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Newsroom and their functions

🌱 Planted on Apr 20, 2023⌛ 2 min read

Table of Contents

What is a Newsroom?

Newsroom is a central workspace in a media house where editors, news reporters, directors, and producers come together.

Central part of the news agency

Different professionals all come together

aka City Room

Selection of news, editing of news, desktop publishing, designing, all take place here

Structure / Elements of a Newsroom

Newsrooms have many wings or departments.

flowchart TD
a(Newsroom)-->b(Editorial)
a-->c(Advertisment)
a-->d(Admininstrative)
a-->e(Printing)
a-->f(Store)
a-->g(IT Department)
a-->h(Circulation)

Each department has its own function but they work in tandem.

Functions of a Newsroom

A place for all the professionals to come together and work. Work as a team. Everything has to go hand in hand, because everything has to fit neatly into the newspaper. The length of articles, the number of articles, the advertisments, everything. Also accomodates last minute changes

News gathering

  • Reporters go out and look for news; their specific Beat
  • Correspondents giving news from other places and Stringers
  • Journalists have sources. Hence the “according to reliable sources”
  • many beats; crime, sports, entertainment, etc
  • expertise in their specific fields
  • field reporters, spot covering, quick gather info that is newsworthy
  • submitted to newsrooms

Selection Of news

  • For example, on business page, if the newshouse has 50 articles, they can’t publish all of it. → NSE and BSE (stocks) gets the most importance - So selection of news, prioritizing
  • Gatekeepers select news. Reporters get multiple news, gatekeepers select news articles based on their “newsworthiness”
  • Select or reject news

Editing

  • Word count / article length
  • Proofread
  • presentation
  • fixes and makes raw text better
  • News selection
  • objectivity
  • arrange accd to inverted pyramid
  • determine news value (importance)
  • aren’t answerable to reporters
  • gatekeeping continues - filtering news story, removing stories that they feel is unimportant

Page Designing

  • alignment
  • should be able to distinguish bw parts
  • no overlap
  • Desktop publishing
  • layout
  • themes during festivals
  • gutter space
  • images, logos
  • ads, typography

deals with advertisements types of ads: classified ads local national real estate ads law ads display ads Advertorial (ads + information)

Printing Press

  • Production aspects
  • installation and maintenance of machines
  • compiling data → newspaper format → paper
  • printing plate prep, printing cutting folding

Structure of Newsrooms

Editorial Structure of Newspaper

Structure of Newsrooms

Newsrooms can have various wings depending on the size of the newspaper. They can be divided into editing, reporting, and mechanical wing.

flowchart TB

X(Chief Editor <br> Executive Editor <br> Resident Editor)
X-->A(Newsroom)

subgraph 1
direction TB
B(Central Editing Desk)-->D(Assistant Editor,<br>News Editor, <br>Chief Copy Editor,<br>Senior Copy Editor,<br>Copy Editors <br> feature writers)
end

subgraph 2
C(News Bureau)-->E(Bureau Chief,<br>Special Correspondents,<br>Reporters: Chief, Senior, City, Beat<br>Stringers <br> Photo Editor <br> Photographers)

end

A-->|editing wing|B
A-->|reporting wing|C

N(News Agencies)--->B
B-->P(Desktop Publishing)

Roles (News Desk/Central Editing Desk)

Editor / Chief Editor / Editor-in-Chief

heads a newspaper supervises and controls all newsrooms designation depends on size and structure of newsroom responsible for the editorial policy looks after its execution (in consultation with Resident and Executive Editors) plans growth responsible for everything, especially the editorial page (aka voice of the paper) makes editorial and special comments on contemporary issues content and presentation of the newspaper = editor’s vision

Executive Editor

Executes the vision of the editor in chief takes part in all initiatives taken by editor-in-chief gives suggestions to junior staff in absence of editor-in-chief up to date with activities of multi-edition newspapers

Resident Editor

in multi-edition newspapers, newspapers are published from different towns and cities person who heads a particular edition = resident editor

Large papers have many editions. For eg ToI originates from Mumbai but has lots of editions - Bangalore, New Delhi, etc

Resident Editors are extended arms of the chief editor who implements newspaper’s policies

Assistant Editor

assists chief editor and performs the duties assigned by the chief editor may write an editorial and look after the feature page + supplements Closely associated w Chief Editor

News Editor

decides the selection and rejection of news items assigns the items on various pages gives a fresh treatment or angle to the news allocates page decides all of this on the worthiness of the news story in close contact w news placement and page designing; and news wing and reporting wing supervises colleagues co-ordinates knows policies and implents them under the guidance of editor

smaller newsrooms might not have a news editor; in that case, chief sub fills the role

Chief Sub Editor / Chief Copy Editor

Distributes news items to sub editors coordinates with news and reporting wing for better
coverage and also consults with the advertisement and circulation wing In absence of News Editor, play the role

Roles (News Bureau)

Bureau Chief

leads central bureau; assigns duties; co-ordinates with news wing; reports to news editor / chief sub-editor

Special Correspondents

(cover national and international news) senior-most, most experienced members

Chief Reporter

covers major events in the city or district assigns duties to reporters and guides them plans special stories builds rapport with politicians and officials builds connections with information sources

Senior Reporters

covers major happenings assists bureau chief takes over the role of bureau chief in case of their absence

Reporters

have a group of reporters might have a specific Beat supervise by bureau chief

Stringers (Journalism)

Freelancers who have a working relationship with a news/media agency but are paid per work instead of a regular salary.

Think Peter Parker submitting photos to the Daily Bugle

Freelance journalists who work on a contract basis for news organizations, rather than as full-time employees.

Stringers typically cover local stories or events that are of interest to a larger audience or market. They may provide written articles, photographs, videos, or audio recordings, depending on their skills and equipment. Stringers are paid per piece or per word, rather than by salary or hourly wage.

Link to original

Photography Wing

Photo Editor

Chief Photographer

Photographers

Other Elements

They may also have -

flowchart TD
a(Newsroom)-->b(Editorial)
a-->c(Advertisment)
a-->d(Admininstrative)
a-->e(Printing)
a-->f(Store)
a-->g(IT Department)
a-->h(Circulation)
reference - IGNOU's MJM-026 Print Media material https://egyankosh.ac.in/handle/123456789/59400 Link to original

reference - IGNOU's MJM-026 Print Media material https://egyankosh.ac.in/handle/123456789/59400

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