It is hard to say what a multimedia newsroom should look like or will look like in the near future. What best can be said is that the media will continue to move towards a converged model. There will be plenty of tries and misses in the process.
Much will depend on technology, and devices on which content will be transferred. But one thing is certain. The walls in the newsroom will continue to come down. There will be more interaction between traditional and digital teams. Many existing job profiles will disappear, and many new ones will emerge.
It’s an exciting time to be in the media for those who want to ride the technology wave; and uncertain times for those who want to stick to what they know best.
Here’s my vision of tomorrow’s newsroom – how a traditional print newsroom will metamorphose into a converged newsroom. The major domo in this newsroom will not be the News Editor but the Web Producer, who will guide print, audio, video, online and multimedia editors.
The team in black (in the graphic below) will be the print interface. It will share a common workspace with the team in blue which will include Audio Editors, Video Editors, Knowledge Editors, Social Media Editors, Web Administrator and Research Editors.
There will be a dramatic change in work flow. News breaks will be processed for being consumed on mobile devices. This will be a priority because more and more people are turning to their mobile handhelds for information.
The Internet website will be the next recipient of the information. This will include text, audio and video stories.
The final processing of information will be done for the newspaper. This will be in depth, and the news team will be greatly helped by the Research Editors in putting this content together. It will be narrow focussed content, and will be targeted at a high brow, up market audience.
Even as the specialised content is being assembled for the newspaper, the central desk will continue to produce updates for the web and mobile devices.
This operation can run smoothly only if the newspaper staff goes “multimedia”.
The chart below gives the list of professionals that a traditional print newsroom will have to hire to become a multimedia newsroom.
