Top 5 measures in the newsroom for 2009

As a consequence of the economic downturn, many publishing houses are engaging once again in intensive discussions about how to reduce costs in the newsroom. In the U.S.A., many newspapers started to lay off personnel months ago. Jobs are also under threat in the U.K., and in Germany one of the biggest regional newspaper publishing companies, the WAZ Group, has announced its intention to save EUR 30 million p.a. – with a large share of this to be achieved in the newsroom.

It is becoming increasingly important to work efficiently, while at the same time maintaining quality standards. However, frequently short-term and poorly considered measures are carried out in order to improve the figures. Instead of subjecting the, in many cases, traditional working methods and processes in the newsrooms to a fundamental analysis and adapting them accordingly, all too often personnel are haphazardly removed from structures without consideration of the medium and long-term consequences. But it is especially the reorganisation and restructuring of work processes in the newsroom that offer a major potential for obtaining a sustained increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of the newsroom as well as a means of securing or even enhancing editorial quality.

For 2009, newspaper newsrooms should examine precisely which instruments they can use to be successful. Listed in the following are five measures that are not fully utilised in most newsrooms.

1st Measure: Optimise editorial planning

Introducing or improving editorial planning is one of the first approaches towards optimising processes in the newsroom. This means deciding early on, at least on an outline basis, the selection of topics, the timing of the publication of their content via print and online and the positioning in the various media. A precondition for this is to consider the topics in a differentiated way as regards relevance, topicality and best possible platform. Not everything is of equal importance for the public, not everything is “breaking news” and not everything is suitable for multi-platform coverage. Thus by prioritising the topics it is possible to better utilise the newsroom resources – from the reporter up to production.

By improved and earlier cross-media planning it is possible to give reporters, photographers and production specialists assignments that are both more precise and more in advance timewise for the newspaper edition or for video: This improves the quality of the articles, therefore reducing the need for reworking. Peak workloads in the production area are reduced because contents are spread more evenly over the day or the week and can be processed. Such a planning strategy was introduced recently at the Nottingham Evening Post and Welwyn and Hatfield Times in the U.K. It has also been applied successfully since a longer time at Nordjyske Medier in Denmark. In every case, it proved possible to increase the levels of both quality and efficiency.

2nd Measure: Generate rather than check quality

Promoting quality consciousness represents an additional challenge. To date, in many newsrooms basic requirements, such as correct grammar or spelling, continue to be checked and not generated. As a consequence, much too much time is spent on cross-checking and correcting that would be better invested in creative tasks.

Then again, the knowledge that such checking is done, as well as the absence in many cases of feedback to “upstream stages” (e.g. to the reporter from the editor), means that there can be no learning effect. Paradoxically, experience shows that too many checks do not necessarily improve the quality and can even result in new errors being introduced into the text. The Daily Telegraph in London managed to halve the number of checks without lowering the standard of quality by giving every editor in the news chain more responsibility. The freed-up time resources can be used for new tasks, in the case of the Daily Telegraph this time is invested in digital journalism.

3rd Measure: Produce pages more efficiently

The increased use of design modules for page production is another method for increasing efficiency. This optimisation of page layout, together with more intensive planning, means that it is possible to quickly design pages with content and page area known early on in the day. This in turn facilitates giving assignments to reporters as they can be told more precisely the desired length of an article. It also reduces the peak workloads at the page production stage before page deadline, as certain pages must be altered only slightly.

4th Measure: Qualify personnel

The successful implementation of all the listed measures is dependent to a major degree on the personnel who are involved. They must be given the necessary skills, e.g. to plan contents in a cross-media way, prioritise contents based on the profiles of the target audience or to use the many possibilities of new digital forms to cover topics. Leading personnel is also becoming increasingly important where quality is concerned: an aimed communication of tasks, constructive criticism or the use of design modules in the editorial or production system. However, more important than specific skills for implementing the measures is having the right attitude. An in-depth understanding of the backgrounds, interrelationships and pursued objectives, as well as the conviction on the part of each individual of the sense of the measures are the precondition for their successful implementation. Such understanding and the specialised skills can be communicated by aimed and structured training programs.

5th Measure: Generate content effectively

Besides optimisation in the planning and production area as well as personnel development, synergies can be used also at the content generation stage that lead to time savings and cost optimisation. Some topics, in many cases from the area of entertainment and specialised subjects, are not subject to geographical or time limitations. Likewise, processing content for specific target audiences is in many cases very similar or can be adapted relatively simply. Examples of such topics are news about celebrities, presenting and testing new car models, service information on health, fashion, education or career.

This type of content can be obtained either from third parties (something that is done already in many instances by the taking over and reworking of agency bulletins or sports and TV schedules) or, in the case of publishing houses that produce several different titles, produced in “joint newsrooms” operating as a type of “internal agency”. The identity of the individual titles or brands respectively is not endangered, as long as “core topics” that constitute the brand DNA are not outsourced or centrally sourced.

An example of this highly effective form of multiple content use is the so-called “Blue Group” of the Axel-Springer publishing corporation in Berlin. From a large-scale newsroom, topics are generated that are subsequently modified in each case for a wide range of different products: regional newspaper (Berliner Morgenpost), national newspaper (Die Welt) and its light edition (Welt Kompakt), national Sunday newspaper (Welt am Sonntag) as well as the accompanying websites.

Such a utilisation of synergies from cross-title “joint departments” is, however, frequently dependent on the publishing house structure; especially if it is desired to remain within one’s own corporate structure. But existing cooperation models of regional newspaper publishing houses that serve different target audiences demonstrate that manifold forms of synergies are possible.

None of the five listed measures can be regarded in an isolated manner. Especially the planning and production-oriented methods as well as personnel development are closely interconnected. Where the will exists, every newsroom can implement these measures also in the medium term. Certainly they are in every way better that short-term cost-saving models to the detriment of personnel and quality.