Comments on: Your newsroom could learn something from TMZ… No, really

By: Steve Woodward

Steve Woodward — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:23:42 +0000

At The Oregonian, all staffers have an open invitation to sit in on the news meetings. The truth is that few ever do, apart from the two dozen or so editors who are expected to attend. The meetings are held in a special meeting room called The Well, which is located in the dead center of the newsroom and whose walls are retractable. So anyone walking by can see and hear any meetings in progress. I suspect that staffers don’t attend the news meetings because they would consider them a waste of time. The daily news budget is posted our our intranet anyway.

By: Yoni Greenbaum

Yoni Greenbaum — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:55:14 +0000

Aurora and Steve - Online broadcasting is indeed an interesting idea. To see how one newspaper is doing it, check out BostonNow who broadcast their weekday meetings online. I agree that it opens some new avenues and I like Steve's big screen reader chat room idea. My thinking was that for newspapers not willing to go from a shuttered meeting to online broadcast, open meetings would be a good intermediate step. Steve, how does it work at the Oregonian?

By: Steve Woodward

Steve Woodward — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:44:26 +0000

TMZ’s approach is better than the traditional news meeting. But I don’t think it goes nearly far enough. If newspapers are supposed to be a conversation with readers, why aren’t we involving readers themselves in news decisions? I don’t profess to know how to do this. But at the very least, I would mount a webcam so readers could watch and hear the news meetings in real time. Perhaps a reader chat room runs simultaneously with the meeting, monitored by a staffer or projected on a big screen. Readers would thus have input, although decision-making still falls to editors. All I know is that opening news meetings to all staffers doesn’t strike me as all that revolutionary.

By: Aurora

Aurora — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:52:03 +0000

The idea of making the meeting available to view online is an interesting one. I think most readers are in the dark about how decisions are made in the newsroom and that secrecy gives people reason to believe that editors are motivated by their own biases. Making the decision making process visible to the public creates a transparency that would be helpful. Of course, it presents some challenges, but I think the benefit would outweigh the drawbacks.

By: Greg Linch

Greg Linch — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:14:24 +0000

I completely agree, we should have open story meetings. It hits at the “two heads” cliché. Why wouldn’t you want and more varied perspectives in deciding what to cover?

I’m going to try it in our newsroom, despite the office being fairly small.