Summary

The constant bombardment of change in the newspaper market has resulted in newspaper publishers striving to sustain a balance between delivering quality editorial products and running newsrooms efficiently whilst trying to keep costs down. Keeping this balance can mean publishers, at times, choose turn to internal reorganisation to make significant changes to the infrastructure and set up of the newsroom. Internal Reorganisation for Publishing Houses is a research series commissioned to obtain an in-depth look into the practice of editorial reorganisation in newsrooms across Europe. Over the course of three special reports both a comprehensive and detailed picture will emerge of how publishing houses are transforming their newsrooms for a variety of reasons, often due to new ownership, organisational optimisation and/or to incorporate digital content into the portfolio of products and services under the newspaper brand. This special report is the first in the series and provides an overview of the context of editorial reorganisation starting with why publishing houses decide to go through an editorial reorganisation program. The report then demonstrates some of the commonly occurring changes made to newsrooms such as structural, workflow and infrastructural changes. Changes made to these core editorial elements and practices naturally affect editorial personnel and an overview of changes to headcount, roles and shift patterns is also provided. Analysing the actual practice of implementing editorial reorganisation is a new area for Ifra research, therefore a specifically developed analytical framework for the looking in detail at this practice rounds off the first report. The next report applies the analytical framework to four case studies of European newsroom which are currently going through or have recently completed a reorganisation program. The third report features the experience gleaned and lessons learnt from the four case studies. This information is utilised for the creation of guidelines and principles for editorial reorganisation. These guidelines and principles are designed to support those embarking on or going through their own editorial reorganisation program.