Transforming what is possible in news production
Transforming what is possible in news production
White Paper
A newsroom without a room
In a world of fake news that can be created by anyone with internet access, it is very easy to forget the incredible and valuable role that professional, trained and responsible journalists play – not just in bringing us the real news, but also in uncovering truth. The famous story of Woodward and Bernstein – the young Washington Post reporters who were responsible for the Watergate story that caused the impeachment of President Nixon – is an outstanding example of investigative journalism at its very best. But things have moved on a long way since the early 1970s.
The fact that social media now drives so many news stories has, in many ways, contributed to what might be called ‘news overload’: new stories appear 24/7, and makes us weary and hardened to stories that would have once touched our hearts. On the upside, however, are the technology tools – tiny HD cameras, man-pack satellites, web video editors, remote production, cellular bonding technology and so on – that have made it possible for journalists to bring us stories, complete with sound and images in real time, from anywhere in the world.
What has changed in all this time?
This has been the key change in the last 10 years in news production: ‘producing’. We no longer get reports about significant events: we can actually witness them. Today, journalists don’t just hammer out some copy and send it into ‘the system’. The role of a broadcast journalist is to turn information into pictures and sound, both reporting and producing live and/or recorded packages. All of it in the shortest time possible (because immediacy rules) and with less and less resources at their fingertips (the eternal request to “do more with less”).
Considering this situation, and considering the radical change the industry has experimented in 2020 due to the boom of remote production in order to safeguard news production in times of global confinement, it is worth analyzing what its future will be like. What role will journalists play in a few years from now? How will the technology evolve? Will journalists be able to improve the fast pace of news creation? And if so, how will they do it? In this white paper, we take some time to review the transformation of news production towards a newsroom without a physical room.
Brief history overview of news production
- Making the leap from voice to image: Broadcast news production emerged as a simple progression of radio news around the 1940s. In those early days, quality and technology certainly did not allow journalists to do much. The first news programs were weekly and only 10 minutes long. Typically, presenters or commentators used voice-over to detail the news while the images and the newscast were being played on screen. An early example of this type of program was NBC’s ‘Camel Newsreel Theater’, which began its first broadcasts in the United States in February 1948. One year later, in 1949, the first evening news programs started broadcasting
- The power of color and live broadcasting: From the 1960s forward, not only the quality of news, but also the quantity of news increased considerably. Technology began to improve substantially and soon came the news in color and live broadcasting. One of the most remembered milestones in broadcast history occurred during the coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s tragic assassination in 1963. In that ocassion, TV networks canceled their regular programming for the first time to broadcast live responses of the fateful day from witnesses and citizens. It was also during this decade that the 30-minute newscast format started. CBS was the leading network to change the format, followed by NBC in 1963 and ABC in 1967. In the 1980s, mobile satellites began to be used to produce live broadcasts from remote locations more quickly and efficiently.
- The beginnings of segmentation and specialization: One of the most important events in the evolution of news production was the beginning of CNN’s activity in 1980. A new era of 24/7 news began, as well as the proliferation of cable news (BBC World News, BBC News Channel, Sky News, Al Jazeera, Newsmax TV, ABC News 24, France 24, STAR News, Fox News, and MSNBC). As a result of this phenomenon, generalist TV channels also began programming more morning and evening news shows to compete with this new format. Subsequently, a specialization in cable news began by themes (sports, financial, meteorological news, etc.) and even by geographical areas (channels for a single region or metropolitan area). Some generalist television networks also began to operate their own cable news channel or IPTV to offer local news, where the same newscast was repeated in a loop during the time between one live show and the next.
Along with all these changes, the beginning of news production as we know it today started. The development of PCs in the 80’s contributed to the appearance of the first technologies for computerized distribution and management of television networks. These systems became the germ of current broadcast automation (playout) and news production systems (NRCS), and they contributed to completely change the work of journalists itself, which was greatly simplified and eased.
- From one to multiple screens: Internet, social media and new content platforms radically changed the way news is consumed and helped to accelerate its creation. While television channels began their transition towards the non-linear world in 2010 (deploying file-based systems and digital streaming plus social networks to connect with their younger audiences), a new form of news production based on the citizens’ contributions also began to proliferate. It is the so-called “citizen journalism” phenomenon.
This fact not only marked a turning point in the coverage of breaking news from multiple points of view, but it also introduced the industry into a frenetic run to be the first to broadcast relevant events taking place anywhere in the world through all possible channels. In search of a solution for this situation, professional journalists had to learn to produce news 24/7 for a greater number of platforms. And all this, in addition, with less and less resources, having seen its main sources of income – such as advertising – diminished in favor of the online world.
- Fake news and 2020, a return to the origins: Everything comes with a price, and citizen journalism did too. Due to the avalanche of data and information available on the Internet, the so-called ‘fake news’ arose and started to being distributed in an uncontrolled way, especially through social media. Paradoxically, in the most connected era in history, misinformation kept increasing everyday. However, it could be said that 2020 was the year that saw a come back of professional news production as it was perceived before. As a result of the global confinement to fight the pandemic, audiences flocked to consume traditional news services in radio and television to find out what was going on in their respective countries and local environments. According to data from the EBU, the daily viewing share of news programs on public broadcasting services (PBS) in Europe increased by 20% in March 2020, compared to the first quarter of 2019. Likewise, the daily reach of their websites increased their traffic 2.6 times in March, while visits to their mobile applications doubled.
Everything seems to indicate that the audience turned to traditional media when they needed reliable and proven information. In fact, 65% of Europeans chose public media as the main source of reliable information during the pandemic, ahead of the information and data officially published by their own governments. In addition, up to 44% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 also used these channels to stay informed about COVID-19. Certainly, this revealing data, information that could represent a paradigm shift on how information and news might be consumed in the future.
Transforming what is possible in news production
Considering the evolution of news production that we have seen so far, broadcast companies had to adapt to new ways of working remotely and cut their costs and expenses to ensure the continuity of their business. How has technology helped them?
Undoubtedly, there are numerous systems and tools that deserve a prominent space in the news production history and evolution: web-based Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCS) and content management systems (MAM systems); cloud video editors; multiplatform distribution; playout in the cloud; IP networks and bonding; artificial intelligence and machine learning… However, more than technology itself, what has led to such a rapid evolution of news production has been a change in how journalists approached their work: the commitment to guarantee the ubiquity of the information and news 24/7 by trying to make the most of their time and productivity.
Organizing work around news or stories (the so-called ‘story-centric news’) has contributed enormously to improving the productivity of journalists, reducing the time they spend delivering content, assimilating innumerable sources of information, publishing or broadcasting news in a multiplatform work environment, and working collaboratively between them to make all of itpossible.
On a technological level, the application of this work philosophy has been enormous, specifically concerning Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCS) or news production software. The evolution of these systems over the years has allowed all professionals and departments involved in news production to simply having to access a single system in order to perform a large part of their daily tasks: organize rundowns, write stories, add multimedia content, prepare social media posts , write the presenter’s interventions, and even schedule content to be broadcast or published on any platform (radio, web, broadcast playout, streaming, social media, etc.).
Obviously, the productivity of journalists has improved substantially with these advances, but there is still a lot of work ahead. The constant evolution of technology and content consumption habits make it necessary to provide them with the most appropriate tools to further improve their efficiency, as well as to fight misinformation and quickly adapt to the structural changes that will continue to occur in the industry.
Some journalists already envision the future of broadcast news production as a newsroom without a room, a fully decentralized workforce that will depend on a common cloud-based platform to connect, send content and produce and schedule broadcast through any platform or channel. Of course, this new way of working will require automating many more tasks to get more work done with less resources.
In this respect, 78% of journalists already consider important investing in Artificial Intelligence to ensure the future of the industry. This technology could have multiple use cases, such as detecting false information and fake news or automatically creating a new video edit ready for broadcast. Other trends, such as the collaborative production of news alongside the audience, the user-generated content in news coverage, the transition to OTT platforms, the programmatic advertising or the object-based media are also some of the keys to the future that will require a close monitoring.
Although it is true that changes in technology and information consumption habits will continue to take place at high speed, nothing suggests that the need to be informed will decrease in the future, according to the BBC.
For this reason, although it is necessary to adapt quicker to new circumstances, take more risks in production and create an increasingly wide range of news (more social and more local), the truth is the dependence on reliable sources will continue to rise for a long time.
VSN NewsConnect, our own bet
Given the needs and evolution of news production, it is clear that any wrong investment made in such a dynamic and changing environment carries great risk. Therefore, one of the many aspects that companies cannot afford is the simple idea of blocking company resources to invest them in something that may not work -because the solution is not adequate for their needs or because it costs too much to update it if the company’s requirements change over time. And this is where VSN NewsConnect comes into play.
Looking for the best way to offer broadcast companies maximum flexibility to adapt their news production environments to new times, VSN NewsConnect is a plugin developed for NRCS systems that allows companies to create their ideal news production environment with total freedom of choice. In practice, it is a plugin of VSN’s MAM system that allows broadcast companies to choose the third-party software that best suits their news production needs (NRCS, CGs, video servers, studio playout, non-linear editor, etc.) and integrate all these systems via MOS protocol under a single workspace. This means that the organization is not obliged to purchase certain systems for the entire solution to work properly. They can simply put together the third-party systems or solution pieces that work best for them, regardless of vendor or brand, and replace each part separately if their needs change in the future – and of course, at a much lower cost than replacing the entire installation.
This way, VSN NewsConnect allows companies to complement and improve their production workflow, while offering journalists and editors access to all their work tools from a single interface. Everything they may need in their day to day – advanced file searches, news writing, video editing in the cloud or with an NLE, graphics’ insertion, sending to playout, publishing on non-linear platforms and social media, or even controlling multiple studios from different locations – it all happens within the interface of the NRCS system of their choice.
There are numerous advantages of moving from a multi-screen workbench to the single interface that VSN NewsConnect enables. The most important: reducing the time that journalists spend creating stories by eliminating the need for them to work switching between different tabs and interfaces. In addition, some options such as previewing in real time what the final result of the news will be like with graphics and video allows you to reduce errors, improve the quality of the work and save time and costs.
In conclusion, VSN NewsConnect enables reporters and editors to work the way they prefer, and what’s more important,it allows businesses to operate the way they prefer, true to its “produce news your way” motto.
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