Connections in the Newsroom
Beau Dure filled a variety of roles at The Chronicle before he graduated in 1991. A few years later, he found himself a pioneer in the strange, new world of online journalism at the Greensboro News & Record, and later, at USA Today. With few precedents to follow, Beau was left to chart his own way. Here are a few lessons he learned.
By Beau Dure
What does it mean to be connected to your co-workers?
Can you be more connected to someone half a world away than to someone at the next desk? Should a newsroom be grouped by role in the physical sense, or will the virtual sense suffice? How much do journalists gain from face-to-face communication or commiseration?
I got my first exposure to these questions in 1996, when I moved online after five years of working on copy desks. It was a literal, physical move from the News & Record newsroom to a square conference room subdivided into cubicles like some Dilbertian nightmare.
Our new office was halfway between the newsroom and the ad department, and we were told to think about breaching the wall. The office mixed our ad sales group, our artists, our news editor and the “producers” — the group I was coordinating — who were supposed to produce both news and ads.
The managers — a three-headed Hydra from news, advertising and technology — each had separate offices, leaving the squabbles over time management confined to our office and giving the rest of the building a noise buffer against our screaming. The hybrid experiment faded out as we got our work processes in order, but those of us who landed on the “news” side of the wall still found ourselves walking around quite a bit. We often fought over our office’s one Coyote terminal, from which we could monitor the newsroom’s work and send 1980s-style instant messages to our colleagues.
The losers of those fights walked to the main newsroom or the separate sports department. Upon returning, we could use AOL’s IM to chat with our online colleagues two desks away.
Little wonder I took a stand for “convergence” in a column for the now-dormant discussion site SportsEditor.com. I was wearing through too many shoes.
The idea behind all the face time — both in Greensboro and at a similarly foot-fatiguing project at USA TODAY — was to avoid the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. We were supposed to be evangelists for our new forms of communication.
Today, more newsrooms are converged, including mine. But that’s in the physical sense. Convergence in the virtual or metaphysical sense is still what individual staff members make of it. One of the online editors is now so far removed from his colleagues that we can’t tell whether he’s at his desk without a quick IM exchange.
Meanwhile, the technology has advanced so rapidly that it’s no longer strictly necessary for me to go to the office to do my job. I’m often more productive at home. And I’m hardly alone. Even though I spend most of my time blogging and writing, I occasionally chip in with other production tasks from the comfort of my living room, with only my dog to keep me company. Photographers no longer need darkrooms. Even if you’re dabbling in multimedia, the editing can be done on any laptop. (Recording, on the other hand, is better in a studio or on location.)
Yet the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon is still an issue. Departments that aren’t on the same floor tend to forget each other as they go about their daily business. A good editor can still take the pulse of a newsroom by walking around, and that’s enough of a reason for bloggers like me to put on real clothes and get into the office.
The other phenomenon of a 21st-century newsroom worth mentioning here: A good project may have plenty of people from disparate departments temporarily joined together. Most newsrooms aren’t physically capable of handling this sort of thing. We have our messy semi-cubicles, sometimes fortified with towering stacks of papers as if we’re trying to build another wall and a ceiling, and we’re cordoned off into various departments.
So if you’re starting from scratch, consider two things:
1. Can someone walk around and get a feel for what’s going on in all departments?
2. Do you have rooms in which you can pull together a reporter, editor, multimedia producer and 2–3 other people who can collaborate? Not just a meeting — actually working together? Be sure to add a speakerphone with conferencing capability, because someone might be out in the field as well.
That leaves only the most important aspect of a newsroom. Whatever you do, however many walls you build or tear down, you must ensure one thing. You must have easy access to snacks and caffeinated beverages at all hours. Not 8 a.m. to midnight. All hours.
If you don’t, you’re better off hanging out with me and my dog in our living room.
