Staff at the newly integrated Herald titles will see a website merger take place in the next few weeks. The Sunday Herald and Herald websites will come together to create www.heraldscotland.com. Similar plans were mooted as far back as October 2007 and major changes have taken place in the newspapers’ newsroom since Donald Martin took on a new editor-in-chief role.

Full article at this link…

• Allmediascotland: Herald&Times editor-in-chief ad renews merger speculation
• ‘A sad day for Scottish Journalism’: job cuts at Herald&Times and BBC Scotland
• Newsquest announces 40 job cuts: ‘poor trading conditions’ to blame
• Miami Herald cancels editorial outsourcing
• Milne Media: Opportunities in the Herald’s website merger

Conde Nast has appointed three senior editorial managers as ‘channel managers’ to control content across its 12 websites. The trio will split responsibilities for fashion, beauty, and entertainment and lifestyle.

• How Conde Nast is dealing with iPad advertisers
• Telegraph merges picture desk and TV under new head
• Daily Finance: Conde Nast brings in consultants to ‘rethink business’
• Conde Nast appoints new chief technology officer
• Conde Nast brings make Gourmet magazine – as an app

Pictures of ITN’s recently revamped newsroom.

• Advertising Age: San Francisco Chronicle on using Demand Media content
• ‘We will not be held to ransom’, Bournemouth Echo warns Southampton FC
• Images from a newsroom: the Star-Ledger gets webcast ready
• NMA: thelondonpaper plans to relaunch website
• ‘A significant challenge’ over at New Jersey’s Exploding Newsroom

The Times and the Sunday Times will remain ‘separate titles with separate staff’, says Sunday Times editor John Witherow.

Talks are ongoing, however, as to how the Sunday paper can be better represented on TimesOnline. At present the title drives a third of the site’s traffic.

• Beehive City: Alan Rusbridger vs John Witherow on BBC Radio 4
• No integration for the Sun and the News Of The World
• First peek at traffic stats for Times’ new site
• Sunday Sport founder expected to relaunch paper
• New York Times after Reuters business news too?

Having separate newsrooms ‘has reached the end’, James Brady, WaPo’s site editor, has said following the appointment of Marcus Brauchli as executive editor.

A final decision is yet to be made, adds Brady, but a merger has been discussed ‘conceptually’ with Brauchli.

• Washington Post Facebook app attracts 350,000 downloads
• Reuters: Robert Thomson named managing editor of Wall Street Journal
• FT.com: Washington Post hires ex-Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli
• WSJ’s managing editor Marcus Brauchli steps down
• Washington Post site attracts record traffic figures

The New York Times and International Herald Tribune are discussing a merger of their websites to expand their international audience.

Plans include a co-branded international site for the publications.

• Revamped Reuters business section on IHT.com goes live
• Mediactive: Protecting your online archive of work
• Forbes.com: IHT.com will become part of the New York Times site
• allmediascotland: Herald and Sunday Herald to merge websites
• Gawker: NYTimes falls foul of Google with IHT.com fold

The Hub and Spoke laying out may be in vogue for the majority of those adapting to an integrated newsroom but you’d be hard pressed to call Trinity Mirror’s Liverpool nerve centre anything other than an archipelago.

Alison Gow, deputy editor of Liverpool Daily Post, gave Journalism.co.uk a quick tour and explained how a partially rather than fully integrated newsroom for Liverpool’s Daily Post and Echo newspapers and a portfolio of weeklies served them best.

Similar to other large cities in the UK, Liverpool’s morning paper, the Liverpool Daily Post (typically 15,000 copies circulated per day) and the evening Echo (109,000) serve vastly different markets. To account for this the newsroom has integrated but also demarked areas where each paper’s interest is best served by not mixing processes.

The newsdesks of the Post & Echo had previously been fully integrated but the unsuccessful experiment lasted only 18 months and end in 2001, as it didn’t fully serve the needs each paper had and met with opposition from staff who were resistant to working on the other title.

“I suspect the industry is a lot more broad-minded now as we work across print, internet, TV and radio,” Gow told Journalism.co.uk.

COPY

The dailies and weekly newspapers have adapted and refined a partially integrated newsroom where the two main papers share news copy, but keep diary and features separate.

“A government minister in town would tend to be interviewed by a Post reporter,” Gow told Journalism.co.uk. “That copy would be sent by the Post newsdesk to the Echo newsdesk to be rewritten and subbed down. Echo page leads are around 350, Post 600 plus.

“The Post & Echo share a court reporter but the very distinct target audiences of both papers means what makes a splash in the Echo, gangster trials for example, may struggle to make a page lead in the Post.

“Inquests would be covered by one reporter whose copy would be shared between both papers.

“An exception would be Liverpool council meetings – mostly covered by the council reporters from both papers as it’s a contact-building exercise as much as anything.”

The Echo can also publish stories from the weeklies the day the papers are published, Gow added, as the assistant news editor has access to their content queues.

“It’s a co-operative system and involves the newsdesks, picturedesk and multimedia desks talking to each other. That’s why the command desk is so important,” added Gow.

STAFF

At the centre of the archipelago – the big island – is the command desk where Post and Echo news editors and their deputies sit along with a picture editor who works across both publications and the Echo design editor.

Reporters are title specific, as are the features and sports teams, and both papers have separate features and sports editors and deputy editors, Arts editors and motoring editors.

A multimedia head, working across both titles, also sits on the command desk. As on the web, Gow says, the two publications have ‘more fluid identities’.

Each department desks now has embedded digital journalist. Under the old system ‘they just used to sit in the corner away from everyone else’ said Gow. Now they espouse the need for web content and ensure the website remains an area of focus for each department on each title now that they break 99 per cent of their stories online.

Video is a separate entity altogether – one video journalist is responsible for managing libraries, cutting pieces and training newsroom staff and reporters in video-journalism.

She has trained eight other staff so far, giving them a week’s hands-on training so that they can manage handicams and cut footage. They aim for a new web video each day.

SUBBING

A pool of eight subs work across the Echo, the England and Welsh Daily Posts, Huddersfield Examiner, the Chester Chronicle, the Merseyside and North Wales weekly papers on a rota basis.

There are also title-specific staff who work primarily for each paper – ‘champions’ of each brand, adds Gow.

This approach has shifted subs from thinking they work for a single publication, she said, to a ‘hive-mind’ where they work across several titles.

• Liverpool Daily Post: Company bans local journalist’s blog
• #FollowJourn: @alisongow/executive digital editor
• New look for Birmingham Post website
• Liverpool Post and Echo take part in Lennon bed-in recreation
• #FollowJourn: @kmatt/head of web and data

Once so controversial as the boss of The Mirror, over the last few years David Montgomery has reinvented himself as a European media mogul.

As head of the pan-European media company Mecom, Montgomery has emerged as an internet evangelist and one of the most optimistic advocates of a multimedia future.

This is good news for Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO and editor-in-chief of Mecom’s worst performing subsidiary.

Denmark’s Berlingske Media is the biggest publisher of daily newspapers in one of Europe’s toughest newspaper markets. Revenues of paid for dailies in Denmark have been ravaged by a costly two-year-long freesheet war.

When Montgomery bought the Danish company in 2006, it had a paltry 3.5 per cent profit margin – miles away from the 15 – 20 per cent Montgomery was promising his investors.

But it’s all grist to the mill for Knudsen, who rumour has it secured her job last spring by submitting the longest list of potential cost cuts.

Montgomery’s toughest general has been charged with justifying his professed faith in the profits to be made from the new media world.

“It is my task to deliver what I have promised, but also to tell Berlingske’s journalists that we have exciting times ahead of us. It is necessary for our survival that we start using new work processes, develop our journalism and launch new digital products. Old traditions are no longer enough,” Knudsen told Journalism.co.uk

Her first act as head of Berlingske was to publicly denounce Mecom’s profit demands as unrealistic.

Simultaneously, she made it crystal clear that the financial situation required radical changes, skilfully lowering the expectations of both her boss and the unions.

Integrate everything
Central to those changes is integration. Not only converging media platforms, but also altering most of the company’s titles into ‘verticals’ that deliver copy across platforms and titles be they broadsheet, tabloid or regional newspapers.

Berlingske may have created one of the most integrated media operations in Europe, but it has also caused great concern among the company’s journalists about work flow, work culture and how it may erode the different media brands.

“Everyone has to be able to work and plan to all media platforms. Journalists get more resources to cover events in this way. Instead of sending three journalists from three different platforms or titles, we will now have one journalist cover the results of a football match, one live blogging it, and one writing the portrait of the game’s top scorer,” said Knudsen.

To ensure editorial standards, she added, each title will have a brand manager to makes sure it runs only content that is appropriate and in line with its specific values.

Discontent
These assurances have not been enough, however, to assure the domestic journalists union. It has voiced continuous concern about merging titles, job cuts and the new ‘integrated’ work environment where journalists are confined to hot desks to create a paperless environment.

Knudsen says that new technology is necessary. Adding that the increase in the number of tools at the disposal of her reporters has also created many exciting new opportunities for journalists.

“This integration is necessary to survive. Journalists today have to accept that they have to fight for every pair of eyeballs. I accepted this job because I believe, both as a journalist and as CEO, we can create something great in this company,” she said.

Not here to please
As for her proprietor, she said: “It is my impression that you can have a discussion. If I am to be in charge of this, I have to believe in it. I have made it very clear that I’m not here to please. I have a very open and direct dialogue with the management about our goals and progress. During my thirty-something years in the newspaper industry I’ve encountered a lot of unprofessional owners. Mecom is a very professional owner, the company imposes certain demands to our revenues, but that is the way it has to be.”

David Montgomery may have got himself a straight shooter, but what impression is she likely to have made on her newsroom staff? It seems she is a journalististic champion who is both admired and feared.

“If anyone can stand up to Montgomery it is she. She is completely ruthless and resembles Montgomery in many ways. I cannot think of anyone in Danish media who dares to pick a fight with her,” said a journalist who has worked with Knudsen but did not wish to be named.

“But her journalistic integrity is above reproach. She is a journalistic champion.”

• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Mecom’s Danish arm may ditch costly CMS for Drupal
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Mecom’s Danish arm will cut costs with open-source CMS
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Behind the spin of Mecom’s half-year results
• Reuters: Newspaper chief Montgomery “forced out” of publishing group
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: A blogging-journalist hero for Ada Lovelace Day

The paper will now operate with a central news desk to allow for ‘enhanced co-operation between print, web and Newswires journalists’, a memo from editor Robert Thomson has said.

• Reuters blogs: WSJ axes 50 jobs, creates new posts at New York ‘hub’
• Reuters: Robert Thomson named managing editor of Wall Street Journal
• LA Times creates ‘visual journalism’ department
• FT.com: Dow Jones planning digital overhaul of B2B activities
• iPad news: would you pay more?

Integrating newsrooms isn’t just a matter of putting all you desks in a spoke and fulcrum formation and projecting the web traffic figures on the wall.

The small matter of how you remunerate journalists expected to work both for print and web is an issue for newspapers across the globe.

It’s an issue that the Guardian and Telegraph, to name just two in the UK, have been wrestling with as they bring their divergent print and online editions closer together.

International editors sitting on a panel looking at whether integrated newsrooms are really working at the World Editors Forum, today in Goteborg, Sweden, admitted to a similar set of problems.

Jim Roberts, editor of digital news at the New York Times, told delegates that the Times’ own integration plans were hampered by the different contracts and lower pay web journalists were receiving compared to their print colleagues.

Roberts is overseeing the introduction of a ‘horizontal’ news production system where each separate news department has web producers embedded with them to encourage multimedia content production, oversee publication.

The Times is trying to spread multimedia, video, podcasts and interactive features across all its news verticals – even to the point where the Times is reverse publishing blog content as columns into the printed edition of the newspaper.

This drive for web content has also brought a renewed thirst to keep the newspaper print edition fresh, as Roberts said ‘to redirect this energy back into print’.

But as staff are now expected to work for both web and print, the different contracts they work under has led to union wrangles. WSJ.com managing editor Almar Latour and Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais, Spain, agreed that they faced similar contractual problems on their integration projects.

• #followjourn: Dan Roberts/business editor
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Print and online integration ‘not the key to success’
• Headline mishaps at Johnston Press and Newsquest titles
• MediaGuardian: Trinity Mirror announces redundancies for all 300 editorial staff in Midlands
• iPad news: would you pay more?

Haymarket has merged the editorial teams for its medical titles GP and Independent Nurse.

As part of the changes the publisher has appointed Emma Bower, who launched Independent Nurse four years ago, as editor of GP.

Bower will now take on the editorship of both titles and responsibility for the newly merged team, which will be responsible for producing content across the magazines and the group’s Healthcare Republic website.

“So far, much of the crossover between our print and digital operations has developed on an ad hoc basis. Now we can tailor the structure of the editorial team to properly fit the needs of both platforms, and allow for further growth,” said Colin Cooper, editor-in-chief of Haymarket Medical Media, in a press release.

The integration will take effect from June 16.

• #FollowJourn: @NeilDurham/deputy editor
• MediaWeek to go online-only; 18 Brand Media editorial jobs cut
• Reuters blogs: WSJ axes 50 jobs, creates new posts at New York ‘hub’
• MediaGuardian: Express owner Richard Desmond loses libel case
• MediaGuardian: Trinity Mirror announces redundancies for all 300 editorial staff in Midlands

The Los Angeles Times has integrate its print and web picture desks and video operations into a new visual journalism department.

The move is the next phase in the Times’ alignment of its web and print operations, which will see mergers across the continuous news desk and main metro news desk this month.

The new department will be headed by Colin Crawford, who has been promoted to deputy managing editor for photography.

“Combining these three departments under the umbrella of visual journalism will improve our ability to present multimedia storytelling in an even more engaging way, and take greater advantage of our outstanding photo staff,” editor Ross Stanton said in a memo to staff.

• MediaGuardian: Trinity Mirror announces redundancies for all 300 editorial staff in Midlands
• Newsquest announces 40 job cuts: ‘poor trading conditions’ to blame
• WAN 08: Disparities between pay of web and print journalists – a problem all over the world for integrating newsrooms
• PoynterOnline: LA Times alert police about geocode error
• Press Gazette: Rusbridger says integration of Guardian and Observer will ‘unlock creativity’ of staff

Today’s a good day to point at three examples of how you can enhance the value of online news by linking it to additional, meaningful and relevant content.

I’m calling them the Three Spheres of relevance, three different approaches to creating news relevance: locally on a news site by bringing related content to a single destination, by using tagged metadata to enable better linking to relevant material and in the newsgathering process itself (stick with me, this might get into seriously tenuous segue territory).

Thomson Reuters has launched a new version of its semantic tagging tool Open Calais that broadly enhances and builds on its first round of development (hat tip Martin Stabe).

Open Calais has made publicly accessible a piece of internal software used by Thompson Reuters that automatically reads content and creates relationships between different articles, news pieces and reports based on the businesses, places, events, organisations and individuals mentioned in them.

External developers have been encouraged to play with the technology to create an additional level of metadata for their own sites that could offer users a more sophisticated level of additional content around news pieces and blog posts by relying on automatically generated semantic links rather than more rudimentary manual or algorithmically created versions.

The second round of development two has brought WordPress plugins and new modules for Drupal to allow developers to more easily integrate metadata into the applications and third-party tools they are building.

As part of round two, Thomson Reuters has also launched Calais Tagaroo, a WordPress plugin that automatically generates suggested tags for bloggers that want to incorporate additional relevant content to their posts.

This weekend has also seen the launch of New York Times’ Olympics blog, Rings, as a destination where readers can get a plethora of Times content about the Beijing games. The blog is the latest edition to the Times’ Olympics sub-site.

In addition to covering the sporting competition the blog – like the Times’ sub-site – draws in reporting from Times’ sports, foreign and business desks, as well as taking pieces from bureaux in China.

Compare this with the Olympics destination the BBC is running for the games. It could easily draw sporting coverage together with relevant material from the news pages but it has chosen not to make that link and instead leave its users to drift off elsewhere to find out about the other issues surrounding the games. It doesn’t make the most of pulling all the relevant and related material togther in the way the Times does with its blogs and sub-site.

The final example of news organisations working on relevance comes before any of that content is even written.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told the Press Gazette that as part of the newspaper’s adoption of an integrated print and digital news production process reporting staff would abandon the traditional newsdesk structure to instead ape the set-up of Guardian.co.uk reporting staff and be rearranged into subject-specific teams or ‘pods’ to allow closer working between reporters and the ability file for both the web and the print edition as the story demands.

• Reuters using Apture for multimedia linking
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk
• IHT and Reuters partner for Middle East coverage
• New York Times debuts aggregation homepage
• Online video: Reuters wants to offer more raw video to clients

The independence of the Guardian’s three national titles – Guardian.co.uk, Observer and Guardian in print – will not be compromised by the integration of the news production process across the titles, editor Alan Rusbridger told the Press Gazette.

Rusbridger claimed that combining the titles would ‘unlock the creativity’ of his staff but that the distinct voices of each title would remain. Senior editors met with staff last week to discuss the future of the newspapers as it integrates its production processes.

• Alan Rusbridger on his vision for a ‘mutualised newspaper’ (video)
• Trinity Mirror overhauls senior management in Midlands
• Update: Internal memo says Observer closure ‘actively being considered’
• Editorial job losses at Express Newspapers reduced from 70 following union talks
• City A.M.: Capital Ideas group makes bid for Observer

The Telegraph has moved further towards its vision of a fully integrated newsroom with a raft of promotions, new arrivals and a newly integrated Science team.

Integrated desks contribute to both titles and the web site, The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk, and so far business, sport, foreign and comment desks have been reshaped to fit the new mould.

The integrated science team will be headed up by Daily Telegraph science editor Roger Highfield and Sunday Telegraph science correspondent Richard Gray, with Professor Steve Jones continuing to contribute. The team will be assisted by Kate Devlin.

The changes follow the abrupt departure of Nic Fleming, Daily Telegraph science correspondent, two weeks ago.

Following the significant number of departures from the Telegraph sports desk last month, former Times sports feature writer Alison Kervin is joining as chief sports interviewer. She replaces star interviewer Sue Mott.

Other changes include Stephen Adams’ promotion to arts correspondent, replacing Nigel Reynolds who was axed last month.

The Daily Telegraph has also appointed former Press Association chief reporter John Bingham to take a senior reporting role.

Further changes are expected as the integration policy continues to roll out.

There has been talk of strike action over management decisions to axe staff members, which included the Telegraph Media Group’s decision to remove the entire reader relations desk as well as individual journalists over the last few months.

Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft resigned in September 2007, reportedly over the integration strategy.

• #followjourn: Christopher Hope/Whitehall editor
• Daily Mail deputy editor takes news editor role at Sunday Telegraph
• The Drum: Newspapers ‘could introduce football Twitter reporter role’
• Guardian wins top sports award with multimedia coverage
• Telegraph merges picture desk and TV under new head