News comes to me that the concept of "newsroom integration" is gathering pace in Australia. That basically means that the newsroom furniture is being rearranged to allow the online and print editorial staff to work together more closely. That's all very good - because, while newspapers are going to be around for a fair while to come, the future of news is most definitely online. What interests me, though, is the fact that this is happening at titles where they have had completely different news agendas for their online and print operations. Without naming names, here's two examples from different Australian capital-city mastheads:
+ One newspaper represents itself as a serious entity in print but never a day goes by when the front page of its website doesn't feature female cleavage, usually accompanied by a flimsy story from the world of celebrity. The pictures that hit web surfers in the eye when they log on to this very popular site would never appear on the front page of the newspaper. Why not?
+ A "quality" broadsheet's website promotes it as a good source of business news and world news, yet the No. 1 ranking story over the past few days has been a beat-up based on hearsay about the long-ago marriage between actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. If web hits count for anything, shouldn't that story have been on the front page of the paper, too?
Now I know the immediate response from my friends in the newspapers concerned would be that the print and online products are different. If that's the case, then, why do they carry the same masthead, and are the "integrated" staff now expected to write differently for the two entities?
The simple truth is that, to this point, these websites have been designed and edited to attract the most number of hits possible - and that means dragging in people from anywhere they can in cyberspace by peddling gossip and bare flesh. While potential advertisers might initially be impressed by the site's statistics, surely those who currently pay a premium to plug their high-end products in the "quality" press are going to start asking questions one day. Why, they may well ask, should we advertise on a site that's been "dumbed down" for the sake of getting the attention of people who Googled the words "Brad Pitt" - especially if they don't even live in Australia?
PS: The solution, of course, is for the media organisations in question to create multiple online mastheads in order to capture as much of the market as possible. This would, however, require journalists who can rework the same copy into many different styles.