4. Convergence
Where are newsrooms going?
An Age perspective
This is an intoxicating time to be a journalist. Media businesses around the world are racing to secure their futures as digital technology transforms the way people consume news and information.
In this new marketplace, high-value journalism is becoming the new "rivers of gold". Those organisations determined to survive are combining traditional news-gathering with the speed, reach and innovative functions of the web.
Journalists recognise this new reality. Where once there was suspicion now there is an acceptance the Internet can be journalism 's saviour. The web is enabling a more enhanced form of storytelling that allows journalists to add vision, audio, slideshows, document trails - and still write with depth, authority and, most tellingly, to infinitely more readers.
Like most phenomena this trend has acquired a name: Newsroom of the Future.
As my Fairfax colleagues and I quickly found during a study tour of the world 's leading integrated sites, there 's no blueprint or "how to" manual - no sure-fire formula for making a "newsroom of the future" succeed.
So rapid is the transition that already the terminology itself is questioned. "Future" is passé; newsroom integration is happening "now". Then again, there are those who say it may already be too late.
Since Fairfax Media CEO David Kirk outlined his vision for a fully integrated digital media publishing business in April this year, newsroom convergence has accelerated across the company 's two biggest sites in Sydney and Melbourne.
Increasing numbers of Fairfax print reporters send breaking news to the web. Many staffers blog. Canberra veterans like Michelle Grattan file audio commentary on the day 's big political news while Age commentators Shaun Carney and Malcolm Maiden regularly do videocasts.
In newsrooms accustomed to morning newspaper deadlines, speed has become the new mantra. Recognition that news is now an on-demand commodity is transforming work practices and a few old shibboleths - such as releasing exclusive material hours before the paper goes to press.
Daily, if not hourly, these convention-busting decisions are being made between reporters and news editors - if the scoop is deemed "perishable" it 's posted to the web.
The Age's recent coverage of the conviction of serial killer Peter Dupas was a textbook illustration of the integrated newsdesk in action.
The Age story was live on the website just a minute after online reporter Dan Harrison sent a text message confirming the verdict at 3.47pm - ahead of on-line competitors, radio and TV and the wires.
Chief court reporter Peter Gregory then filed in more detail when the judge had finished. Both Gregory and Harrison continued to file updates, including reaction from family and the police involved in the investigation.
Photographers contributed images soon after and Viki Lascaris produced a photo gallery to run with the growing coverage. John Silvester 's multi-media report of the case - including his dramatic interview with the prosecution 's star witness, former lawyer Andrew Fraser, was also live within minutes of the verdict.
Significantly, much of the momentum is happening by osmosis. Perhaps that old-fashioned journalistic instinct that took newspapers to their zenith has, like the industry, moved with the times after all.