Shelby Star, USA (circulation about 15,000) responds to one of the many questions he was asked after his presentation about "hyper-local news."

He says, "We tell reporters that if you're not prepared to be a multimedia reporter then you're just not prepared to be a reporter." He believes people need to experience the news, not just consume it -- hence the need for multimedia.

Only for online

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:03:43 CST

In this video clip, Shelby Star (USA) Publisher Skip Foster says some stories are written for the website only -- especially breaking news stories.

Information centers

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:40:48 CST

Michael Maness, vice president, strategic planning, Gannett, USA, says, "We use a lot of words like 'share', 'help', and 'contribute'. We don't say 'be a citizen journalist' because people don't know what that means and don't want to be one...

"All of our newspapers will be 'information centers' by May 1 -- meaning that in just two weeks there won't be any 'newsrooms' any more, but information centers instead. In order to convince other editors we showed the traffic gains from the test sites -- all of the test sites grew 40 per cent faster. We also had editor forums to explain things...

"Surprisingly we have had more problems in the changeover with younger rather than older journalists. The older ones 'get' that everything has changed, whereas younger ones have come out of journalism school and expect only to produce print."

Adopting a mindset

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:51:58 CST

Randy Covington, director of Newsplex Training centre South Carolina, explains that Newsplex is a philosophy of working. It is not about tools and technologies but more about adopting a mindset.

Keynote address

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:31:47 CST

William Lewis, editor of the Telegraph Media Group in the U.K., gives the presentation prepared by group CEO Murdoch MacLennan, who has taken ill and cannot attend the event.

He says, "People often tell me that the digital revolution will kill newspapers, as we'll no longer be main providers of news. Well, foretelling the death of papers has been the consistent pastime of the business since I entered it in the '70s, and if I'd listened to the naysayers (then saying commercial television would mean the end of papers), I would never have joined.

"For an industry in 'terminal decline' we appear to be in pretty good shape - global circulation has risen last year by five per cent. Across the globe there are in excess of 1.4 billion paid-for copies and free circulations have doubled in four years to 28 million.

"The speed of technological change means predicting a year into the future is unwise and five years impossible..."

"The future is no longer as imposers of information but as agents of dialogue. We have to be in a space that both customers and advertisers want if we are to create a successful business model to do that. I want to highlight four practical aspects:
-- training;
-- brands;
-- copyright; and
-- regulation.

"Editors need to master the contours of the digital landscape, including online polling, and journalists need to learn to sift and discern and publishers have to invest in reskilling their staff..."

"The media companies that succeed will not be those who simply add more media, but those who stand out and are trusted for reliability, accuracy, and honesty -- and hence the brand...[but] our ability to protect that content is under consistent attack from Google, Yahoo and others looking to access that content for free, building a business model on the back of our model without payment or recognition."

Change management

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:33:11 CST

The presentation by Sarah Schantin-Williams is available for downloading as a non-printable PDF file. Summit participants will be given access to printable presentation files after the event ends.

Revitalising the newsroom

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:53:17 CST

This article from the February 2007 issue of newspaper techniques describes how the Daily Telegraph, Gannett, and Germany's Westf�lische Nachrichten approached newsroom reorganisation, and gives concrete advice on how to proceed.

Download the article on revitalising newsrooms.

Summit chairman

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:23:28 CST

Chairman of the 6th International Newsroom Summit is Claude Droussent, head of editorial at L'Equipe, the daily newspaper; L'Equipe magazine; L'Equipe TV, the television channel and L'Equipe.fr, the web platform.

Since the end of March 2007, L'Equipe has accomplished another important step toward media convergence. At the same time its four main brands have introduced significant changes in content, design and the services they offer. Why simultaneously? Because increasingly the group believes that all its media brands are connected, that they complement one another editorially and from a business standpoint.

On the fourth version of the web site, each of the group's other outlets is better represented with its brand. There are more videos, sound bites, photos and podcasts, RSS feeds and news alerts.

This global strategy is not completely new to the group. In 2004, an initial merger of television and internet services led to the new entity L'Equipe 24/24, with a team of 50 journalists.

Cross-media bridges

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:44:12 CST

This article from the February 2007 issue of newspaper techniques describes how publishers are turning to system providers to help them more than ever, especially with cross media, organisation and even remote management.

Download the article on cross-media bridges.

Multiblog of London event

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:02:38 CST

The multiblog of the International Newsroom Summit held 29-30 September 2005 in London is still online.

KnowledgeView (1)

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:25:04 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Ali Al-Assam, managing director of KnowledgeView, responds to the first question: "If, after the speeches on Thursday, an editor is convinced of the need to do cross-media publishing and he comes to you to ask you what he needs, what would you answer?"

Nstein (1)

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:00:19 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Chris Fabesch, business development director UK for Nstein Technologies, responds to the first question: "If, after the speeches on Thursday, an editor is convinced of the need to do cross-media publishing and he comes to you to ask you what he needs, what would you answer?"

Nstein (2)

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:03:48 CST

Ifra ntMultiblogger Val�rie Arnould poses two questions to each of the suppliers who fielded queries during the summit. Here, Chris Fabesch, business development director UK for Nstein Technologies, responds to the second question: "Where should the IT manager start if he is asked to present a project plan for cross-media publishing?"

Skip Foster's presentation

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:54:38 CST

The presentation by Skip Foster, publisher of the Shelby Star, is available for downloading as a non-printable PDF file. Summit participants will be given access to printable presentation files after the event ends.

Programme manager

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:00:00 CST

Ifra Events Senior Programme Manager Melanie Shah is in charge of the programme for the summit. She is pleased that the event, with 220 participants from 31 countries, is sold out.

Opening address

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:21:19 CST

Opening the summit, Ifra CEO Reiner Mittelbach says, "In terms of technology, we have seen print go from black and white to full colour, and online go from dialup to broadband to wireless. Mobile has moved to 3G, and ePaper or electronic ink will soon be knocking on consumers' doors for a share of their time.

"All types of content producers are active in all media channels and whether they will converge to a single device or we will use a multitude of devices is not clear; technological development and consumer response will decide."

Number 1 from day 1

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:49:31 CST

Bharat Kapadia, executive director of Divya Bhaskar, India, opens his presentation with a question: "Can you launch a paper which is number one from day one?" and answers, "Nothing is impossible."

He continues, "In 2001 we had the idea of entering the Gujarat market -- a whole new market and language for us. We evaluated the market for the scope of readership and circulation growth, and we were looking at papers that had existed for more than 50 years -- but when we looked at the satisfaction level of the two papers that dominated we found those papers were complacent…

"Our strategy was then to involve the people of Gujarat and make them realize their latent need for a good paper… We visited 800,000 households -- knocking on doors asking what kind of newspaper they would like to have. We returned to find out what they liked or didn't like in their existing paper, and a third time we went in with a dummy and an order form for a three-month subscription. The ad campaign simply said, 'now your wish will prevail,' and the result was a number-one position from day one in four cities with a total of 1.15 million circulation -- growing the total readership base by over 50 per cent. Even our competition had readership increases."

Investing in the future

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:15:37 CST

This interview with Telegraph Group CEO Murdoch MacLennan, which appeared in the Febuary 2007 issue of newspaper techniques, reveals his approach to the challenges facing the newspaper industry. (MacLennan was scheduled to give the keynote address, but unfortunately has been taken ill and cannot attend the summit.)

Download the interview with Murdoch MacLennan.

Inspiring the veterans

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:05:01 CST

Answering a question from the audience, Skip Foster talks about inspiring veteran journalists to adopt new technologies.

Last-minute check

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:05:03 CST

Laure Belot, summit co-chairperson, reviews the programme and makes last-minute changes to her speech before the conference opens. Belot is editor of the "Futurs" section at Le Monde.

Word of mouth

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:11:09 CST

Henrik P�lsson, vice president and head of Consumer and Enterprise Lab, Ericsson, Sweden, says, "My job is to feed our organization with the insights of the consumer perspective, to see things from the other side. The problem is that some consumers know what they're going to be doing in 12 months, but most live for today, so the need is for analysis, then design, then -- most importantly of all -- to follow and find how consumers react, because often they don't use what we do in the way we thought they would. They take what we give them and use it, but not in the way we expected."

He continues, "In every business I hear the same message: It's getting tougher and tougher. In fact, to be marketing manager in one region now is as tough as it was being a global manager 10 years ago. Most marketers today -- if they are honest -- know only one really powerful way, and that is word of mouth, and that's gaining at enormous speed thanks very much to the Internet. Everyone looks at the teenagers, but it is the 25-35-year-olds who are influencing new behaviour patterns – they are the engine, affecting their parents and those younger.

"In Sweden today I don't know teenagers who are focused on paper and I don't think they are going to change that when they turn 20 or whatever."

Mobile publishing

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:59:13 CST

This is not your average weblog. Web logs are a kind of online diary or journal increasingly popular with individuals as an outlet for personal expression. There are an estimated 1.8 million currently active on the Internet, according to Blogcensus.net, Blogcount and other sources. The typical web log, or blog as they are called in Internet speak, consists of postings in chronological order, the most recent first, about whatever topic or person the site focuses on. Blogs are typically updated from several times a day to once every few days. Posting are usually made from a computer using software that does not require much if any technical skill. People browsing through blogs often are able to insert their own comments in response to the blogger's.

Multiblogs are a particular type of blog designed to work with mobile phones, especially phones with cameras. Instead of using a computer, postings are created by sending a multimedia message or email from the phone to an online address tied to the blog. When the email arrives at a service such as TextAmerica, its subject line is automatically turned into a headline for the new posting and the message text becomes the posting itself. Any attached picture is inserted into the posting as a thumbnail linked to the full-size image.

A bit more expertise is required for multiblogging than regular blogging because text has to be input using the phone's 9-digit keypad. This is a skill increasingly common since the advent of SMS text messaging. The process is also aided by predictive text technology built into many phones.

The advantage of multiblogging is that posts can be made from anywhere at anytime and often within moments after a picture is taken or an event happens. Multiblog popularity is growing in line with skyrocketing mobile phone sales, reaching a record 516 million handsets in 2003, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. One in five mobile phones sold today is a camera phone, double the ratio a year ago. The second-generation of camera phones now available can also record video with audio. Most mobile phone networks around the world have or are being upgraded to higher bandwidths to accommodate the fact that mobiles phones are being adopted as a tool for more than just conversing. News organizations are taking notice of this trend. And Ifra, through its Newsplex research initiative, has pioneered the use of multiblogs as a professional publishing environment with the application of mainstream editorial standards and workflows.

There is a complete team of editors and journalists behind this Ifra multiblog. A newsflow editor manages the overall process, directing the reporting team toward the ultimate goal of providing a distinctively comprehensive and engaging presentation of this event. Storybuilders edit and categorize the constant flow of submissions from the mobile journalists all the while taking additional information from them over the same phones being used for newsgathering and delivery. And a new type of hybrid informatics journalist called a newsresourcer augments the multiblog submissions with research and online links adding even greater depth and breadth to the presentation.

Individually, each entry in this multiblog documents a single aspect of this conference -- an attendee's comment, a speaker's summary, an exhibitor's explanation, busy aisles, quiet corners, people energized, tired, talking, planning, confused, informed. Each entry stands alone as a piece of micro-journalism. Collectively, however, the entries accumulate to eventually form an intricate mosaic revealing the larger trends and tones of this intricately multifaceted occasion. Both on-site and remote visitors can interact with the multiblog by browsing it online, downloading the pictures, adding their own comments and even submitting their own entries via mobile or email.

Overall, Ifra's multiblog process melds some of the best attributes of in-depth, wide-ranging, detail-oriented newspaper reporting and real-time, putting-you-at-the-scene, visually engaging television coverage, leveraging the capabilities and reach of online with the latest advances in mobile. It is a thoroughly convergent media experience. – Kerry J. Northrup
Director of Publications, Ifra