digital newsrooms

8/3/2019 Digital Newsrooms

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JLlImUllfsIIf 5 1 " , U , 0 ; ; , Velum 5, Number 1. 2004, pr. 1l/'-1!1O nRoutledge__________________________________ S~ Tdy1or l o . r nmc : l 5Cra11p

Journalists at Digital Television Newsrooms inBritain and Spain: workflow and m.ulti-skilling ina competitive environmentJOS.E ALBE'RTO GARCiA AVILES and BIENVENIDO LEON University of Navarra.SpainKAREN SANDERS and JACKIE HARRISON University of Sheffield, UK

ABSTRACT This paper explores the impact of new technology on joumalisls' attitudes and practice indistinctive nationa/and organisational contexts, deriving evidence from observa/ional and interview researchconducted in s ix digital newsrooms selected to provide comparative settings in Britain (BSkyB, IndependentTelevision News [(TN] and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC]) and Spain (Telecinco, An/ena 3andTelemadrid). The study explores the perceived rationale for diglt/sation, its impact on workflow andmultiskitling, and the changes it has generated in journalistic practice. The influence of digitisatlon is shownto be significant in both countries. The evidence indicates, however. that in terms of attitudes, practfce andtechnological provision, the relatively younger, smaller Spanish newsrooms reflect digitised journalism morefully. Nevertheless, journalists in both countries expressed concerns about the ennuo of core journalisticvalues. as journalists become increasingly computer-bound "mouse monkeys" required to trade accuracy (orimmediacy in the speeded-up world of digital and 24-hour news.KEY WORDS: Television Newsrooms, Digital Television News, Spanish Television News. British TelevisionNews, Journalistic Practice, News Technology.

Technology and [curnalism PracticeTelevision new, by its nature, faces an ongoingprocess of change. Technologi al, market andglobal dev lopments have influ need the waytelevision news is gathered, produced and pre-sented. The pace of change has accelerated overthe last ten year reflecting the impact of politi-al and economic fact rs (a lib ralised econ-omic nvironrnent and deregulation),technological changes (digitisaticn of news in-put and output and the growing usc of livetransmissions) and global developments (whichshow an in rcasing connectedness of e entsaround th world). As Schudson argue, newproduction is under constraints imposed byorganisations, despite the private intentions ofindividual actors, and by the practices a quired

suggesting tha t news values are increasinglyti d to particular economic demands made.upon n ws executives, willie journalistic evalu-ation of th n wsworthiness of stories iadapted to fi t particular programme need.Ursell (2003) argues that a process of dumbingdown of profession aI practice is occurring intclcvi ion newsrooms. Such developments raiseconcerns about the volution of journalisticpra ti e in the contemporary digital televisionnews environment.Discussion of the impact of new technology

on journalists' practice i as old as journalismitself (S hud on, 1995; Winston, 1998). The rail-way, the telegraph and later radio, televisionand the internet have all played their part in thedevelopment of [ournalism. It is hard to dis,agree with Pavlik' assertion that "the way


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(1999, p. 54). This commonly accepted tartingpoint begs two further que tions. First, howpreci ely do s technology influence journalists'work jJ1 Spain compared with Britain; second, isthere anything distinctive about current techno-logical change which is making a qualitativedifferenc to journalism practice and output?Cottle (1999) introduces hi tudy of a British

Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) regional news-centre by pointing to the normative professionalconcerns about the impact of new technologywhich hav largely focused on the belief thatanalytical depth is being trad d for immediacy.His premise, shared by this study, is that tech-nology is a factor in the changing news pro-duction environment (1999, p. 23). However, ashis work also points out, discu sion of technol-ogy's role has been largely atheoretical andba ed 0)'1 slender empirical evidence. Firmertheoretical foundations and a larger body fempirical studies are, we agree, necessary "toirnpr v our understanding of the complex in-teraction b tween changing news technol giesand journalist practice" (l 99, p. 26).A number of theoretical approaches to tech-

nology's role can be identified in the literature.Marjoribanks (2000) examines the relationshipbetween the introduction of technology andworkplace reorganisation in the n wspaper in-dustry, taking News Corporation a a casestudy. His comparative study of th newspa-pers of this group in the United Kingdom, theUnited States and Australia concludes that theintroduction of computerised syst ms broughtabout a Significant modification of the journal-istic skill required. He analyses various theor-etical approaches, including t chnologicaldetermini m, labour process theory, the institu-tional social choice model, the relational modelof workplace organisation and, finally, themodified relational m d 1 .Pavlik (1999) takes a Panglossian view of

technology' effects. Using the reporting of theOklahoma bomb in 1995 as an example, heoutlines the advantages that the introduction ofnew technology have brought to the telling ofthe story so that it is "put: in better context,accuracy is increased and lead, sources and

JOSE ALBERTO GARCIA AVILES a t a l.

On the other hand, far from enhancing thejournali t's role, new technology has also beenseen as a management tool used in part todeskill the workforce and play its part in theeconomic and social battles fought betweenmanagement and news workers (Hardt, 1990).MacGregor (1997) recognises too the widerforces that have come to bear upon news pro-duction. However, he explores how new tech-nology contribute to the shaping of themessage, often in wa s that lend weight tojournalist' concerns about the sacrif e of depthfor immediacy.Th implicit Mcl.uhanism found in MacGre-

gor (that the "medium is the message") isturned on its head by Win.ston's (1998) histori-cal exploration of th cultural grounds that playas significant a role in shaping new technologyas new technology does in shaping culture. Thisview finds some empirical support in Cottle'swork (1993). However, his later study of a BBCnewsccnlre (1999) provides vid n era morenuanced view of th interaction of new technol-ogy with journalistic practice and outpu t. Onthe one hand, he finds that journalists are morecomputer-bound and pressurised by multi-skilling and multimedia working practices,lending support to Hardt's (1990) position andto Bromley' (1997) critique of the deleteriousimpact of news technology 011 journali ts'working practices. Cottle also discover r how-ever, that journalists welcome increased controlover work processes and the news product; thenew technology of news production, far fromdetermining content, is placed at the ervice ofconventional forms of news so that, he con-cludes, "despite the professional turmoil gener-ated by the pressures and new workingpractices of multi-skilled, multi-media pro-duction, the new appears pretty much bu i-ness as usual" (1999, p. 41).Some journalists, academics and media ana-

lysts see technological change as a negati edevelopment that affects news content and thejoumaLi st's ability to undertake hi or her corefunction, namely, to investigate. John Tusa re-called in his 1994 J ames Cameron MemorialLecture that. reporter had recently commented


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J OU RN ALIS TS A T D IG IT AL T EL EV IS IO N N EW SR OOMS

become re-processors. There is I~O 'tim for dig-ging up the news" (T1..ISa,1994, p.4, cited inHarrison, 2000, p.120). The advent of the"mouse monkey"-the computer-boundjournalist-has taken the ability to reprocessand repackage news to new technologicalheights, allowing some multi-skilled broadca tjournalists to take agency and location feedsand tum them into a variety of packages tomeet different programme dirors' visions oftheir programme (MacGregor, 1997)The growth of satellite, cable and digital

channel ha led to an increase in news pro-grammes and outlets. In Britain there has beenan eight-fold increase in the supply of tele-vision news in the last decade, with about 243hours a week availabl to viewers in 2002 (BBC,2002), compared with about 30 hours in 1989.The increase in the amount of news on tele-iion, coupled with the advent of 24-hournews programming, has made the immediate akey feature of everyday televi ion journalism,Reporter ha the role of witness, writesP ters, "as an observer or source po es ingprivileged (raw, authentic) proximity to facts"(200], p. 709).The culture of broadcast [ournalism has al-ways placed tr ng emphasis on deadline and

timing precision within news programm dur-ing their broadcast. Schlesing r (1987, p.84)identilie this as "a stop-watch culture". Inthose newsrooms dealing with appointmentprogramme, there is a p riod of calm activitythat gradually builds into more frenzied ac-tivity the closer th deadline gets and as timeruns out. In contrast, 24-hoUI newsroom mustexist in a constant broadcasting state, wheretime has always run out and everything mu tbe broadca t immediately ( anders and Bale,2000). The sense of rush and shortage of time isbecoming an important lem nt of newsroomculture, wher to be obsessed by time is, acon tant element of the news day with no s nseof reprieve. In this context, the 0 erage of thevents of ptember 11, 2001 and of the war inIraq were, in many different ways, two of thegreatest challenges for any television news or-ganisation. The were also unprecedented testsof digital new production systems,

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plementing digital newsrooms. Finnish publicservice broadcasting (YLE) introduced a digital,aut matised system in 1 96. In Spain, the com-mercial network T lecinco wa the first tolaunch a fully digital news operation in August1998, and the commercial network Antena 3followed in September 1999. The BBC intro-duced its digital 24-h0l.1r news channel inNovemb r 1997. Sky Jaun hed digital servicesin 1998 and Independent Television New(!TN) followed in 2000. Other broadcasters,such as Italy's Mediasct and RAI, and France's'fFl, al 0 went digital throughout 2000. In thUSA, a number of local stations, as well as themain 24-hour news channels (CNN, MSNBCand fox News) have implemented digitalnewsrooms since 2001. However, none of themain networks (NBC, ABC and CB ) has yetconvert d to digital.Some researcher have examined this chang-

ing working environment in both Britain andSpain. In addition to Cottle's (1999) pioneeringstudy, Urs 11(2001) examined journalistic prac-tic at three British television newsrooms(Briti h Broadca ting Corporation, IndependentTelevision News and Yorkshire Television). AUof them ar news broadcasters, but the marketswhere they operate, th scale of their pro-duction systems and the levels of technologicaldevelopment are different. Ursell (2001, P: 194)stated that "demand for and pre ures onjournalistic staff have increased in all three". Ina more recent article, sh found that employ-ment and working conditions in the productionof journalism-baed television programmes inBritain have worsened, with negative conse-quences for the quality Q'Fthe output (Ursell,2003).The d vclopment of digital newsrooms by

Spanish broadcasters has been do umented byBandres e t ( : I I . (2000). These authors aminehow journalists have adapted to new ways ofaccessing, editing and producing information,and they argue thi process could be regardeda a "r volution" imilar to the use of om-munication satellites or the replac merit of filmby videotape (Bandrc eI ul., 2000, pp.22-26).More r cently. in their analysis of th irn-pi mentation of the digital system at tw com-


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Aviles and Le6n (2002, p.367) argued that the"new y tern has enabled journalists to takedirect control over the proce of produ ing anews package and it has increa ed their re-ponsibility". Similarly, the e authors di cussthe trend in multi-skilling and the growth inthe work load faced by television journalists,Taking into account these theoretical consid-

erations, and the issues they rai e in r lation tothe changing nature of journalistic practice, thisarticle e amines professional attitudes andpractices in 5 vera I digital tele ision new-rooms. We have focused on Britain and pair"two countries where broadca ten; have beenamong the first worldwide to introduce a dlg i-tal new r om. In Britain research was. conduc-ted in a British public service organisation, theBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBe) and thedigital newsrooms of commercial broadcastersBSkyB and Independent Television News. helatter provides news programme or Channels3, 4 and 5 of th independent television n t-work ((TV). In Britain, news prof ional fromSky New. lTN's Channel 3 and New -24 news-room and both BBCWorld and New -24 news-rooms were interviewed: in Spain, research fo-cused on the commercial channels Telecinco andAntena 3 and the Spanish public regional chan-n ITelemadrid. Interviews with journalists wereconducted at each of th three digital news-rooms.'The symmetry in the choice of commercial

and public channel in two different nationalcontexts wa deliberate. Part of the underlyingtheoretical rationale for this research was toexplore a sumptions about journalists' percep-tion of the adoption of new technology indistinct national and organisational contexts.Comparative work is difficult (Blurnler andGurevitch, 1995), which is perhaps why com-parati e media research is relatively thin on theground (Blurnlcr et al., 1 92). H requires deepknowledge of the worlds being examined aswell a' methods that allow meaningful equiva-lences to be established whi h, at the arnetime, do not negl ct the wealth of differentmeaning that exist in diverse cultural contexts.Indeed, although comparative research hasgrown in frequency and cope in recent years, it

JOSE ALBERTO GARCfA AVILES et al.

In comparative research the key is, fir t, tofind obj cts that can be compared, and whosecomparison can yi.eld useful insight into thefield being examined, and second, to e tablishmechanisms to ensure the reliability of the com-parisons being made. Our study focuses on thepercepti ns and practices of news directors andjournalists working in broadca t newsroom inwhich digital technology has replaced analogueequipment.

Implementing Digital Newsrooms in Britainand Spain: the contextIn Britain, the first 24-hour n ws channel Waslaunched by BSkyB in 1989. By capitalising ontechnological development, it was able to makeits primary commitment the speed of deliveryof stories, since at that time the BB and ITcould only provide appointment news pro-grammes on the terrestrial chann I. SkyNews's 24-hour rolling news format was mod-elled on the tyle of CNN, bringing a new styleof news delivery to British television. Th 24-hour news format was eventually followed bythe SBC, which launched SBC News-24, and by[TN, which Iaunched its own 24-hour newschannel in 2000. To date, the BBC has taken anaggressive approach towards it role in thedigital television and news environm nt, By2003 the BBC's News-z-l had become a succes -ful cornp titer to both Sky ew and ITN's24-hmlT new ..

By contrast, th digital fortunes of the frVsystem have been more mixed, with majorproblems prompted by the fall in advertisingincome and the eventual. collapse of JT V Digitalin Mar h 2002. lTV's news supplier, [T , hasfaced unprecedent d competition. VVhenit wasfirst formed in ]95~, ITN was nominated thesol news provider for the independent tele-vi ion sector (lTV) and was owned by all theregional television companies. In 1993 ITN be-came independent of lTV when a cons rtium ofbroadcasters, acting as hareholders rather thanSpOll or , assumed control. Independent Tele-vision News now competes with commercialcompanies su h as Sky News for the news


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JOURNALISTS AT DIGITAL TELEVISION NEWSROOMS

2002, it was obliged to r du e it bid to 36million, creating a deficit of 10 million c m-pared with 2001. Independent Televisionew '5 24-hollI news channel, launched on 1

August 2000, offered a similar format to SkyNews and USC News-24, with a round-up ofnews every l5 minute and an interactive ser-vice. The [TN News Channel was launch d as ajoint venture with cable-broadband company

L, but remained a loss-making company.lTV bought out the majority share in June 2002and th INN ws hannel has b en re-launch d as the lTV News Channel. This willlead to gf ater integration between lTV' mainterrestrial news programmes (shown 011 Chan-nels 3, 4 and 5) and the 24-hour channel shownonly on digital television, This is likely to in-rease pressures on ITN [ournalis to serve alarger numb r of outlets and to engag' more in24-hour news delivery. It ha air ady triggeredredundr nci (Byme, 2002). The budget- for thethree 24-hour news charm I illustrat rh calcof [T 's difficulties. While BBC New -24 has abudget of around 40 million and Sky Newsapproximately 30 million, IT invests only10 million in its news channel (Hodg on,2002).At the BBCand at Sky News particularly, the

pro es. of di itisation ha been very un ven.Digital t hn logy was first introduced at BBCMillbank, the Political Unit, in 1992 to 1993.Sections of the BHe, howev r, are still not fullydigiti ed and the competing digital systemsu ed in news organisations can cau probl msfor cooperation between broadcasters. InBritain, !TN has the most integrated digitalnewsrooms across entire news organi aliens,with BB and Sky News dose behind.In 1989, Spain's aspiring privat broadca ters

rcc lved the first licenc 5 permitting them totake to th national airwave: Ant na 3, analPlu and Telecinco entr d the market withth ir own daily news broad a IS, r ad to COID-p ztc with th national public network TVE, butconfronting a veteran newsgathcring operationwith worldwide reach and audiences long-accustomed to receiving their information frompublic broadcasters. But during the 1990 ,audi-

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continues to deli er the most popular newsprograrnrn ,both Tele inca and Ant na 3 haveseen th ir shar of the audience rise sharply.Despite stiff competition from goverment ub-sldisod networks, Tclecinco became the secondmost profitable broadcaster in Europe in 1998.Telecinco introduced digital technology withtwo basic objectives: to renovate a low-keynews operation, ba ed on outdated analogueequipment, and to gain both peed and co t-effectiveness. The ompany inve t d 12.5 mil-lion in the construction. of a new building thathou the stud i for news progra rnrn S and anewsroom that holds 95 journalists, U ing imi-lar technology, Antena 3's digital newsroomwas operationalised during 1999. One floor wascompletelyrenovated, to set up the new digitalsystem, with over thirty editing terminalsavailable to its 130 journalists. The co t of theoperation for Antena 3 was 6.25 rnilli n.Telemadrid was th first Spanish r gional

public televi ion broadcaster to complete thedigiti arion of its newsroom, in January 2000.Telemadrid's managem nt had consider d im-plementing an integrated digital newsroomwell before 1997, when the channel moved intoa new building. In that year the company ac-quired digital equipment for most department,exc pt new, sin e they were thinking of in tai-ling an integrated digital newsroom. The cost ofthe whole operation was in the regi n of 9rnillion, which included 40 editing terminalfor the 110 journalists and digitisation of thearchive.

Managing Change at the WorkplaceAccording to news managers, there was littleinternal resistance to the introduction of digitaltechnology in the cases analysed in this study.lnitially, orne journaJi ts stressed the draw-backs of their new tatus but, in the end, mostof them welcomed the opportunity to have agreater control over the whole process and theywere plea cd with the final result. he newdigital system was accepted by journalists as ato I J that helps the job to be done more ea ily,rather than somethlng that hinders their work


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among some journalists to adapt to the newystems, but this was largely overcome whenjoumali ts discovered the benefits of, for e am-ple, writing cripts to images they thems lvesselected and edited. In each news organisationthere were broadcast journalists who welcomedthe opportunity to retrain and to improve theirrange of skills, seeing this as an empoweringand p sitive element in their careers.In the Spanish case, most journalists thought

the introduction of a digital newsroom offeredan excellent opportunity to obtain greater con-trol over the final product, ince Ies depen-d nce on technicians wa required. AsTelemadrid's news director explained:[oumalists were frightened when they first learnedabout the plan for the new system, but everythingchanged the day they started to get to know rhmachine and saw that it was, on the one hand,very simple to use and, on the other, great fun.Now, no one in the newsroom wants to return tothe old system. Everyone is happy, because fur-thennore they do not have to depend on anotherpees n to produce the!r stories.Telemadrid was the only broadcaster that

had to deal with more hostile reactions to theimplementation of the new system, which camemainly from trade unions. Most of the resist-ance came from tape editor, whose job wouldbe made redundant by the new system, whichp rmits journalists to edit tories themselves.Unlike in Spain, the trade unions were notmentioned as a factor illembracing or resistingthe hanges introduced by the British broad-casters.At Anrena 3 and Telecin 0, news managersslated that they worked hard with technical

directors to make joint decisions about whichsystem would be most uitable to meet journal-istic demands. From the start, this jointffortmade it easier to win joumalists' approval ofthe proposals made by the technical directorsduring the design stage. As Telecinco's techni-cal manager put it:

As engineer we tend to develop technical struc-tures and then pass them on to users. This time wedid it the other way round: we worked with jour-

JOSE ALBERTO GARCfA AVILES et aLhours a day working on a computer, so they mustfeet comfortable with that.The cooperation between the technical and

journalistic areas was also highlighted by newsdirectors at the BBC and ITN ..Their joint workplayed a pivotal role in making decisions aboutsweeping changes in decades-old work systemsand routines.The notion of making the news operation

more cost-efficient was also a key factor inimplementing these new systems. However,asAntena 3' technical director said, "you need toexplain the reasons for the change, and not tofocu only on issues such as efficiency andmoney". In Britain too, senior news executivesexplained that the rationale for the introductionof digital technology was speed and cost-effectiveness. Although at the BBe, one execu-tive expressed scepticism about its herr-termcost benefits:I 'thin k it ls a rare d igitaI beast that sa ves youmoney. r think that by the time you have trainedeverybody it is a long-term investment It is not5 mething that is going to immediately how youa ben fit in forms of saving money ... In a bigoperation like the BEC, you can never run nut thewhole thing in one go. You can't afford to throweverything away and bring if1 a new format. It isalways going to be a sort of mixed economy. A lotof those costs are hidden; you never quite knowhat they are. Extra time spent dubbing things,extra time spent in people getting ltwrongandhaving to re-do stuff.Specifically addressing the economics issue,

we found an age gap in both countries, Manyof th reporters who are over 40 had livedwithin a rule-regulated, hierarchically orderedand technologically cautious work culture. Forthem an entirely new digital sy tern was asource of added pressure on their status andjob security. They were more likely to agreethat news and staff budget cuts would be theconsequence of the huge investment in newtechnology. On the contrary, young r journal-ists felt the changes would benefit their care rs.They were not a conscious as older journalistsof financial down izing,Training was regarded as "essential" in all


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them tha t technology was, in fact, going tomake their lives easier. A common theme in theBriti h new rooms, however, was the gap be-tween e ecutive ambition and the reality ofpractice. The aim of training journalists to dealwith me t, if not all, of the production processdid not work out as envisaged in some cases.One BBC reporter, speaking about the originalmanagerial ambition, said that:it ha rr't gone as far as th y originally hopedb cause the original idea was that we would beediting whole packages our elve . They tri d tosend us on courses to learn that type of thing butithasn't worked because it is too specific and thereis still too ruuch division.Training often meant that [oumallsts dedi-

cated hours of e tra tim , with no financialcompensation, to get acquainted with the newtools. Courses were mainly technically oriented,covering areas such as computer skill ,U ofdigital s rvers, ace ss t in om.ing digital ma-terial and production of news items.A significant exception was found in the case

of Telecinco, wh Ie training included visual.grammar, picture editing and improved story-telling, with an emphasis on helping journaliststo make decisi ns about when th y would ditthe stories them. elves. In this n wsroom, someof the stories in the n ws broadcasts weredited on computer-based, non-linear systems(althou h they wer finally taped for trans-mission), 0 that journali t could get u d tothe n w diting software three months beforelaunching the digital system. Training pro-grammes decreased the time reporters spent ontechnical matters and aUowed them to devotemore attention to news cont nt. One of Antena3' news directors also pointed out the need tolead the process of change from within 0 thatjournaJists would find the experience worth-while:The rna t important thing is cr ating enthusia rnfor change among your own journalists. lnfor-rnation is the basis for succeeding in this, At a veryearly stage we organised a number of seminars,internal meetings, with all the groups in the news-room. This enabled us to address and answer allthe qu srions they had about their concerns.

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several technical problems in the weeks lollow-ing the 1 unch of the new system. The digitalnetwork era hed everal times and parts of theedited work were lost and could not be aired.Also some of the automated process had to bedone manually. In Telemadrid the whole ys-tern collapsed just at th beginning of the even-ing newscast, which had to be postponed fortwenty minutes. According to the technical di-rector,The sy tern ha a high level of risk, since all thematerials are stored in the same server. Tn ad-dition, the way we work does not allow us tomake a backup of the packages, since most of themare edited at the last moment.Sam journa li ts wait until the "last minute"

to finish their work, which means, according tothe same source, that they "trust the ystem toomuch". Although aU video package ditedwithin 15 minutes before air-time are taped,tills is not of much help, since most packageare finished closer to air-time.The BB also encountered technical

difficulti with 24-hour news. BBC News-24was launched on 9 November "1997 and BBCNews Online went onl.inethe same month.Almost immediately there were problem withthe technology and the newsroom uffered s v-eral blackouts.

Newsroom WorkflowGenerally speaking, digital technology has beenadapt d to the existi.ng newsroom structures.Nevertheless, some new posirions have beencreated. In Spain C 1 . number of signif:icantchange have been made in the structure of thTelecinco and Antena 3 newsrooms. Two newjobs w re created: system managers and m diamanagers. Sy tern manag rs U uaUy have anengineering background and they tak car ofthe technological aspects of th equipment.Media managers take charge of th traffic ofinformation inside the newsroom, they assign"profile lines" (access to the main server) toevery reporter in order to edit the news Items.Some responsibility for content decisions, al


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rn dia manag r, They also d tide pri rities inthe allo arion of re ources.Media manag rs are also advanced u ers o. f

the system, since they have received moreexten ive training and are able to diagnosesystem failures. Four media managers usuallywork 011 the traffic desk on each shift, assigningthe neces ary system resources to the users.Once reporters edit their stories, they are sentback to the erver from where they can gostraight on air. A selection of the material willremain in the server for five days. Afterwards,it is available in . a digital library.At Telemadrid, however, there has not been

any significant change in the structure of thnewsroom or its workflow. Some new positionshave been introduced in the traffic control roomin order to direct and tore news feeds frominternational agencies and from staff membersw rking outside the central facilities. Accord-ing to the technical manager, orne of the newtechni al jobs involve littl rearivity and agreat deal of responsibility.

In Britain, bucking the trend of job reduction,in. each news organisation the new role of me-dia manager has also been introduced. Themedia rnamlge.r, explained a SSC journalist, "isresponsible for house-keeping of the pictures ...The e people are monitoring things cominginto the building and are re ponsible for'binning' things that aren't ne d d anyrnor ."In th fully digitally integrated tudio e tab-Ii ned for 24-hour news, the role of cameraoperator had diappear d altogether and beenreplaced by remote cameras operated from theoutput station.Although no specific data were provided by

management, it is certainly the case that jobreduction have occurred ill some Briti h newsorganisations for reasons that those inter-viewed attributed to the introduction of digitaltechnology. On the contrary, the Spanish news-rooms have not experienced any job reduction,for veral rea ons. Trade unions put pressureon managers from the outset to ensure that anyredundant workers would be relocated; thenew system provided an increased number ofhours of news for those channels, and also the

J OS E A LBE RT O GARC IA AVILES al at.In Britain a number of respondents spe u-

lated that the original intention in introducingdigital technology had been to rernov the dif-ference between the rol of journal! ts and thatof more technical roles such as the cameraoperator and the sound and tape editors ..Thenew designations for journalists who combinejournali tic and technical skills-"op rationalbroadcast journali til at the BR C and"production journalist" at ITN-in part expresthis ambition and its achievement. However,the real difficulties in acquiring all th se skilland at th arne tim maintaining quality meantthat th reduction in technical jobs had notgone as far as management might have wi hed.News directors interviewed at all threeSpanish networks emphasised that with the

introduction of th system there was an accom-panying decision not to change either pro-gramme content or programme de ign, butrather to improve the competitivene of thenetworks, As Telecinco's news director argues,

We have increased our competence as news pro-ducers. We need our staff to think of producingnews content, which could be distributed not onlythrough television but also 01 1 the internet andradio. We must provide quality news but we mustalso b' there faster and faster. Our environment isgetting much more competitive. But we are striv-ing to provide much more context about what'shappening: to be rnor analytical and explain 10our audience why Lho e events occur. in this ease,multiple 11 cess to all video material and the im-mediate Liseof the digital library has enhanced ourcapability to provide that context,

Some journalists in both Spanish and Britishnewsrooms made the point that the new systemdoes not change their job in a radical manner.In the words of an Antena 3 reporter,"digitisation is not.hing more than a technicaladvanc . ft i an advan e but th to Is are justinstruments .. , In the end, no digitisation willsub titure fo r the prime material, which i thejournalistic quality of our editors."

TIle role of the prog-ramule and news editorswas not seen to have changed radically, "Theyarc still. responsible", said one news executive,"for the output of their programme and the


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the erosion of "the separation between the pic-tures and the journalism" meant they would be"more in charge of the actual pictures and howthey were going out".However, editorial control is an issue in a

digital integrated newsroom, since the systemis designed to allow management to control thecontent easily, and programme editors haveimmediate access to the p-iecesbeing worked onby each journalist.The system allows editors to access reporters'

pieces while they are still being produced attheir editingtsrrnirrals. Some of the news direc-tors interviewed confirmed that they now canaccess every script and video once it is in thesystem ready to be broadcast, and that they cansuggest last minute corrections or improve-ments. Editors also point out that some of theitems are finished just before going on ail',which means they sometimes are unable tosu per\! ise them.

III a digital environment, archiving can nolonger be separated from all the other processesin the news production cycle, and the decisionof what goes into the archive is becoming partof media rnanagernent. AU Spanish newsroomshave already implemented digital archive sys-tems, whereas in Britain the pictu.r is a littledifferent. A technical lag compared with Spainwas found with regard to archiving, No newsorganisation has yet digitised its archives andhow to archive and what to archive are con-sidered major challenges ahead.At Telemadrid, Telecinco and Antena 3, the

new digital library allows journalists to browsethe key frames of a package, and to search forkey words, ....ith instant access to recent archivematerial. The digital system allows iournallststo get closer to the material and to have greatercontrol and decision-making power when edit-ing each story.Digitisation of the library has prompted some

c.hanges in the way the newsroom operates.First of all, the fact that library pictures can beaccessed online makes it easier for journalists to

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Finally, librarians now have a very importantrole in the newsroom, since they have to decidewhich material remains accessible on theserver, and which is taken off.

A Greater Role for Multi-skil'lingAlthough multi-skilling can be observed tosome degre in all the networks analysed,the Spanish newsrooms have moved furtherin this direction, since their integrated digitalnewsrooms operate on the principle of anew role for journalists, who must now editpictures on their personal computers. TnBritain there are journalists who edit theirown pictures but this is by no means thenorm.Traditionally, in most Spanish television

newsrooms journalists were mainly concernedwith editorial content: they had to gatherbackground information, interview sources,write the text and read the voiceover.Technicians took care of editing the video.Although there were a few attempts toestab-lish multi-skilling, with differing degrees ofsuccess, before the new digital equipmentwas introduced, journalists typically did notedit the storiesthemselv's, although theyusually had the final decision on the cut,which was made by tape editors in theirpresence.Initially, multl-sktlling seemed a difficult

challenge for most journalists. But after amonth working w:ith the new system, the ma-jority adaptedweU and reporters were muchmore involved in shoots out in the field becausethey knew they would have to edit the videolater. Telecinco's manager of technical directorsargues that journalists are now more interestedin picture editing, since they know more aboutvisual grammar. In addition, the fact that oneperson writes the text and edits the picturesallows for a better combination of pictures andwords.Telemadrid's news editor explained that


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Much of th success ot our news programmesdepends on journalists working rapidly and accu-rately, and with total confidence in their ownabilities and in the equipment. And they havelearned to 5 lve typical editing problems in ar alistic time-frame.After ,< 1 few weeks, they weremuch better in working with the visuals and mak-ing the most of their journalisticcraft, in their jobof telling and explaining the news.evertheless, he warned against the use of

multi-skilling exclusively for economic rea ons,which could worsen the quality of rh newsoutput. The general view was that multi-skilling is increasingly a necessary requisite fora journa list.A numb r of British journalists also saw

multi-skilling as a desirable development. OneBBC Milbank journalist e plained:

I think [ournali ts who can do more than one taskare desirable. There 15 a payback for journalistswho can do things themselv s because a journalistwill be quicker to spot a pictur which tells thestory b cause he understands the story and therehave been numerous occasions when I have shotstories because I knew instinctively thesignificanceof that picture.Another journalist xplained that the n w

environment requires versatility, 'peed and ac-curacy: "Th key to th job h r i to b abl todo a many things as pos ible as quickly aspos ible and as accnrat ly a po ibI. Any-thing from writing script for presenter toread, to cutting pictures that go out on air,writing your own reports and putting yourvoice down on the 'report."Some journalists also empha ised the prob-

lems with multi-skilling, highlighting the para-do ical t ndency to place journalists in anarrower role in processing th new. AtTelecinco and Antena 3, everal reporters ex-pressed their concern about becoming "contentpackagers", as one of them put it, devoted torepackaging agency feeds for different outlets.According to a BBe journalist, reporters have to

JOSE ALBERTO GARCiA AVILES el atother radio and television outlets. Ther fore itis quite rare fOJ journalists to have the oppor-tunity to go out and chase a story.British jour:nalists explained that there wa a

considerable emphasis on processing and, asone of them put it, "an element of write it downand whack it out", particularly working in 24-hour news. TI1e need for peed and the e pec-ration that journalists should also possesediting skills caused some anxiety that qualitymight be compromised. Multi- killing, ex-plained one joumali t,

has orne drawbacks too which are particularly todo with people like me cutting headlines. Weneither want to do it or spend toomuch time overit. In the past headlines would have been carefullycut, now we just try to gr


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98

There is a tendency to do two-ways with peo-ple before they fully know the tory and till isa potential source of problems. One journalistexplained his frustration at constant demandsfor live two-ways fo r different news outlets:"For God's sake, I'd like to go out and get theblasted story. It is like that everywhere. Thepictures have come in,we expect a package onthat in hall an hour's Lime. here isn't quite thetime to consider it."However, the increase in the l iueness of tele-

vision news was judged by one British execu-tive to b less a cons quence of digitaltechnology than about "air-time and the avail-ability and price of satellites". She explainedthat "we go to live events all the time ... Mayb to o much, but it is there now wh re itwasn'tfive or six years ago. So that i not part of thedigital issue, it is all part of the sam culture ofcontinuou news."

ConclusionThis articl has identified difference in thework of journalists at public and commercialbroadcaster in both Spain and Britain, afterseveral years of digitisation of their newsroomoperations. An investigation of journalists' per-ceptions of their practice in a rapidly changingenvironrn nt must take into account the nega-tive and positive effects of the digital systemsand th ways in which j urnalists have appro-priated technology to improve clements of theiractivity.We have seen how television journalists

adapt to the constraints and pressures placedon them by technological developments,financial constraints and reduced numbers ofstaff. Despite these increasing pressures, thecxi t nc of a specific journali tic culture en-sures that a et of shared practices and valuescontinu s to exist innewsrooms. A shared be-longing to a journalistic culture means thatthere is general acceptance that th new killsand practices necessary for using n w t chnol-ogy can improve and make new gathering andprocessing more efficient. Although certain core

JOSE ALBERTO GARCiA AVILES at 81 .

threatened by new working practices. How-ev r, de pite the fact that some journalists dis-played concern about the changing nature oftheir job, particularly the sense of being hort oftime and becoming too technically oriented,there appeared to be little dissent about theintroduction of new technology expressed innewsrooms.There are differences in size, culture, true-

ture and output between the six channelsanaly ed h re and consequently comparisonsmust b drawn carefully. In general, the rea nfor introducing a digital system was the at-tempt to improve cost-effectivene s. which hasbe n partially achieved. In some cases, the im-plementation of digital technology was seen asan opportunity to reshape the newsroom sizeand structure. Significantly, in some Britishnewsroom , the new technology is een as thecause for job reductions (particularly at IT ),wherea In Spain there have been no job 10 esin any of the newsrooms studied. Workflowvvithin the newsroom has changed moderatelyand th i ha re ulted in the creation of the newposition of media manager in most newsrooms.

11,e relatively smaller and younger Spanishnewsrooms have introduced wide structuralchanges such as allowlng journalists to edit thepackages, while British newsrooms displaygreater inertia and have tended to incorporatethe new tools within the previous n wsroomstructure. New positions have been created infive of the six n wsro ms as a consequence ofthe requirements of the new technology. Inother case, old po itions have acquired newroles, especially in the Spanish newsrooms,where the archive is already digitised and li-brarians fulfil a more important role in theresearch process.

In ever case there was initial resistance rochang but, after comple-tion, there was a gen-eral acceptance that the advantag s of th digi-tal s stems outweigh possible disadvantages.At times news workers hav placed too muchtrust in the system, since technical failures oc-curred in some newsrooms, particularly in thefirst weeks of op ration. ft would seem that


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In Britain data were gathered from observations and interviews conducted in the newsrooms of three British television~tafl()ns: the BBC, !TN and ky News. 111e HBC is a public service broadcaster funded by a licence fee. IndependentTel vision News and Sky New are both commercial news orgaLlisabuns. 111 pain, dnta were also gathered by observationsconducted in the newsrooms of the three Spanish television stations: Telecinco, Antena 3 and Telemadrid. Both Teleclncoand Antena J are commercial broadcasters funded b advertising. Tclemadrid is a regionol public service broad aster,funded both by advertising and by financial aid from the Regional Government of the Community of Madrid.Semi- true-lured interviews were conducted with 13 senior m,Hiilgers and j umallsts from B13 , ITN ami Sky News newsrooms inBritain and 11 from Telecinco, Antena 3 and Telemadrid (see Appendi [or details of those interviewed). AlIl:he [ournali tsinterviewed were helpful and willing to ansv er followup questions. During th", period of observation, it was importantthat [oumalists working in the newsroom and the researchers became II d to each other, in order to create an unobtrusiverelationship. The bservatiou "coteswere mainly concerned with descriptions of the work o r [ournalisrs in the various stagof news producrton, the use of digital technOlogy and the organisational tructure of the newsroom, The informationgathered in these periods of observation, which extended over two days in "".ch newsroom, was then usee! for preparingthe open-ended interviews with journali ts, A similar interview schedule W,1S used In each country and was refined . 1 I 1 dmodified to take into account new, related '1I'e1!Lil>nS as the research progressed, 111TOUghiteratur study. discusslons withe perts and nbservatien, thre diff rent klnds of open-ended interviews were prepared, one for each professional level:new director, system us rs and technical directors.

Bandres, Elena, Garda Aviles, Jose Alberto, I'':r.:7,G.ibrid ..no Pl!rez. [avier (2000) El pa iC1 li i s l llo en l t L' l" "i s iv ll " i/ ir tn i, B.trceluna:Paid6s.

B SC (2 002 ) A .Rl'l,iL~" o f B BC N flI 'S , London, < hl'lp:/ /www.bbc.co.uk >,Blumler, In}' G. and. Curevitch. Mich,wl (1995) Ti, , Cris is oJ Public Commumcanon , London: Routledge.Blumlcr, J ~ y G ., M Lcod, J . ~nd Ro :" " '" ,l 't ! n, Karl F .. (Eds) (19'12).COlllpnrntivdy SI"c"kil')(: CU'IIII"",icllli',,1 (!rid cultus RaD,s s pnu and' im" , N ..wbury Park, CA: Sage.Bromley, Michael (]997) "The End nf journalism? Ch..nges in workplace practice in Lhepres..; and broadcasting in the lQ'lOs",In: Michael bromley and Tom O'Malley (Ed ), A ImlrlmlistlJ R''l1Il"r, London: Routledge, pp, 330-50.

JOURNALISTS AT DIGITAL TELEVtSION NEWSROOMS

In the digital age, journalists increasinglywork in multimedia companies, and th y face agr ater demand for multi-skilllng in their work.Although it has been a matter for concernamong new workers, multi-skilling s ems tobe 11 trend that will increase in the near futuremainly because of economic reasons. Neverthe-Ie s, the po sible negative effects of this trendmak it nee ssary for companies to adopt themodel carefully to avoid endangering tra-ditional journalistic skills and to ensure that adiver ity of expertise is retained in the news-room.Digiti arion eems to have an ambivalent im-

pact on jou.rnalism. Multi-skilling leaves jour-nalists Jess time to fulfil traditional journalisticpractices, such as double-checking of sourcesand finding contextual information. The newlyestablished routines tend to emphasise the. im-portance f sp e ed, which sometimes raises con-cern about the quality of the output. Inaddition, the fact that technoJogy allows f01'faster processing of news in I' ases the pre ureto be first with the story and to provide more

Reference

on-the-spot, u tantaneous live news, whichleaves very little chance to explain context. Thisis particularly so in the case of 24-hour newchannel, wh re journalists must report live onevents that they have very little time to research. On the other hand, digital archivesmake it easier to u e file material, which canallow journalists to contextualise their storiesmore fully. The routines of digital production5 m to have an impact on structuring news.However, the effect of changing journalisticpractice on new output requires further re-search.The situation unfolding inBritain and Spain

provides the ideal. backdrop for conducting fu-ture research as Significant changes in marketstructure, outlets (cable, satellite and the inter-net) and performance take place. On the basisof this discussion, it would seem that furthercomparative news research, oriented to the pro-duction domain and the ways inwhich digital-isation may be influencing the quality of n woutput. might prove aluable,

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/http://www.bbc.co.uk/


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100 JOSE ALBERTO GARCiA AVILES et al.ortle, _im n (1995)"The Production of New Formats: determinants of mediated public contestation", M,,I/a. Culture Ii/ld SOO"1Y17, pp. 275-9 J.

Cottle, Simon (J999) "Prom BBC New roam 10BBC Newsc ntre: on changing technol gy and journalist practices", Conuergenc5(3), F'p. 22-13.Garda Aviles, J o s e Alberto and Leon, Bienven.ido (2002) "Journalistic Practice in Digital Television Newsrooms; the case ofSpain's TelllCinco and Anrena J", jOl lmal ism: Tlwury, Practice & Criticism 3(3), pp.355-71.Hardt, Hanno (19'30)"Newsmakers, Technology and [nurnalism History", Cr;t iCliI S~lIdies it! Mass Conmnlllll ' lt t iDtI. 7, pp,346-


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