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What would a newsroom look like if you built it from scratch today? That was the question answered by a project sponsored by the Knight Foundation and conducted at the Chronicle, the student newspaper of Duke University. It was led by Chris O’Brien, who in addition to being project manager for the Next Generation Newsroom, is a business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. The beauty of this project is that it’s not just research and concept; the blueprint of the next newsroom is now a proposal being considered by Duke University.

In this interview with Chris, we discuss the five principles their research identified for what a newsroom will look like. As I reviewed the principles for this interview, it struck me that they reflect the characteristics that make social media so powerful. Below are the Next Newsroom principles and, in italics after each one, I’ve outlined how PR professionals can adapt their role to be a valued resource for these next newsrooms. These would be either PR managers and specialists inside corporate departments or PR associates in a firms representing clients.

Give us your thoughts at 206-600-6887 or in the comment section below. For every comment you provide, Provident Partners will provide a food item to a St. Paul, MN, food shelter.

Five principles for the ideal newsroom

So rather than start by trying to create a single “ideal,” we decided to identify the big themes. This led to the establishment of five principles we think any newsroom of the future should embrace:

*Community: The community should be at the center of a newsroom. That can mean physical spaces for training, spaces for public events, and social spaces. But it also means making the community an integral part of the news and information gathering, discussions and production.

For the PR professional, Community means: Identify all of the communities your staff participates in. For example, an employee that is active in professional associations, local government. These people can be resources for news.

*Multi-platform: The ideal newsroom should embrace all platforms — online, print, broadcast, mobile — on an equal footing. Any newsroom that organizes around a single platform, and considers the others to be secondary, risks becoming stagnant as those platforms change and new ones emerge.

For the PR professional, Multi-platform means: I’m a big proponent of the right medium for the story. Some stories are most powerful when told by video, while others may be more appropriate for audio. Pitching stories to television because they are good video stories is now limiting. Every media is multi-media, and your video story should be pitched to the outlets most appropriate for that content. Just because a network doesn’t like your pitch for X story, you should look at the same video story for The New York Times because they have a fully integrated multi-media newsroom. Consider ways your information might appeal to a mobile audience and devise ways to deliver information there.

*Innovation: We’re entering an era of increasingly rapid change. The ideal newsroom today won’t be the ideal newsroom of 2012. So any newsroom needs to make innovation a priority and find ways to create the capacity for constant experimentation.

For the PR professional, Innovation means: Stay on top of the changes in the media that cover your company and topics of interest. They may be looking for ways to cover issues at less cost, accept bylined articles (I’m not talking about product shilling here; I’m talking thoughtful discussion of issues. If a person in your organization can do that, then be on the look-out for opportunities as newsrooms evolve.) New marketing and PR will be about testing and adapting, not doing what worked for 100 other companies. By that time, you’ve lost the creative edge and audiences will have moved on to something else. There is no longer safety in numbers. Safety is a figment of your imagination; innovation is critical to sustained growth.

*Collaboration: Because any newsroom will be one among many in its community, it’s critical that it figure out how to work with others in the news and information ecosystem, whether that’s linking, teaming up on strategic stories, or finding other ways to cooperate when its strategic.

For the PR professional, Collaboration means: Companies need to think and act like newsrooms. When issues of concern take center stage, your company needs to react as if you were covering breaking news. What is your company’s opinion of a trade embargo, the price of oil, the health care proposal, or [insert relevant issue here]. You need to either have an opinion or be a conduit for discussion. You can’t just sit around and wait for your new product improvement to issue a “news” release. Why? Because it likely isn’t news. When you realize that most companies don’t make news, they are part of the news, then you’ll start to be included in the real news.

*Transparency: The explosion of information and news creates an enormous challenge for people to figure out which sources they can trust. The best way for a news organization to approach this problem is to become as transparent as possible. In the case of some new newsrooms we examined, that meant a transparent structure that allowed the public to see inside and invited them in. But in terms of content, that also means being as open as possible about your processes, sources, decisions and content.

For the PR professional, Transparency means: This is my favorite. I’d love to see companies conduct editorial meetings every month and treat their organization as a news source. Please stop. Do not submit the following, “Well, we have a company newsletter…” No, that’s a marketing brochure in a layout that looks like a newspaper.

Let’s start by identifying conflict as a part of the issues you cover about the topics in your company’s interest. There must be conflict because conflict makes for interesting stories. So in health care, is there conflict between access and cost? In the finance industry, is there conflict between regulation and growth? In manufacturing, is there conflict between using certain types of raw materials? Of course, and you have plenty of thoughtful ways to discuss issues that are debated in your industry everyday. That is what transparency is all about. It’s not about revealing your secret, patented manufacturing process, or your boss’ stash of Johnny Walker Black in her desk. It’s about being a forum for discussion in most cases about issues in your industry and less about the greatness of your latest widget.

In this podcast, I mention one of my favorite sites, The Frontline Club, an independent journalist organization in London. It is brilliant, raw journalism at its best.

Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter for every comment we receive on this blog or on the comment line 206-600-6887.

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