Newsrooms have traditionally been associated with legacy media (newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, radio stations) outlets – companies with offices where journalists worked together to distribute their news. This still happens, even as many formal newsrooms have moved to virtual environments where journalists now work from home. But the basic building blocks of newsrooms have remained the same while new types of newsroom structures have also come to the fore.
The legacy media employ a number of people in varied positions to help their newsrooms function. These newsrooms have different structures. Newsroom structures can be as simple as entrepreneurial news websites with just one or two employees (a journalist and a sub-editor) to large, converged newsrooms with many employees doing many different things.
A converged newsroom is one where many different departments and journalists work together in one newsroom, sharing their skills and knowledge. For example, videographers and writing journalists will all work in the same newsroom. In a converged newsroom journalists will also apply various skills to their work, a writing journalist might also take photos and make videos. The digital era has led to convergence in many newsrooms around the world, where journalists are expected to be multi-skilled.
Newsroom have been changing in the last few decades. The coronavirus pandemic has also led to some significant changes in newsroom structures, but, mostly, newsrooms have been changing because of new technology since the advent of the internet. New technology led to convergence. This means that newsrooms now often produce stories for many different platforms. They have structures that help them reach this goal. There are very few newsrooms left that produce news for one platform only.
Many newsrooms are no longer physical. The Potchefstroom Herald is among many newspapers that no longer has a physical newsroom. News work is done remotely from the homes of journalists and editors. News meetings take place virtually. Even a large company such as Media24 decided to close its office in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, and has journalists who now mostly work from home. They sometimes gather at a central office for discussions or meetings. This is partially a way to save money, but it is also an efficient way of working because, with fast internet speeds, it is now possible to do much work from home. This saves commuting time and fuel costs and leads to greater productivity.
Traditionally, large newsrooms follow a hierarchical structure (a structure with different levels or ranks). Generally, whether in a news agency, television or radio station, newspaper or magazine, the structure is somewhat similar, and a typical day at the office follows more or less the same pattern.
There are several departments in every media organisation. These include administration, engineering, commercial/advertising, and editorial. The editorial department is directly responsible for what is read, heard or seen in the media. This is the department that interests us the most; but, of course, the advertising and marketing departments are also important because they help find the money to keep the business going. If you work for a small news organisation, you might be expected to help find sponsors and come up with ideas to find money to finance the news production process, apart from doing your journalistic work. You might be expected to do marketing work as well. If you work for a non-profit newsroom, you might be expected to help look for new sponsors.
Daily newspapers or websites
In most countries, large daily newspapers generally have a large staff. With the addition of online sites, many newspapers now publish news regularly throughout the day, not just once a day or once a week. Some only appear online, as print circulation has declined so much that, for some publications, it is no longer financially viable to publish printed editions.
In South Africa, some examples are the Daily Sun and Volksblad. In the UK, The Independent is an example of a formerly printed newspaper that now only appears online.
Daily newsrooms at printed newspapers and converged print and online news outlets have a relatively similar structure. The graphic below illustrates a converged newsroom in a general way. There are minor variations between newsrooms. Very small newsrooms will have only a few of these roles.
Radio
Radio – one of the most widely used sources of news in the world – has the advantage of speed and easy availability. Radio journalists can get the news on the air quickly, and anyone with even a battery-powered radio can hear the news almost anywhere at any time. It is also easier for most people to process audio news, as it takes more effort to read the news than to listen to the news.
Radio journalists tell stories with sound as well as words, so listeners feel they have experienced some of what the event was really like.
Radio news is on the air many times a day, so it is frequently updated. However, most radio stations provide only a limited amount of time for each news bulletin (unless they are talk radio stations where they may talk about the news all day).
On many radio stations, news bulletins are a brief summary of only the biggest stories, without the depth or breadth that a newspaper or audio documentary, such as a podcast, can offer. Some radio stations present longer news discussion and documentary programmes. Some radio stations now also present podcasts.
The infographic below shows what a radio newsroom usually looks like. This can differ between different radio stations.
Television
With both sound and pictures, television news bulletins can show viewers what is happening, not just tell them about it. One of television’s strengths is its ability to convey emotion and share experiences with viewers.
Studies have shown that people remember television news much better than any other medium because it contains visuals and sound (Fox et al., 2004). Technological advances – smaller cameras, digital editing, the use of mobile phones to record visuals, and mobile uploading of stories to the newsroom’s content management system – have made it possible for television to be almost as fast as radio in getting a story on the air.
Television’s dependence on pictures can be a drawback: television news sometimes avoids telling complicated stories because they are not visually interesting. For example, a long and important sitting of parliament might not make it to the television news bulletin because visuals may only show people talking behind their microphones.
The diagram below shows what a typical television newsroom looks like. Note that there can be minor differences between different types of television newsrooms.
Online newsrooms
The distinction between the traditional categories of print and broadcast news has blurred. In South Africa and many other countries, many news organisations now produce news across a variety of platforms, including the internet. Since the internet is infinitely expandable, online news is not necessarily subject to the same restrictions of space and time imposed on the print and broadcast media. News sites can provide more information and keep it available for a longer time and they can make it possible for users to search for the news that interests them the most.
Online news sites affiliated with newspapers, radio and television stations may look similar to the converged newsroom structures described above. Journalists in online newsrooms for radio and television stations also illustrate their stories with photographs, and many offer streaming videos of stories or complete visual news bulletins. They may also supply a podcast version so that readers can listen to the news. News organisations sometimes also post their own blogs, letting journalists write online diaries about the stories they are covering or the decisions being made in the newsroom.
The structure of online newsrooms is quite similar to the converged newsroom, shown above, although there are many different types of online newsrooms. Some online newsrooms consist of just a few people, while others are very large. There are now many independent, entrepreneurial journalists who create their own content and distribute this content on platforms such as YouTube or TikTok. These can be called “one-person newsrooms”.
One-person newsrooms
A new type of “newsroom” might be called one-person newsrooms. The ease of creating and distributing news online has made it possible for anyone with a smartphone or a computer with access to the internet to create news channels and distribute their news. This can be on social media, through newsletters, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, websites, etc. There are many examples of people on social media platforms, such as TikTok and Facebook, who distribute news on their platforms (see chapter 9).
These people work in newsrooms from their home, in coffee shops, or even on the road, from hotel rooms or their cars. These types of newsrooms carry some risks, particularly because some independent journalists are biased and distribute only information that shows one side of a story. If you work alone, there is also a risk that your news stories are not properly checked for grammar and spelling mistakes and that there is no second pair of eyes to help you verify your content.
However, one-person newsrooms can work. Many well-known journalists (see chapter 9) work for themselves. They write or create their own news videos and publish themselves across various channels.
The graphic below shows a one-person newsroom:
A good one-person newsroom should consist of the journalist (who also plays the role of editor) and at least one other person (or even a friend) who can help with editing stories and verifying facts. It is very important if you work for yourself that someone else should check your work. As you will see in our discussion in chapter 5 about creating news packages, it is essential that stories should always be checked. You cannot check your own stories, the human mind misses our own mistakes. Some independent journalists also use video or audio editors on a freelance basis to help with the creation of videos or podcasts.
