| Article Index |
|---|
| Chapter 5: The Mission |
| The Washington Post |
| CNN |
| Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
| Examiner.com |
| BBC Online |
| The Guardian |
| The Daily Telegraph |
| Lancashire Evening Post |
| All Pages |
5.8 The original “newsroom of the future”: The Daily Telegraph
When it moved to its purpose-built premises near London’s Victoria Station, the Telegraph Media Group shape-shifted from a conservative publisher of Tory-focused morning and Sunday newspapers into a 24/7 multi-media operation, running a newspaper and website featuring ITN news video and several in-house television portals for business, sport and lifestyle. TMG, majority owned by reclusive property billionaires, David and Frederick Barclay, created the “newsroom of the future” which has been widely copied, including by Fairfax Media, which adopted the “hub and spoke” model for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Screens constantly updating lists of telegraph.co.uk’s most popular stories dominate this impressive newsroom. Conference goes all day and editor Will Lewis’ decisions are relayed from section heads to reporters working for both the Web and print. Digital editor Edward Roussel said, unlike most competitors, the site had to operate strictly as a business: “If you look at the Guardian, it is owned by the Scott Trust, which is run to ensure the newspaper and website are adequately funded by cross-subsidising from the more commercially successful properties in the group; News Ltd is able to subsidise its newspapers and websites from a range of different media properties. We have had to make money from the word go.” It hasn’t all been plain sailing.
The National Union of Journalists was quoted in the UK’s Press Gazette this year claiming more than 150 editorial staff had left the Daily and Sunday Telegraph since the Victoria Station move in 2006i. Roussel said the new era called for a new type of reporter, with the attributes of a wire journalist or a sports reporter: “If you imagine the way a football reporter works, filing grabs every few minutes and then turning the whole thing into a story very quickly afterthe end of the game, that is the way our reporters work now when filing for online,” he said. Roussel believes success lies in original stories, or “premium” content.
He adheres to the Jarvis maxim: “Do what you do best and link to the rest”. He says outsourcing effectively reduces costs. He told a conference at New York’s City University in October that the Telegraph’s deal with ITN to use their video news content had paid off, as ITN could produce material technically far better than the newspaper’s, and the newspaper could concentrate on its core business.28 At the most recent audit, telegraph.co.uk was Britain’s second most-visited news website, with 22.95 million unique users in September, behind guardian.co.uk on 24.19 million.
