I spent Thursday and Friday at the NextNewsroom Conference at Duke University. Thanks to Chris O’Brien for coordinating a great discussion and helping college students attend.

My interest in the conference stemmed from a previous interest in exploring the idea of a “virtual newsroom.” I wrote a little about this before.

Due to some initial crazyness at the Gainesville airport, I was late to the show, so here are some links documenting what I missed:

Greg Linch posted the highlights of Chris O’Brien’s opening words and collected some excellent quotes from Saf Fahim’s keynote speech. I’ve been following Greg on Twitter and his blog for a while now, and it was awesome to finally meet him. We even collaborated on live-streaming and recording sessions on the second day. More about that later.

Byran Murley used Cover It Live to keep up on speeches the first day and sessions the second. Cover It Live looks like a sweet live-blogging tool.

I did make it in time for Randy Covington’s speech on “New Roles in the New Newsroom.” I posted my notes earlier, but the quick takeaway was that the current structure of the newsroom is an impediment to convergence and integration between mediums. As examples of alternative structures he pointed to London’s Daily Telegraph and the Tampa Bay Tribune.

Next there was a panel discussion with Robertson Barret, Sharon Behl Brooks, Christian Oliver, Rusty Coats and Keith Hanadel as moderator. The discussion was a little disappointing, I felt like they kept drifting into different arguments instead of responding to the questions and comments posed via Twitter.

There’s video from all this at Ustream.tv.

On Friday, the second day, Greg and I joined forces (and equipment) to live-stream video from the sessions we attended. We had some technical difficulties, but it was really fun!

Session 1: We went to a discussion facilitated by Brett Erikson, Kathy Stofer and Sharon Brooks on operating a converged newsroom in the context of student media. Check out the video.

Session 2: How can the newsroom management structure be reorganized? Led by Bryan Murley. Takeaway: The Web editor needs to be high up on that ladder. I’m gonna point you to Greg again, as his notes are better than mine for this session. And again, video.

Session 3: How to change from old news culture to new - led by John North, Knoxville News Sentinel. If we had come up with any answers to this problem, we could make a looot of money. Watch the video.

Session 4: Balancing work and class, learning and innovation in college media, led by Kathleen Sullivan. Ustream was crashing no matter what I did, so I switched to Yahoo Live. Unfortunately, it doesn’t save video, just broadcasts it. :(

The best thing about this conference was that after breaking out for different sessions we all gathered back together to share what had been discussed in each group. I’ve never done this at a conference and I thought it was a great way to walk out with as much to think about as possible.

So, what is the next newsroom going to be like? We don’t really know. There are so many aspects to consider, from roles and structure to physical space to technology. I’m still trying to remember names, Web sites, and ideas, gathering all my notes off of napkins, stray paper and boarding passes.

Facilitated by Kathleen Sullivan

How do we build in opportunities for trying new things?

How do student journalists balance work and classes?

How do we manage more (with only so much staff)? Where can you scale back, where can you do more?

Different deadline realities, diff sources for content, what can be delegated and what can’t?

Teamwork for stories instead of individual ownership?

The story doesn’t end when it goes to print. You can have all sorts of discussions online.

Build in-house wiki(s) to avoid starting over with new staff

Google 20% project time

Additional platforms = additional people, so ppl get territorial. How do you solve that problem?

Aside: Livestreaming is so cool!

Get interdisciplinary staff, not just j-students.

What can you make into a product (low-hanging fruit)?

Ustream.tv crashed all my browsers a dozen times, so we’re on to Yahoo Live!

So for the first session of the day, I ended up at a discussion on operating a converged student media newsroom. I can’t really relate; The Independent Florida Alligator, being separate from the university, can’t take advantage of all the available tools and skills at UF. But the ideas from the converged model applied to our print and web publications could make things work much more smoothly and allow us to go farther.

Greg Linch and I got video, using UStream.tv

Now I’m at a discussion of newsroom structure, facilitated by Bryan Murley. We’ve been talking about who takes responsibility for what and how work is distributed through roles in the newsroom.

Livestreaming.

The sessions for this morning:

Session 1
1. What are the keys to successfully operating a converged newsroom, especially for student media?
Facilitators: Brett Erickson, Kathy Stofer, Sharon Brooks
2. How can design of space promote innovation in the newsroom?
Facilitator: John Keefe
3. What productivity tools can transform the newsroom?
Facilitator: Christian Oliver
4. What is the role of social networking in the newsroom?
Facilitator: Kara Andrade

I want to go to all of them!

Yesterday was the first day of the Next Newsroom Conference, with keynote speakers and panels and all kinds of good discussion. Unfortunately, I missed the first couple of speakers, but Greg Linch totally has my back: check out his complete coverage of yesterday.

My notes from Randy Covington’s speech:
Newsplex:
Its not about formats or technology but on stories
cover stories across media
stories are better because of audio, video, community interactivity
we live in a mutli-media world
people are using media in diff ways

TRAINING

newsrooms will be different: no more assembly line
Edipresse - cubicles and open space 2002-2003

New roles for full media newsroom

Newsflow editor: story
directs coverage across formats and delivery services
integrates multiple products under unified editorial brand
service to a broad range of news consumers
multiskilled journalist: content
able to work in diff formats and do diff things (video, text, graphics, audio, photos and interactivity)
NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE THIS - BUT - bring in MORE multiskilled people who like to shape and control their own work
news resourcer: context
informatics journalist/editor
apply news judgement with understand of informational landscape
cybrarian, not news librarian
google is not good enough
story builder: experience
one editor handles story for all mediums
combines roles of print copy editor and broadcast producer
convergence organizational models:
Tampa Tribune

Nordjyske - denmark was dying, needed to reinvent, created an all-news cable channel on model of old cnn news, dont need lots of people
NOW - free papers, local papers, the news channel, 2 radio stations and a web site with 248 jous
editors for each medium refine the content
editorial depts serve all media
NOT one size fits all
started charging for tours, jous all over were willing to pay
super desk: groups for diff mediums in open space with editorial mtg place in the center

Daily Telegraph - london
24-hr digital multimedia newsroom
story components integrated from the start
three job titles: reporter, editor, producer
hub and spoke system for organization of newsroom

I’ll come back later and clean up the formatting on that. After Covington there was a panel discussion responding to questions posed by the audience through Twitter. So I stopped taking notes and made my commentary there instead. I’ll round that up into something cohesive later today as well. But you can check out the continuing conversation on Twitter.