The first ONA panel on day 2 is about how to manage a newsroom in the 21st century. Despite starting at 8.30am, the session is pretty packed.
This is understandable, as just about every newsroom is struggling to bridge the cultural differences between print, broadcast and online.
Jim Brady from the WashingtonPost.com admitted that managing the relationship with the print side was still the biggest challenge he was dealing with. The Post maintains a separate online operation in Arlington, while the newspaper is in downtown D.C.
Part of the issue is that the attitude of the newspaper folks has changed over the past two years. Brady said that the newspaper now wanted to do far more online:
Everyone in the print newsroom really wants to work with you. So the challenge is how to pick the right projects without dampening down enthusiasm at the print side
The Post is aiming to bridge the cultural gulf by bringing 20 print people over to the website for a few days. The aim is to communicate the difference between mediums. For example, Brady said one of the things they need to explain is that the front page of a website is not like A1 of a newspaper and that many people come in at story level in any case.
By comparison, USAToday has moved to integrate the print and online operations.
Kinsey Wilson said that despite having a converged newsroom, there is still a fair amount of side by side organisaton, even after two years.
Wilson said the next stage was to push down responsibilities to editors so that they don’t need to go through so many layers of control.
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