jtm-next-newsroom

A newsroom like no other -- intentionally open, collaborative

The organizational plan and staffing chart for The Next Newsroom reflect the different goals and new approaches on which this news-gathering organization is founded. These new jobs and new reporting structures bear little resemblance to the newsroom structures of today.

This is intentional. The Next Newsroom consciously will try to build an open, collaborative organization:

Link newsroom management structure to Community Stock Option Plan. Every household in the local community automatically becomes part of the CSOP and every household can participate in management oversight of The Next Newsroom through regular CSOP town hall meetings and election of the CSOP media board of directors. 

(See the post about the CSOP board.)

In partnership with local universities and/or leadership development programs, The Next Newsroom will ensure that its volunteers and staff have the latest skills for governance, communication, decision-making and transparency.

Tiered and tailored content and ad sales. The Next Newsroom will produce more than one digital product. The Next Newsroom offers tiered and tailored packages of products, based on existing community networks and interests. Readers can pick from a variety of tiered content and tailored packages. Examples: More sports/less sports news; more community commentary/less community commentary, etc. Staff will produce tiered and tailored reports around the most popular community interests.

Collaborative partnerships inside The Next Newsroom and with the community. The Next Newsroom will be organized by task, not title. Collaborations and discussions will be the goal on issues related to content, production challenges, and business development. These discussions will include regular interactions and critique with the public, sources, bloggers and other stakeholders. These transparent conversations will be posted online for viewing and comment by all CSOP members.

Seek feedback regularly on what worked, what didn’t. The Next Newsroom is inextricably linked to a community of readers. A public feedback loop can be quickly activated and used on a regular basis to gauge interest in stories, effectiveness of advertising, etc. We ask readers to patrol content for accuracy. Rather than complain about bias, we ask readers to find it and alert us to it. The Next Newsroom also monitors other new digital publishing ventures including:  Global Voices; Village Soup; Madisoncommons, etc.

A publication, but no presses. The Next Newsroom is a digital publication.  At first, The Next Newsroom may have an ink-on-paper element, or a printed guide to the digital edition. Any print edition will have some digital sections available online as part of the subscription. This gives The Next Newsroom a pathway to paid online content. Any printing will be farmed out to others, or be based on address-specific desktop printers. The Next Newsroom will aggressively test new forms of delivery. These include Web only, home printers, and electronic tablets. Partnerships with technology companies appear very promising. Research on digital publications like The New York Times Reader and the University of Missouri EMprint edition clearly show a well-designed digital newspaper is far easier to read that a Web site. And, readers of digital publications spend more time with digital editions than they do on Web sites.

CSOP editor and publisher. The leader of The Next Newsroom is the editor/publisher. He or she reports to the Community Stock Option Plan advisory board.  This is a journalist who is also a lynchpin to the CSOP stakeholders. He or she will meet with the CSOP directors and with his editors on a regular basis.

NEXT POST -- MORE SPECIFIC JOB DESCRIPTIONS.

Engaging with colleges and high schools to join and help shape their civic conversation for the sake of democracy

Partner with colleges and high schools, locally and nationally, to develop internships.  The Next Newsroom is a real-life, real-time experience for aspiring journalists who want to prepare themselves for careers in 21^st-century journalism. The project will actively seek partnerships with journalism programs at regional and national universities to build a student reporting corps. Similarly, there is strong evidence that American high-school students are changing the way they consume -- and create -- news. JTM-TNN will seek to engage teen-agers on their terms to create new forms and voices of news and civic engagement.  How?

Listings, reviews, databases, multimedia part of tiered and custom content

Tiered and custom-tailored content using a Cable TV/HBO pricing model for a range of services. Basic news, advertising and other information created by The Next Newsroom in print and online will be free. But just as cable TV and HBO have learned, revenue can grow by offering tiered and tailored special products and packages.

The Next Newsroom will develop added tiers of content for sale to CSOP households. This tiered content will include such things as enhanced local listings for restaurants, extra movie reviews, access to other local databases on jobs, Real Estate, crime statistics, sports statistics, community school achievement scores. These tiers of content will be linked directly to the interests and desires outlined by the local social network interests.

In addition, The Next Newsroom will regularly produce tailored content for specific local social network groups. This includes special publications, in print or via e-books, tied to community events, churches, sports teams, clubs, community history, etc.

The tailored content would also have multimedia presentations such as documentary videos or protected Web sites where additional newsroom content also could be offered for sale.

For a fee, consumers also will be able to tailor their news and information packages to specific topic areas or needs that go beyond basic service. The tailored news packages could mean more sports/less sports, more photos/fewer photos, all obituaries/no obits, etc.

And, CSOP members will be offered the opportunity to lease or buy two higher-tier digital delivery vehicles. These options include:

• Electronic reading tablets. The Next News Newsroom project will contract with Sony, Fujitsu, or others, for leasing tablet/laptop devices that, in turn, will be leased to news consumers as part of a tiered service package. The Next Newsroom already has been working with the University of Missouri, and others, to develop digital reading software that creates a pleasurable reading experience on a tablet.
  
• Address-specific home printers. The Next Newsroom project will work with Hewlett-Packard and others to develop a home-printer model of content delivery for those who want to print out and read content.

Tapping into the Baby Boomer retirees: Oldjournalists.com

Oldjournalists.com The Next Newsroom will establish a network of professional journalists who aren’t on staff but who can free-lance for special projects. This group, oldjournalists.com, may have taken early retirement, found other jobs outside the business, or who are simply interested in nurturing and support The Next Newsroom model. What will motivate old journalists? How should they be compensated?

Identifying and training social-network leaders critical

Identify local social networks in the community and have them report their passions. The Next Newsroom’s news coverage plan will be organized around the interests and needs of identified local social networks in a community. The Next Newsroom will map these social networks, identify key participants in these networks, and ask champions from within these to help devise news coverage and gather news from the networks.

Train leaders of local social networks to be better journalists and photojournalists. The Next Newsroom will host training sessions, give seminars in higher-level Web based tools like Microsoft Vista, and offer basic training in Journalism 101.

These Training programs could be organized through a local college or perhaps at a major university. The University of Missouri already has expressed an interest in this project.

Their training would include:

• Understanding social networks;
• Digital advertising, and digital technology;
• Use of electronic  tablets;
• How to write for the Web, photograph, video for the Web, verify for the Web.
• How to develop community databases for content purposes and to sell at a premium;

Three tiers define the professional-amateur relationships

Structure The Next Newsroom around a pro-am model. The Next Newsroom will be structured around teams of professional journalists and community experts who work together to plan and gather local news and local content. To understand how this relationship can work, consider that The Next Newsroom will be organized around three tiers of reporting:

Tier I - High-end enterprise reporting done mostly by professional journalists.

Tier II - Community beat reporting, which is a mix of some professional journalists and some community experts, quality bloggers, and independent community contributors. These pro-am teams will organize and collaborate around key beats and passions in the community.

Tier III - Citizen-generated content that is hyper-local names, faces, calendar events.

Community contributions in Tier III and Tier II will represent at least 50% of all content published.

Skilled professional journalists will focus on higher-end enterprise reporting and supporting key beats closely tied to local interest areas. Their work will represent 25% of the content.

Databases, listings, and freelance/syndicate purchase will provide about 15% of content.

Shaping news through conversation, and a community oversight board

Commitment 4: Shape news content through direct conversations and interactions with citizens who retain oversight authority for the newsgathering operation. The Next Newsroom is committed to growing a community. The community sets the course for The Next Newsroom, maintains management oversight, and monitors performance. Control of content shifts from journalists exclusively to a mix of citizens and journalists who regularly meet, talk, share feedback.  Management oversight of this news gathering enterprise rests with a community oversight board, or related community-based management structure. The editor/publisher of The Next Newsroom reports to this board, much as a school superintendent reports to a school board.