Thursday, May 22, 2014 – 25

NEWSROOMS are all different - some are big, some small; some publish once a day, some once a week; some publish

online and on the radio as well as in print, others stick to print. But while the size of the newsroom may change, and the titles people have in the newsroom may vary, the fundamentals of how a newspaper is published are the same everywhere.

The starting point is the story idea. The reporter may come up with a story idea - maybe from talking to a contact, reading a council agenda, observing something on the way to work - and pitch it to the News Director, whose job it is to oversee what all the reporters are doing. Sometimes the chief reporter will assign one or more stories to the reporter. Often those stories will have come from the News Diary - a carefully maintained calendar of newsworthy events such as conferences, court cases, sporting events, concerts and parliamentary proceedings.

THE News Director will take the day’s story ideas to the news conference. There are generally three conferences a day, one early

in the day, one in the middle of the day which looks specifi cally at the front page and one closer to deadline. At the conference the News Director joins the Editor, Content Director, Digital Editor, Graphic Designer and other senior staff to discuss the stories and decide which ones to pursue and how to go about it.

ONCE the reporter has enough information and has checked the facts, it’s time to write the story. And all of this is done against

the clock. Newspapers have strict deadlines for stories because a lot happens to them after they’ve been written and if they are late getting to the print site then they’ll be late getting out to shops and homes - which could mean fewer sales and less revenue for the newspaper.

WHEN a reporter’s happy with his or her story it will be ‘fi led’. The story goes to the Content Director who checks

everything that needs to be in the story is in there - is it fair, accurate, balanced, the main points covered and properly explained? If there are any gaps, the reporter will be asked to do some more work on the story and fi le it again.

Once the Content Director is happy with the story it gets sent into a general news ‘queue’. There, it will be seen by the sub editors.

THE Digital Editor will assess the story to decide whether it should be published on the website. The story will be modifi ed

to optimise it for web publishing - perhaps a different headline, the addition of keywords to help make the story easier to fi nd online or even a simpler intro. Then the story will be published directly on the website. The web editor also monitors the ‘wires’ - a steady stream of national and international news stories provided by news agencies.

THE Sub-Editor cuts stories to size, checks for accuracy and typos, writes headlines and captions. At this point the story is on a page

and has a shape - the sub-editor knows how long it’s going to be, how big the headline is, what picture’s going with it. The sub-editor’s job is to check the story for factual errors and typos, make the story fi t the space allocated to it and write the headline and caption and any other elements on the page, such as selecting quotes to highlight. The chief sub may also have given the sub-editor some direction on what kind of headline to write and things to watch out for in the text.

Once all the stories on a page have been subbed and checked, the pages are printed out and proofread.

THE Editor assesses the story to decide whether and where to use it in the newspaper. They may re-angle a particular

story, tighten up the story, and send it for a rewrite if they think it needs more work or if something new has happened since the story was written. The Editor also monitors the wires for stories. Once the News Editor is happy with a story, they will mark it up with information on what page it should go on and where, and send it on to the production team.

WHEN the pages have been signed off they are sent to the print site as PDFs. There the paper is printed, bundled,

labelled and loaded onto trucks and distributed to homes, newsagents, schools and businesses.

THE production team is headed by a Senior Producer who works with designers, photographers, layout sub-editors and

text sub-editors. They oversee getting the pages drawn up, choice of pictures and allocating stories to slots on the page. The Senior Producer oversees page layout, checks story for obvious errors, assigns it to a sub-editor.

Space is allocated on each page for stories, pictures, ads, headlines. The pages are drawn up by designers or layout subs, often under direction from the chief sub. Once the pages are drawn and the stories are on the page, the chief sub will assign to a sub-editor.

NOW it’s time for the reporter to research the story or stories assigned to them. That may involve calling contacts, interviewing

people in person or on the phone, checking previous stories for background information, researching facts and fi gures online, attending a press conference, interviewing the ‘man on the street’ for popular opinion and more.

How the newsroom actually works

Step 1: News ConferenceStep 1: News Conference

Step 3: Meeting deadlinesStep 3: Meeting deadlinesStep 4: Checking the storyStep 4: Checking the story

Step 5: Going digitalStep 5: Going digital

Step 8: Proof, proof, proof!

Step 6: Story potentialStep 6: Story potential

Step 9: Ready to printStep 9: Ready to print

Step 7: Page layoutStep 7: Page layout

Step 2: ResearchStep 2: Research

The newspaper The newspaper newsroomnewsroom