For example, print and online journalists are no longer expected to work purely in their specialized media. Instead, they are expected to be both print and online journalists, and probably have working knowledge of radio and TV. News organisations do not operate solely in one media (except for specialist, new, online media outlets like Brisbane Times). The ABC for example, operates across TV, radio and online, while papers like The Australian also have an online presence.
Journalists in these organisations have to not only be able to work with journalists in other media sectors, but also have to be able to write an article for print and then write it's online sister. No longer are print journalists writing one copy and sending it to online journalists to write an online version. Instead, they have to do both jobs.
Therefore, physical newsrooms are no longer separated into print and online. While different sectors may be evident as some journalists are required to remain in one section (such as managing directors, editors or producers), regular reporters have the ability to move fluidly around a newsroom. The following picture demonstrates a more modern newsroom structure.
Source: Fernando Samaniego - 25 Tips for a Modern Newsroom
An example of a newsroom embracing the need for a multi-media structure is The Seattle Times. According to Knight Digital Media Centre, The Seattle Times' newsroom previously had very separate print and online managing directors, each working independently of one another. Now, however, there are three branches of the newsroom: creation (news-gathering staff), curation (production staff) and community (staff who engage with the community, including local bloggers).
Executive Editor David Boardman says that the old newsroom where everything was separate was unworkable. "We were in the same newsroom physically, but it was a situation where the online operation was just a processing operation and the website was just the newspaper online with a few updates throughout the day. There was a little bit of dabbling with multi-media, blogging, but not much," he said.
However this new hybrid newsroom which focuses on the stages of producing news and not on the type of media being used to distribute news, plays to the strengths of each media. It allows reporters to focus on reporting, regardless of what media they are using.
For students, this means a few things. It means that we must be proficient in all types of journalism, and not have a specialty. We have to be able to prove to employers that we can write for online (by including pictures, videos, slideshows), write for print (formal written style, no reliance on graphics) and write for TV (over-reliance on images, casual style of talking). We also have to prove that we can tell one story over a variety of platforms without being too repetitive. It also means that we need to know our stories inside out; we are now responsible for telling this one story over every type of media and must bear the full responsibility for quotes, facts and sources.
In a way, it means that students graduating into the current workplace have an advantage. We have grown up using a variety of media and have been trained to use new media, including blogs and social media. We have an advantage over older journalists, who while have experience, may not have our knowledge of how to tell a story over a variety of platforms.
The best way to show how much value news organisations place on multi-platform journalism is to show you the following advertisement for The Guardian. Most people have probably already seen the ad. We were shown it in the lecture on Monday but my Mum showed it to me a while ago when it was first released. This ad is still considered one of the best advertisements for a news organisations because it shows how diverse and modern The Guardian is, and how this type of journalism is what all modern news organisations are striving to achieve.
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