Convergence and education in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom: Mapping the digital future for a small community newspaper

Convergence in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom

Name: Kayla Roux [G10R1626]

Year: JMS Honours 2013

Course: Research paper

Lecturer: Larry Strelitz

Supervisor: Harry Dugmore

Assignment: Research paper – Convergence in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom

Date: 1 November 2013

Word count: 15 833

Abstract:

Multimedia convergence is an inescapable fact for media organisations like Grocott’s Mail and

journalism schools like the Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies. In

light of the imminent move of the bulk of Grocott’s Mail’s editorial processes to the School, I

have conducted an action research study of the paper’s current digital publishing processes.

Using my experience as multimedia producer, interviews with key stakeholders and research

into convergence theories and models, I have conducted a research project outlined by a media

logic approach to analysing institutional, organizational and technical convergence. Using

different models of converged newsrooms, I conducted a benchmark convergence test on

Grocott’s Mail’s digital publishing processes.

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Table of Contents

Table of Figures .................................................................................................................. 3

Table of Abbrevations ........................................................................................................ 4

Plagiarism declaration ........................................................................................................ 5

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 6

2. Literature review ........................................................................................................... 10 2.1. Convergence: theory and practice ...................................................................................... 10 2. 2. Journalism education in the 21st century ............................................................................ 13 2. 3. Theories and models for testing newsroom convergence ................................................... 15

3. Methodology .................................................................................................................. 22

4. Discussion of findings .................................................................................................... 27 4. 1. Organogram ....................................................................................................................... 28 4. 2. Work flows ......................................................................................................................... 32

Diary meetings ................................................................................................................................ 32 Story production ............................................................................................................................. 33 Editing ............................................................................................................................................ 35 The digital publishing process ........................................................................................................ 36

4. 3. Benchmarking convergence at Grocott’s Mail Online ........................................................ 38 4. 4. Old and new problem sets .................................................................................................. 43 4. 5. Students and student contributions .................................................................................... 50

5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 52

6. Works cited: .................................................................................................................. 54

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Table of Figures

Figure A: Structure of Grocott’s Mail newspaper (Garman, 2006: 97) ................................................... 19

Figure B: Grocott’s Mail editorial work flow (Garman, 2006: 102) ...................................................... 20

Figure C: Grocott’s Mail website showing the webpage [left], the news page [top right] and out-of-date advertising page [bottom right] (Garman, 2006: 107) ................................................................... 21

Figure D: Grocott’s Mail structure 2013 ................................................................................................ 29

Figure E: Grocott’s Mail editorial work flow 2013 ................................................................................ 31

Figure F: Nika user interface 2013 ......................................................................................................... 34

Figure G: Brewer’s “typical converged newsroom” (Brewer, 2012: 1) ................................................. 39

Figure H: An editorial operation’s “back-end” or “work flow” and culture (Schantin, 2010: 1) ......... 40

Figure I: An editorial operation’s “front-end” or “audience flow” (Schantin, 2010: 1) ....................... 41

Figure J: Dailey et al.’s convergence continuum (Dailey et al., 2010: 151) ........................................... 41

Figure K: A screenshot of the recently redesigned Grocott’s Mail Online website on 1 November 2013 ........................................................................................................................................................ 46

Figure L: A screenshot of our digital replica weekly newspaper, which is hosted by a digital publisher in Canada called Newspaper Direct. .............................................................................................. 47

Figure M: A screenshot illustrating our new ‘Tip us off’ anonymous contact box ................................. 48

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Table of Abbrevations

1. DRPEJ: David Rabkin Project for Experiential Journalism

2. SJMS: School of Journalism and Media

3. AMM: African Media Matrix

4. CMS: content management system

5. CSM: content management system

6. ICT: Information Communication Technologies

Keywords: Grocott’s Mail; newsroom convergence; convergence continuum; action research;

Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies; David Rabkin Project for

Experiential Journalism

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Plagiarism declaration

1. I know that plagiarism means taking and using the ideas, writings, works or inventions of

another as if they were one’s own. I know that plagiarism not only includes verbatim copying,

but also the extensive use of another person’s ideas without proper acknowledgement (which

includes the proper use of quotation marks). I know that plagiarism covers this sort of use of

material found in textual sources and from the Internet.

2. I acknowledge and understand that plagiarism is wrong.

3. I understand that my research must be accurately referenced. I have followed the rules and

conventions concerning referencing, citation and the use of quotations as set out in the

Departmental Guide.

4. This assignment is my own work, or my group’s own unique group assignment. I

acknowledge that copying someone else’s assignment, or part of it, is wrong, and that

submitting identical work to others constitutes a form of plagiarism.

5. I have not allowed, nor will I in the future allow, anyone to copy my work with the intention

of passing it off as their own work.

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1. Introduction

This research paper maps the exploration a small community newspaper in the Eastern Cape

has made of its digital future, analysing convergence practices in the newsroom within the

theoretical journalism studies framework of multimedia logic. Grocott’s Mail is a weekly

English-language community newspaper based in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape that has

been under the ownership of Rhodes University for the past decade. The newspaper has been

printing for more than 140 years, making it the oldest independent newspaper in South Africa.

However, the paper ran into financial difficulties in the 1990s and was purchased by Rhodes

University in 2003 to set up the David Rabkin Project for Experiential Journalism (DRPEJ)

training, academic staff at the university’s School of Journalism and Media Studies (SJMS)

recognizing the potential of the newspaper as a platform for hands-on teaching and learning

(Garman, 2010: 1). Since then, Grocott’s Mail has slowly but surely attempted a response to

the demands of a rapidly growing (and changing) online audience, necessitating the

development of a digital branch called Grocott’s Mail Online in 2007. The outputs of the

newspaper’s digital branch have since grown despite the shortage of dedicated staff and

resources. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4.

In this research paper, I will refer to the key stakeholders in the editorial process by title only.

The people involved in the process and discussed in this research are:

Editor: Steven Lang

General Manager: Steve Kromberg

Production Manager: Sue Maclennan

Multimedia producer: Kayla Roux

Advertising Manager: Ronel Bowles

Cross-Media Marketing Manager: Sarah Cohen

Freelance Web Editor: Mike Whyle

Freelance Sub-editor: Caroline King

Audiences – including those in Grahamstown – have evolved along with the technologies they

use. They demand more from their media: they want it to be exciting, immediate, interactive,

and most of all – free. They want it tailored to their interests, and they want it from the comfort

of their own homes. It’s a fact that newspapers have felt acutely; many (if not all of them)

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struggling to come up with viable business models as advertising often lags behind in the

digital migration – or finds its own way. Social media and free easily programmable internet

domains have allowed businesses to market themselves and do business at little or no cost. The

small size of Grocott’s Mail and the number of people in Grahamstown that do not have access

to the internet have hampered the growth of its digital operations. This year, however, one of

the biggest changes in the newspaper’s history has already been set in motion. Grocott’s Mail

and the School of Journalism and Media Studies are in the process of taking their institutional

partnership to the next level, which sees the bulk of the newsroom’s editorial operations being

moved into the African Media Matrix (AMM), the current home of the SJMS. Advertising and

administrative staff will move to smaller, more affordable premises in the Grahamstown city

centre. Not only will this save the newspaper a small fortune in rental fees, but the move also

provides the opportunity for the school to reshape and intensify its engagement with the media

organisation it bought ten years ago. My unique perspective at the forefront of the newspaper’s

digital operations provides me with an interesting, multi-faceted and immediately relevant

avenue for research into configurations of work flow and newsroom convergence.

While Grocott’s Mail has been slow on the digital uptake, a number of changes have indeed

been implemented, and revisiting them can show us just how far the paper has come – and how

far it still needs to go. By the end of the year, the board of the DRPEJ hopes to have relocated

most of Grocott’s Mail’s operations to the SJMS. This is a strategic decision motivated by

financial concerns – the high rental fees and unused space at 40 High Street being some of

them – as well as the DRPEJ’s teaching mandate. Moving the newspaper’s editorial activities

to campus could provide the opportunity for much-needed institutional change in two ways:

firstly in terms of the practical experience students gain by putting together real media products

and interacting with real audiences, and secondly a move towards a more integrated new media

education. The former is quite straight-forward, and already takes place to some degree with

small groups of students spending a term or semester working at the newspaper. Now, students

and academic staff will work, teach and learn using Grocott’s Mail as an experiential learning

platform that is integrated in their curriculums on a rotating basis, ensuring a steady and

manageable flow of students in the newsroom as part of their curriculum. But the latter –

training multi-skilled, multi-platform journalists – requires an overhaul of Grocott’s Mail’s

current newsroom structure, editorial practices and digital publishing processes. This cannot be

done without a thorough understanding of what those processes currently entail. By using the

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theoretical framework of multimedia logic, I used my personal experience and pertinent

research in order to study

“…the way in which distinctly different parts—print/online/broadcast

newsrooms, specialized sections or “beats”, marketing and editorial,

offline and online professionals—perceive each other, establish a mode of

communication with each other, and develop cross-disciplinary skills to

work with each other…”

(Deuze, 2007: 145)

Through a series of interviews, observation and action research, a type of methodology

explained in Chapter 3, I will provide a comprehensive description of what those operations

currently entail as the only dedicated digital staff member at Grocott’s Mail. With this paper, I

want to provide a comprehensive and reflexive record of this tumultuous but promising period

in the relationship between Grocott’s Mail and the Rhodes SJMS. Although the short length of

this paper limits its scope and timing limits its relevance to the actual processes as they

continue to unfold, I hope it will be able to serve as a good starting point for further research

into this exciting marriage between theoretical education and practical experience. This action

research paper is to serve a reflexive purpose, allowing myself the time, space and extra

research to reflect critically on Grocott’s Mail’s short digital history, our current practices and

what we need to do to survive and thrive as an education media organisation. In light of these

imminent changes, I want to provide pertinent research that will draw on current theories of

convergence and apply them critically to our practices in order to enable research and

discussion that will propel the newsroom well and truly into the 21st century.

In this paper I will provide an overview of the unique situation in which Grocott’s Mail finds

itself – with its dual mandate of serving the Grahamstown community and fulfilling its role as

an experiential learning platform – and the different challenges it needs to address to move

successfully into the digital realm while accommodating a number of academic staff and

students. As a new media producer for Grocott’s Mail, I will be conducting this action research

as a participant-observer, using my personal experience of editing the website, interviews with

staff and key stakeholders, and observation of newsroom practices in combination with

research into current theories of convergence and pertinent case studies to describe where we

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are on the convergence continuum and what we still need to do to improve delivery of

multimedia content to various platforms.

In this introduction, I have already discussed the background in which this research was

conducted, explaining its relevance and context. I will review the literature informing this

paper, critically assessing and synthesizing theories of digital ‘convergence’ and different

newsroom models from around the world. I will apply the concept of a convergence

continuum, using it to compare Grocott’s Mail’s different digital incarnations – past, present

and future – with models and case studies from different parts of the world. This work falls

under and is guided by the research paradigm of newsroom and work flow convergence, its

parameters and principles circumscribing the contents of this paper and the approach focusing

on organizational structures and processes powering newsrooms in different positions on the

convergence continuum. While this broad theoretical and descriptive literature about

convergence in the newsroom comprises one part of the literature under review, other parts will

feature literature that is more specific to the situation. Some of it is specific to Grocott’s Mail –

texts outlining practices in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom at different points in time and past

research done about its newsroom practices – and some of it addresses experiential journalism

education in the 21st century newsroom, using case studies as examples of the intersection

between journalism education and converging newsrooms. Then, I will describe the research

project, defining its scope and purpose. I will describe the concepts and practices underpinning

action research, a research method which accurately describes the kind of work I have done for

this paper. I will review some of the literature on action research in Chapter 3, explaining my

choice of methodology for this research which is ultimately aimed at understanding those very

processes in which I am engaged every day. Then, I will discuss my findings informed by

unstructured and semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders at Grocott’s Mail, an

examination of the paper’s digital history and developments to date, participation in meetings,

my personal experience, and research into various models and theories of convergence and

digital publishing. I will give a detailed description of the newspaper’s current digital

publishing processes, focusing specifically on work flow and organisational aspects such as the

digital publishing process, the newsroom’s filing system, the content management system

(CMS) in use, and staff roles and responsibilities. Drawing on interviews with various

stakeholders who are acquainted with the paper’s long history and newsroom studies that have

been conducted at Grocott’s Mail in the past, I will describe changes that have taken place

since some of these studies were done to shape the situation. This will involve drawing up

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revised flowcharts and diagrams which illustrate the structure of Grocott’s Mail, the layout of

the newsroom, and the production flow, with a specific emphasis on the digital publishing

process. These charts and the discussions around them will both outline how we have

addressed past problem sets (Garman, 2006: 102) and highlight problem areas where

inefficiencies and oversights still occur.

2. Literature review

2.1. Convergence: theory and practice

The concept of ‘convergence’ in many of its varied forms has pervaded much of “media

technology, markets, production, content, and reception” (Quandt & Singer, 2009: 130). It

concerns the ever-hastening development of technologies, structures, systems and processes

and the way they relate, coming together and enabling faster developments across a

complicated web of relationships. The body of literature on convergence in the newsroom has

grown rapidly, and its contents have changed almost as quickly as the technology described in

its pages. In fact, so much has been said about the concept that the word has fallen out of

favour with many researchers due to its sheer number of different interpretations. This has “led

to the conclusion that ‘Convergence is a dangerous word!’ as early as the mid-1990s”

(Silverstone in Quandt & Singer, 2009: 130). According to these authors, research and debate

around the topic “has not become much more focused since” (Quandt & Singer, 2009: 130-

131). For the purposes of this research, I focus on aspects of convergence influencing the

media, placing my work within a media logic framework, an approach adopted by journalism

studies theorists such as Deuze (2007: 140). Media logic is

“…defined as the particular institutionally structured features of a

medium, the ensemble of technical and organizational attributes, and the

cultural competences of users—all of which impact on what gets

represented in the medium and how this gets done…”

(Deuze, 2007: 140)

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This research paper is limited in the amount of time that can be spent discussing cultural

dimensions such as attitudes, competences and relationships, but they form an inextricable part

of the organisation and practices directing the flow of content in the newsroom. But Deuze

takes it one step further, “[extending] these considerations to assess the characteristics of a

multimedia logic in journalism” (Deuze, 2007: 140). This approach is useful to theorists who

want to gain a “broad perspective on the dynamics of change and resistance in adapting to new

environments, while at the same time locating the study within the boundaries of a particular

media type” (Deuze, 2007: 140). It is based on the assumption of the importance of an

understanding and critical appreciation of the ‘media logic’ underpinning “a broader

understanding of the impact a changing media environment has for the social organization… in

journalism” (Deuze, 2007: 141-142).

Although Deuze suggests a broad approach to understanding the logical relationships that

govern media practices, I will only select and discuss from his framework a handful of

“institutional, …technological [and] …organisational” concepts and practices in the Grocott’s

Mail newsroom (Deuze, 2007: 140), not having the time or resources to conduct an

organisation-wide study. Despite its adoption of a number of converged practices, Grocott’s

Mail faces one of the biggest events of institutional convergence yet in its history, where a

partnership with the School of Journalism and Media Studies will change the way it creates and

disseminates news. Focusing primarily on this aspect of convergence, I have studied the forms

of “cross-media cooperation or synergy between formerly separated staffers, newsrooms,…

departments [and work flows]” and aim to establish something resembling a “research and

development strategy” to ensure that our exploration of the digital future is as well-informed as

possible (Deuze, 2007: 142). Technically and organisationally, I have also studied certain

aspects of the level of “synergy between different departments (including marketing, sales,

beats, hierarchical levels of management, technical and administrative staff)”, limiting the

‘departments’ to the print and web publishing systems and staffers (Deuze, 2007: 144). I have

looked at organisational issues in multimedia convergences that are broadly defined as “the

ways in which reporters and editors have dealt with, responded to, and accommodated [digital

technology] into their work” (Deuze, 2007: 144). The theoretical grounding of multimedia

logic is useful in framing the issue of convergence “by analyzing the field from an institutional,

technological, organizational, and a producer/user perspective” and searching for the self-

reflective elements that belie the practice of multimedia journalism as “the ongoing negotiation

and evaluation of recombinant factors of influence on the daily decision-making and

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technology adoption processes of reporters and editors” (Deuze, 2007: 148) – in other words,

as a living, growing, learning process.

The “general model of media convergence” (Dupagne and Garrison, 2006: 238) can refer to

convergence from different perspectives: instutitional, organisational, technological, and

user/producer convergence (Deuze, 2007: 142-147). Technical convergence happens when

previously distinct technological functions merge in a single device (Mathurine, 2013: 28).

Technical convergence is commonly understood as “coming together of all forms of mediated

conversations in an electronic, digital form, driven by computers” (European Commission

Green Paper in Dupagne & Garrison, 2009: 239): its “the digitalization of information”

(Verweij, 2009: 76). A quick look at any of the increasingly affordable and accessible tablet

processors on the market demonstrates the concept: they are telephones, video cameras and

personal computers – which are already converged tools – all in one attractively small package.

Institutionally, previously diverse and quite competitive platforms, like print and

telecommunications come together under one roof: the internet, which is rapidly surpassing all

the relatively single-purpose platforms that went before it. “Cross-platform consolidation” is

one response to changing audiences and a highly competitive media environment (Dupagne &

Garrison, 2009: 237): it entails “a single business operating with multiple platforms: common

management, ads sold across multiple media, and a shared news operation” (Aaron et al. in

Dupagne & Garrison, 2009: 239). Convergence in the business of news refers to cooperation

and mergers between various media companies (Verweij, 2009: 76). Whether previously

separate companies merge under a large corporation or traditional legacy media branch out to

broadcasting and/or web, economic convergence is about different configurations of media

organisations and different ways of interacting with audiences (Dupagne & Garrison, 2009:

239). The term can also refer to the convergence of previously discrete systems, for example

the adoption of digital content management systems and website publishing practices by

previously print-only operations (Mathurine, October 2013). These systems and processes

make up the work flow and internal newsroom structure. Content – different media and

methods of storytelling – has also converged thanks to the inextricable convergence of

technology, structures and systems. Whereas newspapers would previously tell stories in text

and pictures – illustrations or photographs – they now have the option of referring their readers

to a website where they can delve into a wealth of rich, often interactive information. Exciting

as it may be, it is clear that ‘convergence’ is a very broad concept that has understandable

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generated a lot of heated debate about its very usage. In this paper, I will be looking at

newsroom and work flow convergence. I specifically focus on aspects of the digital publishing

process like the organisation’s organogram, staff job descriptions, and the daily processes that

constitute the editorial flow. The latter, in the context of this research, will specifically focus on

digital aspects like the content management system, multimedia and social media use.

Although I have isolated this aspect of ‘convergence’, it cannot be removed (practically or

theoretically) from others, like the convergence of systems, technology and content. I believe

that although the concept of ‘convergence’ is problematic as the ‘catch-all 21st century’ phrase,

a research project with well-defined parameters can still benefit from using the phrase and

reflecting on work done within a specific field of convergence. It is important to note one last

aspect of convergence that will not be addressed in this paper for lack of space: regulatory

convergence refers to the depth and breadth of the industry-based laws governing the media

and media ownership (Garcia-Murillo & MacInnes in Dupagne & Garrison, 2009: 240).

The effects of media convergence are felt acutely in the media world, and have necessitated

and facilitated the move towards ‘multimedia journalism’ in broad strokes. It is characterised

by two distinct, crucial elements: firstly, “the presentation of a news story package on a website

using two or more media formats… including interactive and hypertextual elements [in online

journalism. [Secondly it requires] the integrated… presentation of a news story package

through different media” (Deuze, 2007: 140). These are not fixed points with specific practices,

but rather represent end goals on a continuum of different combinations of convergent practices

and systems.

2. 2. Journalism education in the 21st century

Like most journalism programs around the world have done at some point, Rhodes

University’s SJMS teaches students a mixture of practical journalism and media theory,

allowing them to specialise in one of five channels: writing and editing, television, radio,

design and photography. They have implemented some new media-related courses in the first

and second year and offer an intensive in the fourth year, but in general students are limited to

work in their specialisations. Although this kind of approach has the potential of producing

graduates with strong skills, this rigid media division for the third and fourth year students does

not reflect the demands of a changing media landscape. Hirst (2007) suggests that the

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inevitable nature of the changing media landscape should be reflected in the journalism

program of the Auckland University of Technology, and explores the concept of “immersion

learning”, where students learn (multi-skilled, multi-platform) journalism by practising it. He

states emphatically:

“We are training young journalists of the future. They expect, and the

media industry expects, that graduates from the AUT journalism program

will have some skills and knowledge of how the newsroom works. We

therefore have to replicate some aspect of the ‘newsroom’ in our

classrooms.”

(Hirst, 2007: 7)

Relating to students who are “digital natives” and teaching them to work in multiple media on

multiple platforms (Hirst, 2007: 3) is a constant and demanding challenge for journalism

schools. It’s undeniable: “the vast majority of media in the developed and developing world

now has at least some elements of convergence” (Hirst, 2007: 4). Whether it is with a website,

a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a mobi-site or all of these things, most newspapers,

magazines, television and radio shows and stations have some kind of online presence, with a

level of work flow organisation and outputs that falls somewhere on the convergence

continuum. (Deuze in Hirst, 2007: 4). This places serious and clear demands on journalism

education. But there is a variety of opinions on the approach: while some argue for a

“‘backpack journalist’ approach – the teaching of all skills across all platforms to all students;

others argue that there is still room for some specialisation” (Hirst, 2007: 5). The demands of

these organisations aside, the kinds of journalists who are likely to excel in the future are likely

to be those who embrace the digital realm as the home of a large, hungry audience, dedicating

their careers to finding ways to deliver quality journalism. One thing seems to be universally

important: strong writing skills in print, broadcast and web (Huang et al. in Hirst, 2007: 5).

Some journalism schools are taking it further than the mere replication of newsroom conditions

in their classrooms, or even short-term productive projects like CueMedia, which sees the

Rhodes SJMS turned into a multimedia organisation consisting of Cue newspaper, CuePix,

CueOnline Cue Radio and CueTV during the National Arts Festival every year (Verweij, 2008:

83). The Missourian boasts an impressive digital and print operation that is run by a rotating

panel of academic staff and groups of students of the University of Missouri and puts out a

daily newspaper alongside a 24/7 news operation. Hirst raises the example of the Caucasus

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School of Journalism, where students learn journalism “by immersing themselves in the doing

of it” (Hirst, 2007: 7). Soon, the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies will join that

growing group of experimental, experiential education pioneers who are preparing their

students for the demands of a real media organisation. Hammond, Petersen and Thomsen

analyse the case of a convergence experiment at Brigham Young University, where, “[over]

five years… students and faculty… created a converged newsroom that brought together

broadcast, print, and online journalism in one organisation” (WHO, 2000: 16). At that time, the

writers could only identify two other cases of convergence efforts at American universities –

namely Marshall University and Virginia Commonwealth University (Hammond et al., 2000:

17). Now, there are more universities who are providing successful multimedia, multi-platform

media services to their surrounding communities: the example of student-filled 24/7 newsroom

The Missourian and what we learned from them is discussed in the longer version of this paper.

2. 3. Theories and models for testing newsroom convergence

So, what does this demanding, inevitable ‘converged newsroom’ entail, and what should

journalism schools be emulating? There is no shortage of debate on what makes a successful

converged newsroom, and alongside the search for a viable digital media business model, it’s a

problem any 21st century newsroom faces. This paper is but one of a growing number of

“educated guesses about… the organizational structure, [and] the production work flow” that

constitute convergence (Verweij, 2009: 76). Theorists and media workers have developed

various models for measuring convergence in the newsrooms and many have come up with

models of their own. Aviles et al. proposed an interesting transnational comparison of

newsroom convergence, coming up with different models or ‘levels’ of convergence: full

integration, cross platforms, and isolated platforms (Aviles et al., 2008: 8-10). They

hypothesized that “several models of newsroom convergence might be found and defined

according to various parameters” (Aviles et al., 2008: 7). They set up a convergence ‘matrix’

along which newsrooms can be placed based on key factors in their practices and organisation

(Aviles et al., 2008: 7). These key factors include the level of technological and systemic

digital integration in the “work flows and news flow; ways of communication and cooperation

of journalists and managements; multimedia and content responsibilities; degrees of multi-

skilling…; [and] training efforts” (Aviles et al., 2008: 8). The fully integrated newsroom is

enabled for “multi-channel production… controlled via a central news and work flow

management” (Aviles et al., 2008: 8-9). Content is the first priority, while packaging for

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different platforms happens further down the line. ‘Digital first’ is one of the approaches to

content that have come to signify the massive digital transitions in the media world. Whereas

before, editors were wary of cannibalising exclusive content (that is bound to sell newspapers

and get people talking), they can’t afford to keep it to themselves anymore. On the internet,

immediacy and not necessarily quality wins first prize. The first to break a news story –

regardless of the quality of the product or the lack of substantiated facts – wins the page views

and shares, retweets and mentions, and swell in audience numbers.

Training is also a feature of this integrated newsroom, where all editorial staff members are

prepared for multimedia production and publishing (Aviles et al., 2008: 9). In Aviles et al.’s

cross media model, “journalists work in different newsrooms for different platforms, but are

interconnected through multimedia-coordinators and/or -routines” (Aviles et al., 2008: 9), and

multi-skilling is not as common here as in the integrated newsroom. In the least converged

newsroom they envision, cooperation does not occur between isolated platforms except when

initiated by individual journalists (Aviles et al., 2008: 10). The authors go on to identify

“success metrics for multi-channel media production”, making it clear that work processes and

journalistic production are in fact a lot more complicated than they seem when easy

“buzzwords” like ‘convergence’ are used to describe them. Simply put, it’s a lot easier said

than done. The authors conclude that “newsroom layout” is not the begin-all and end-all of

convergence, but rather that media organisations should focus on cooperation and coordination

between staff, content and platforms (Aviles et al., 2008: 12).

This is compatible with the kinds of convergence continuums described by Dailey et al. and

Brewer. Along with others, these theorists recognise a picture of convergence starting to

emerge: not as an event, product or an end goal, but as a developing process with a lot of

different aspects that differ between unique situations. Dailey et al. “[define] convergence by

placing it on a dynamic continuum that contains the overlapping levels of cross-promotion,

cloning, coopetition, content sharing, and full convergence” (Dailey et al., 2010: 151). This

paper is useful in the context of action research, as one of the writers’ goals is to “provide a

model through which media professionals can assess their own convergence efforts” (Dailey et

al., 2010: 152), which is in line with the reflexive aims of this convergence research. Although

this continuum refers to cooperation between media partners (Dailey et al., 2010: 153) like a

newspaper and television station and does not really refer to the kind of news operation the

DRPEJ oversees, it is still useful if the concepts are transferred to the internal operations of a

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single newsroom with multiple divergent products and platforms. Cross-promotion, cloning,

coopetition, content sharing and convergence are the five stages of convergence identified on

this continuum, but the authors stress the fact “that each stage is characterized by a wide range

of behaviours that can overlap as interaction and cooperation increase among news

organisations”, which can also move up and down along the continuum (Dailey et al., 2010:

153). I will elaborate on this process as it applies to the Grocott’s Mail newsroom in Chapter 4.

Grocott’s Mail has offered good opportunities for media research from Rhodes University staff

and students, and academic focus on the organisation has only increased in the past decade as

the SJMS tries to envision ways of incorporating it as an experiential learning platform. In

2009, Anthea Garman conducted a study of the experiences and education outcomes of

students who moved through the Grocott’s Mail newsroom – one fourth-year Writing and

Editing class, one Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism class and individual interns and

vacation workers (Garman, A. 2010: 58). The school had purchased the newspaper as “part of

an evolving effort to locate real, consequential practice (and not just simulated practice) at the

heart of journalism teaching” (Garman, A. 2010: 58). While this study is not focused on

teaching methods, the requirements of journalism education in the 21st century are in part what

necessitates this discussion on the digital evolution of this small community newspaper. Many

have argued for benefits of “the kind of learning that comes from direct encounter” (Garman,

A. 2010: 58), which are two-fold: the experience is gained both through having the encounter

and through critically reflecting on it (Smith in Garman, A. 2010: 59). While university

education offers “an education for journalism,… what they learn in a newsroom is an education

in journalism”, providing students with “a foundation for the practice of journalism” (Glasser

in Garman, A. 2010: 59-60). Garman warns against failing to “problematise the notion of

experience itself” and accepting blindly that which is only one model in a burgeoning body of

different theories on education methods. But an insistence on the importance of experiential

learning does not discount the theoretical study of journalism, which “provides a context in

which to critique and improve the practice of journalism” (Glasser in Garman, A. 2010: 60).

Ancer, the youngest editor Grocott’s Mail ever had, feels that the benefits of direct newsroom

experience are enormous:

“Students get a taste of deadlines, they see how stories come together and

how a newsroom works. In our Cadet School we have recruited journalists

who have spent time (sounds like a prison sentence) in a newsroom and

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they have a real advantage over students who haven’t. They are more

confident and the editorial process is less of a mystery. They understand

how it works – how to find a story, pitch it and what happens along the

editorial chain.”

(Ancer, 2013: 1)

He agreed with Anthea Garman: the School of Journalism and Media Studies had been

grappling with ways to use the newspaper as a meaningful experiential platform, and “there

were some tensions between the paper’s objectives and the department’s objectives” (Ancer,

2013: 1). Could the physical convergence these two entities are undertaking and their mutual

interest in converged operations hold the answer to these struggles? Only time and research can

tell.

Brian Garman authored a chapter in a 2006 study called What the Newsroom Knows.

“[It]…reflects studies conducted to assess and evaluate policy factors

affecting the usage of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in

the creation and management of knowledge and other informational assets

in privately-owned newspapers in eight Southern and East African

countries.”

(Garman 2006: 95)

The large study is prefaced by the context of the role the media can play in creating a “global

and representative Information Society for all” (Berger & Sibanda, 2006: 1). Aiming to expand

the body of research into content management systems (CMS) and digital media convergence,

the study looks at the gains media have made with ICT practices “that enable efficient work

flow processes and multi-platform publishing that extend print content seamlessly onto web

and cellphone platforms” (Berger & Sibanda, 2006: 1-2). Garman’s study of the Grocott’s Mail

newsroom and its digital publishing processes aimed to assist in the planning and production of

a CMS, streamlining the work flow. He produced

“flow charts of various work flow processes in the newsroom;

…relationships between editorial, photographic, advertising and feature

work flows; …[and summarised and assessed]… the current technology

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employed in the newspaper and the technological literacy of the Grocott’s

Mail staff.”

(Garman, 2006: 96)

After providing some insight into Grocott’s Mail’s recent history and outlining the objectives

and significance of his research, Garman delves in to describe the organisational organogram

and job descriptions of the newsroom and its advertising and administrative operations, the use

of technology, resource management, edition planning, and work flow processes (Garman,

2006: 97-100).

Figure A: Structure of Grocott’s Mail newspaper (Garman, 2006: 97)

The organogram above illustrates the organisational structure of Grocott’s Mail in 2006. It

identifies the DRPEJ board as the overseeing body to which an Editor and General Manager

are accountable. A Deputy Editor helps the Editor manage a production team made up of one

photographer, designers and a sub-editor. The Editor is also responsible for the editorial team

of reporters (the photographer also falls under this category) (Garman, 2013: 97 Fig A).

After conducting interviews with staff and analysing documents (Garman, 2006: 96-97),

Garman came up with the flow chart above, describing the path editorial content follows and

highlighting the “complicating factors” at each step of the process as a labelled list of ‘problem

sets’ (Garman, 2013: 100-102), which will be described and addressed in Chapter 4. He also

20

outlined the flow of advertising content and photos, which I will not reproduce for the purposes

of this research.

Figure B: Grocott’s Mail editorial work flow (Garman, 2006: 102)

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The Grocott’s Mail website, which was set up that year by Vincent Maher (Ancer, 2013: 1),

was not functional at the time that Garman was conducting his study. The basic home page

contained a number of broken links and he describes a lack of any basic policies surrounding

the “timing of updates, access (free or subscription), […] advertising […], editorial

responsibility, value-added content on the site, and use of the site as a possible third revenue

stream (after advertising and copy sales)” (Garman, 2006: 107). Ancer, the editor at the time,

did not share Garman’s negative view of the newspaper’s online presence:

“We published a cartoon in the paper of [Grocott’s Mail] being shot into

cyberspace on the day [the website] went live. It was exciting because

most newspapers were avoiding the internet and we (well, at least I) felt

that our newspaper was at the technological cutting edge.”

(Ancer, 2013: 1)

Figure C: Grocott’s Mail website showing the webpage [left], the news page [top right] and out-of-date advertising page [bottom right] (Garman, 2006: 107)

Garman recommends the development of a “multi-channel publishing” CMS with a

universally accessible database that provides content to the newspaper’s two platforms (today it

is three, if you count ingoing and outgoing SMSes). He sees this as a much more “user-friendly

interface” for reporters, editors and ultimately, the audience. Garman suggests damage control

for the website until it can be turned into a relevant, useful source of news – at the very least

carrying the stories that appear in the print edition. When the website has fulfilled this

‘cloning’ requirement on the convergence continuum, staff can start to explore ways to add

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value to the digital product and turn the website into a third revenue stream (Garman, 2006:

112). Its uncluttered front end would allow the forward and backward movement of content in

the digital publishing process, making it more efficient and effective (Garman, 2006: 108). The

diagram below illustrates Garman’s suggested model for a “database-driven CMS” that

contains all content and delivers to multiple platforms. It would make use of an intranet system

to manage the news diary, calendar, journalistic and editorial resources, and allow journalists to

submit drafts for review (Garman, 2006: 111). I will elaborate on Nika, Grocott’s Mail’s

current CMS, and compare it with Garman’s suggestions in 2006 in Chapter 4.

3. Methodology

In light of the imminent changes faced by the School of Journalism and Media Studies and

Grocott’s Mail, I want to provide pertinent research that will draw on current theories of

convergence and apply them critically to our practices in order to come up with goals and

models that best suit our situation.

Although this research paper was developed with the aim of describing the current transition

underway in the merger between Grocott’s Mail and the School of Journalism and Media

Studies, this did not prove feasible for the limitations of this paper. In a longer version of this

paper, I describe the transformation process that was set into motion when Rhodes University

bought Grocott’s Mail in 2003 and has gained momentum in the past year, taking care to

describe the process leading up to the planned integration of the newsroom into the Journalism

school’s building and curriculum very comprehensively. But the length of this paper and its

timing – right in the middle of the transformation planning process – limit it to a

comprehensive overview and assessment of Grocott’s Mail’s current digital publishing

processes, which will nonetheless serve as foundations for further developments in the

upcoming year or two. With this groundwork, anybody interested in working on the new

Grocott’s Mail project or learning about it has a solid starting point outlining the current state

of digital publishing at the organisation. In the extended version of this paper, I have provided

a description of the transformative processes currently underway, flagging certain areas where

more research is needed and making some tentative suggestions for increased multi-platform

efficiency and multi-skilling, hands-on newsroom training. Expanding on the results of my

23

interviews, participation and personal experience of the newsroom in relation to the case

studies and literature I have reviewed, I draw up some practical guidelines for adopting a ‘web-

first’ strategy that will streamline and enrich the digital publishing process while strengthening

the print publication and drawing students and academic staff into its expanding operations.

It is clear that convergence is a broad, multidimensional concept that affects the media in a

number of different ways. For the purposes of this research, I will only discuss a narrow

selection of aspects which fall under newsroom and work flow convergence. Although to do

this I will have to touch on some things like the technology in use at Grocott’s Mail,

advertising, organisational structures and financial business models, I do not have the space or

resources for such a task as a comprehensive study of the relatively small news operation. I am

interested in studying the level of convergence in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom within a

theoretical framework of ‘media logic’ in the field of journalism studies, emphasizing the day-

to-day practices and work flow used to generate and manage content and knowledge within the

newsroom. I do not think it necessary, or necessarily useful, to attempt to cover all the bases at

this level. My direct experience in one aspect of the newsroom’s operations is what enables me

to provide insights that affect the whole organisation: a more converged newsroom would

make better use of available technologies, necessitate and create structural change, and

hopefully, ultimately, create new revenue streams and reach new audiences. Although the point

is debated, I will assume the strategic value of convergent practices – with the goal of a fully

integrated newsroom – as I have outlined them lies in reducing inefficiency, improving content

quantity and quality, and building up a loyal follower base by interacting with more, different

audiences. Although “it is safe to say that growing majorities of news media in different parts

of the world offer their core journalistic product through more than one channel”, the ideal

‘fully integrated newsroom’ “still has not been achieved nor accepted widely by the industry”

as the answer to the changing media environment (Deuze, 2007: 142). Even given more space

and time than this research allows, others have recognised the definitional complexity of the

concept of ‘convergence’ and have opted to study one or two aspects of convergence at a time

in order to provide useful descriptions of and recommendations for various digital convergence

phenomena. Much has been done in terms of research into effective digital business models

and e-commerce opportunities for media organisations, which will always be useful and

relevant to this kind of work, which is based within an . Besides the assumed benefits of

adopting digital convergence practices for media organisations, it is also an inescapable fact for

journalism schools around the world: newsrooms and audiences and their demands on

24

journalism graduates are changing. Given my direct experiences at Grocott’s Mail, I am in the

position to give a detailed description which can act as a record of the development of its

current digital publishing processes and set the foundations for thinking about the upcoming

changes at the media organisation and journalism school.

The kind of research I have conducted can loosely be described by a method called action

research. Action research(explain in the intro) is a “living, evolving” method that is based on

the concept of ‘knowledge as action’ (Reason & Bradbury, 2001: 9) and does not outline

concrete methodology (Reason & Bradbury, 2001: 2). Rather, it is based on the combination of

theory with practice, where researchers and practitioners work “together on a particular cycle

of activities, including problem diagnosis, action intervention, and reflective learning” (Avison

et al., 1999: 94). In my work and studies, I have managed to recreate this research method

throughout the year: alongside this research, I have also studied the use of social media and

mobile communications during the March water crisis in Grahamstown (Grocott’s Mail, 2013:

1a) for another of my five research Honours research courses. Unfortunately, “there is still a

lack of detailed guidelines for novice researchers and practitioners to engage in action research

studies in terms of design, process, presentation, and criteria for evaluation” (Avison et al.,

1999: 94). It is important to set up clear criteria against which the outcome of the research will

be measured. In this research, these criteria have in part been set up by the different theories of

convergence, like the convergence continuum and models of converged newsrooms.

Converged newsrooms are efficient and effective at getting multimedia, multi-platform content

to their audiences. Therefore, the duplication of effort, confusion, disorganization and a failure

to make use of the appropriate resources all count against a news organisation in a benchmark

test of convergence (Schantin, 2012: 1). But these criteria should also be flexible to reflect

changes “as part of the process of problem diagnosis, action intervention, and reflective

learning” (Avison et al., 1999: 96). A good understanding of the specific context in which this

merger is taking place and a self-reflexive approach to finding a way forward is integral to its

success. Action research is specifically useful in “immediate problematic [situations]” (Avison

et al., 1999: 94), making it well-suited to the context of this research. The transition of the

Grocott’s Mail newsroom into the heart, culture and curriculum of the SJMS is a complex one,

and requires a good understanding of the systems in question, the active identification of

problems and the testing of solutions. Action research which is used to study and inform “an

applied discipline” (journalism and journalism education, in this case) is “often justified in

terms of its implications for practice” (Avison et al., 1999: 95). I have chosen to analyse a

25

selection of newsroom practices and structures that will be affected by the move and will serve

as the foundation for a converged, productive news operation in which experiential learning is

prioritised. For this reason, an action research project into the state of digital publishing at

Grocott’s Mail could provide anybody who is involved in the transition with a good

understanding of the existing processes and a reflexive analysis of their shortcomings. I have

shaped my selection on a number of factors. Firstly, my experience of the digital aspect of

Grocott’s Mail’s digital processes puts me in the position to be able to accurately describe them

and the problems associated with them. Secondly, the inevitable fact of the digital migration

places pressure on the DRPEJ from many sides: its audiences are moving online and its

advertising revenue is declining, but above all, their teaching mandate necessitates a program

that will adequately prepare journalism students for work in digital newsrooms. This means

that despite Grocott’s Mail’s small size and the details of its unique situation, the project they

are undertaking with the SJMS requires both parties to embrace digital and its associated

practices and cultures, finding a way to make it work. A 1997 survey listed four types of action

research: research aimed at “…change and reflection”; research to settle contradictions

between “espoused and applied theories”; “Participatory action research emphasizing

participant collaboration”; and “[action] learning for programmed instruction and experiential

learning” (Avison et al., 1999: 95). In this research, I played the part of participant and

observer, conducting participatory action research with the goal of “change and reflection”

(Avison et al., 1999: 95) on the processes I am involved in. Perhaps it would be more accurate

to say that while the impetus for the change does not stem from this research, the work I am

doing will hopefully serve as a basis for critical reflection on the existing processes and the

demands of the project, allowing practitioners to make well-informed plans for a way forward.

I have used my everyday experiences at the Grocott’s Mail newsroom to provide me with ever-

evolving insights as I have “[developed] skills of inquiry” and immersed myself in the object of

my study (Reason & Bradbury, 2001: 2). It is from this position that I have engaged my

colleagues and literature on the subject, providing what I hope could act as a solid, relevant and

well-researched starting point for addressing the inevitable changes that will probably be taking

place over the next year. Action researchers have accepted the fact that researchers form part of

the environments they study, observing it subjectively and ultimately impacting on it (Reason

& Bradbury, 2001: 8). Researchers in the field recognise their work – “knowledge generation”

in general – as being “an explicitly political, socially engaged, and democratic practice”

(Brydon & Miller, 2003: 13). In my position, I accept that I affect the objects of my study, and

because it is my responsibility, I actively aim to do so. Action researchers want to create

26

practical, useful knowledge that accurately reflect and inform real practices: “working toward

practical outcomes, and… creating new forms of understanding, since action without reflection

and understanding is blind, just as theory without action is meaningless” (Reason & Bradbury,

2001: 2). Indeed, what is the purpose of research and theory if they do not ultimately reflect

and inform real practices and relationships? Surely, all research aims to create some kind of

knowledge that is useful to the world. While the point can be contested, I agree that “practical

knowledge, knowing how, is the consummation, the fulfilment, of the knowledge quest”

(Heron in Reason & Bradbury, 2001: 1). Similarly, practice without any critical reflection and

assessment is unlikely to result in success. Such action will most probably be characterised by

a series of hit-and-miss attempts instead of a coherent structure with clearly defined objectives.

The method is used to describe, analyse and critically reflect on practices, processes and

relationships from within.

“…[It] seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in

participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of

pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of

individual persons and their communities.”

(Reason & Bradbury in Brydon & Miller, 2003: 3).

Besides my direct experience, interviews with my colleagues and stakeholders form a crucial

part of the research process. They can help me describe past and current newsroom practices:

their strengths, weaknesses, requirements and shortcomings. Some have also provided

interesting insights in discussions about the viability of various theories of convergence within

the practical limitations of the unique situation at hand. I conducted semi-structured interviews

and informal discussions with the production manager, who is instrumental in the story

planning, execution, packaging and publishing process of the newspaper and more recently, the

website as well. I also had informal discussions with the general manager, who proved a

valuable resource throughout the research process. Not only did he help me outline the project

parameters at different stages in the momentum-gathering transition taking place, but he had a

broad understanding of Grocott’s Mail’s current operations and has been instrumental to my

learning process throughout the year.

The production manager is also an invaluable resource in this research. On a day-to-day basis,

she has to keep the project’s broad strategies in mind – things like audience engagement,

27

relevance and ethical dimensions, for example – while developing individual stories with

guidance for reporters, the multimedia editor and students moving through the newsroom. She

is also responsible for systematic news editing: she relays and processes external information,

develops stories with the editor, edits them for print and web in conjunction with the sub-editor

and even lays out pages. I have also interviewed the editor to come for a better understanding

of daily processes in the newsroom, digital developments and engagement with students –

although he does not plan to renew his contract next year, he does offer valuable insights into

the current processes and the difficulties the project has faced so far in creating a more

converged newsroom.

Because of the sensitive nature of some of the discussions that took place between my

colleagues and in interviews, anonymous transcriptions of primary sources – interviews with

Lang, Maclennan, Ancer and Mathurine – will only be made available only request.

4. Discussion of findings

Informed by my experience, research and interviews, in this chapter I outline the current work

flow and newsroom organisation processes in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom, comparing them

both to different incarnations in the past (Garman, 2006: 102) and other models and theories of

convergence from around them world. Informed by a multi-faceted multimedia logic

approach, I have analysed some of the aspects of convergence from “an institutional,

technological, organizational, and a producer/user perspective” (Deuze, 2007: 148). From an

institutional perspective, multimedia logic studies of convergence can explore the different

ways that organisations and platforms work together – this already happens to some extent

between our website and newspaper, but will take place on a greater institutional level in the

next year when the organisation partners up with the School of Journalism and Media Studies

(Deuze, 2007: 142). Technologically, a study of the “increasingly standardized yet custom-

made software applications… used to digitally produce, edit, translate, and integrate distinct

media products” (Deuze, 2007: 144). Many – if not all, for the purposes of this research aspects

– of a multimedia logic approach can be helpful when looking at the content management

systems and work flow practices employed by Grocott’s Mail in the past and the present and

outlining different problem sets as they are identified and addressed.

28

4. 1. Organogram

As Figure D shows, the upper management structure of Grocott’s Mail – now a subsection of

the DRPEJ – has not changed much since 2006. An editor and a general manager still report to

the project board, but now a Production Manager replaces the Deputy Editor. The editor and

production manager oversee three full-time Reporters (civic affairs, crime and courts, and

sports), one freelance Citizen Journalist, and one Multimedia Producer. The production

manager and editor also put together the weekly newspaper with the help of a production team

made up of two full-time Designers (and sometimes either of two freelance student designers)

and a freelance Sub-editor who works three to four days a week. The production manager is

mainly responsible for coordinating content from different sources and planning its publication

on the website, social media and in the newspaper in cooperation with the editor and the

multimedia producer. In her own words, she does “a bit of everything”: from subbing to

providing advice and dealing with public queries to making decisions about copy for print as

well as web (Maclennan, 2013: 1). The general manager oversees a team of administrative,

advertising and financial staff: an Advertising/Operations Manager, an Advertising Sales

Clerk, a Cross Media-Marketing Manager, and one Advertising Administrator. A Finance

Clerk currently oversees one Accounts/Distribution clerk, a Receptionist, a Cleaner, a Driver

and Freelance Sellers. When necessary, a Project Finance Clerk is consulted on a case-specific

basis.

29

Figure D: Grocott’s Mail structure 2013

As the multimedia producer, I am the only dedicated digital staff member at Grocott’s Mail.

Working with the production manager, editor and general manager I maintain digital operations

and keep them in line with the project’s overarching objectives. My job description includes

editing, packaging and publishing multimedia content on the organisation’s website. I manage

social media platforms, coordinating and directing outgoing links and stories as well as

incoming tip-offs, feedback, civic updates and story ideas. I post daily social media updates

and update the website front page several times a week, publishing stories as per a loosely

agreed-upon publishing schedule. I moderate incoming SMSes and send weekly SMS headline

updates to 565 subscribers. I manage digital queries, including accounts and subscriptions to

our digital replica e-edition. I create features and special pages online (For example themed

pages like book reviews or Makana EnviroNews), as well as design and redesign adverts for

web and market competitions alongside our Cross Media-Marketing Manager. I send out a

weekly email newsletter to 3039 subscribers. Every Tuesday, the week’s biggest stories and

multimedia content are collated in an email newsletter, which also carries one to three (at times

five or six) adverts and promotes any running competitions on Grahamstown NOW! This year,

I started a separate email database which received a daily newsletter every day of the National

Arts Festival. In it I collated all our print and surplus content with an attractive bevy of picture

30

galleries, videos and podcasts from CueMedia, NAF-related tweets, Grahamstown NOW!

competitions, and our daily NowNowTix two-for-one ticket giveaway notifications. Although

the newsletter only went out to 197 email addresses this year, some strategic promotion could

go a long way in building up strong databases for social media (including email) and RSS feeds

during any large event in Grahamstown: whether it be the NAF, SciFest or another water

protest.

In Figure E, the basic editorial work flow of the newsroom is illustrated with special emphasis

on the digital publishing branch. In this section, I describe the processes all the way from the

daily diary meeting to the finished story package on various media platforms. While doing so, I

compare it to Garman’s work flow diagrams in 2006, discussing his organisational problem

sets and assessing how far we have come in addressing them. It is clear even from the

reasonably simple work flow diagram reproduced from Garman’s study in 2006 (Garman,

2006: 102) that the folder-based system was cumbersome and complicated, fraught with

inefficiency, confusion, and the duplication of efforts (Garman, 2006: 100). Not only did the

process leave much room for error, but it also resulted in incomplete archives: in fact, Garman

found that a complication in the Adobe InDesign saving process had meant that “there [were]

no complete, archived, electronic copies of Grocott’s Mail at all” (Garman, 2006: 103). In the

upcoming section, I will address these problems and flag new problems accompanying

Grocott’s Mail’s plunge into the digital sphere – website, social media platforms and mobile

technology and all.

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Figure E: Grocott’s Mail editorial work flow 2013

32

4. 2. Work flows

Diary meetings

When staff members arrive at the Grocott’s Mail newsroom at 08h00 every morning, they have

time to check and send emails, finalise stories and pitches, and flag potential problems in

existing stories (Lang, 2013: 1). At the daily 08h30 diary meeting, editorial staff (including the

cross media-marketing manager and excluding the designers and freelance sub-editor) discuss

the news events of the day. On Mondays the team takes a look at the week’s news diary and the

editor and production manager allocate story ideas, tip-offs and events. Then, the team

members take turns pitching ideas. As the editor puts it:

“Reporters or editors have to formulate a pitch: they recognise a story and

then they have to ‘sell’ it by creating a news hook. Then, stories are

pitched, discussed and ideas are suggested.”

(Lang, 2013: 1)

This can happen on any morning, but it mostly takes place on Fridays and Mondays as

reporters plan their stories for the next edition. After this, the diary meeting consists of editorial

team members taking turns updating each other about the progress of their stories. The diary

discussions often carry on for quite a long time as staff members bounce ideas off each other,

discuss team projects, develop story angles, and work together to solve problems that arise.

When post-mortem discussions are necessary, these take place on Fridays when the paper

comes out. The outputs of this process are story assignments and updates to the diary, which is

kept in an accessible Google Document and updated by the production manager. At the diary

meetings, stories are also discussed in terms of their publishing destination. There are a couple

of configurations at Grocott’s Mail: most stories are written for print, and are published online

after they appear in the newspaper. Stories that do not make it into the latest newspaper and

will not be relevant if they are held over for the next edition are designated web-only, and are

published there as soon as the decision is made. Often, the editor decides beforehand that a

story will not fit in the newspaper and is better suited for web-only publishing. Lang says he

designates important updates and breaking hard news web-first, which means this content is

published as soon as it is written. Multimedia content is also planned ahead, with picture

33

galleries often being assigned to important events like protests, political events, sports, and

other visually interesting displays These events are captured well in video, but I am the only

video reporter that shoots and edits complete video packages with event footage and

interviews. Multimedia content is promoted in the newspaper, and important print stories are

advertised with short teasers and pictures on the website and social media. When the

newspaper has an exclusive scoop, the editor likes to keep it for the newspaper and publish it

on the website simultaneously or shortly afterwards: “If there’s breaking news and you leave it

for print, it makes you fall behind the game” (Lang, 2013: 1).

Story production

Once reporters have their assignments, the story production process can start. “Hopefully, they

do some research before going off to do a story,” quips the editor (Lang, 2013: 1). Reporters

use whatever primary incoming material is at their disposal – a public notice, statement, PR

material, emails/SMSes, tweets or Facebook messages – to conduct secondary research after

receiving the initial story idea. They have been able to do this on the internet, but now they can

also use the global searchable database of our new content management system called Nika.

This serves as a powerful local search engine for the Makana region that dates back to 2008.

This is much better than the folder-based system, where multiple versions of stories in different

stages of development were stored in a difficult-to-search ‘incoherently named’ filing system

(Garman, 2006: 102). The final research reporters do is attending events and collecting

information through interviews and investigation.

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Figure F: Nika user interface 2013

Now, reporters need to write their stories. They have to create a profile on Nika via the

internet, and then they can access the Nika user interface pictured above. To create a new story,

they simply click on ‘New’. A blank document is created in the ‘In Progress’ directory, and the

reporter is free to create, save and edit their story at a later stage: they need to provide a

headline, slug, byline and text – pictures and their captions are encouraged, but optional.

Reporters are generally required to submit content on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays,

depending on when the event they are covering takes place. Unfortunately, reporters often lag

behind on deadlines and submit content on Wednesdays and Thursdays, which leaves designers

inactive for some periods and overstretched at others (namely, production day Thursdays)

(Maclennan, 2013: 1). The universal CMS obviously addresses many of the problems Garman

identified in the folder-based system Grocott’s Mail used in 2006. Then, “stories all [went] into

an undifferentiated folder”, “stories [accumulated] over months…”, “unused stories [stayed]

35

here and [were] lost” (Garman, 2006: 102). Nika adequately addresses these concerns,

combining text, pictures and captions in tracked and ultimately archived story ‘items’.

Reporters attach a number of pictures to their stories for consideration, with a handy caption

editor that accompanies the pictures onto the website. Unfortunately, designers still need to

download the images from Nika onto their computers and upload them to InDesign, which

leads to unnecessary duplication and space wastage. This process is elaborated below.

Editing

Only when reporters move their story through to the ‘News Desk’ directory does the editor

review the article. If he is satisfied that the story is newsworthy, fair, and relatively well-

written, he bumps the story through to the ‘Subbing’ queue (Lang, 2013: 1). Content that

comes from external sources is submitted by the receiving staff member: usually the production

manager, editor, multimedia producer or sports reporter will extract the useable information

and submit it directly to the News Desk. Page allocations are made by the production manager

and editor. If the story needs any work, the editor will send it back to the reporter in the In

Progress directory with notes for improving it. This back-and-forth process is a great

improvement on the folder-based system used in 2006: instead of creating many confusing

versions of the same story (Garman, 2006: 102), Nika eases the movement of stories between

editors, reporters and channel packagers. In the subbing queue, the production manager and

freelance sub-editor edit the stories. This involves checking spelling and facts and rewriting for

general angle, style, grammar, and length requirements (Maclennan, 2013: 1). They can also

send stories back to reporters for more editing, but mostly they just ask them for clarification

and implement the changes themselves. When they are finished with the stories, they bump

print stories to the Layout directory, from where the layout designers copy and paste them into

InDesign page templates and design the pages. If necessary, a layout designer may send the

story back to the production manager or sub-editor for it to be cut to conform to the length

restrictions of the page. When the stories have been placed, they are sent to the ‘On the Page’

directory. The layout designers print out the pages for the sub-editor or production manager to

proofread and reformulate headlines to fit the space requirements. Then, designers implement

the necessary changes and print the pages again. When the editor signs these pages off, they are

edited, exported and sent via FTP to the printers in Port Elizabeth and the digital publishers,

who are based in Canada.

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The digital publishing process

At the diary meetings, stories are designated for publishing in different orders on different

platforms and different multimedia packages are planned: is the story going to be published in

print and then on the website, on the website first, or only on the website? Will the story work

well with accompanying pictures, sounds, or video footage? How many journalists are needed

to cover it? Once stories are in On the Page directory, Nika now automatically sends them to a

moderation queue on the Grocott’s Mail Online website for the multimedia producer to edit for

web publishing. Incoming SMSes, user-submitted MyStory content, community and sporting

events and blog posts are also added to this queue. I moderate this incoming content with

guidance from the production manager and the editor, and often feed it through to Nika for

consideration for publication in the newspaper. This serves the print product well, and also

encourages those few users interacting with our interface on this deeper level to carry on doing

so to see their name in print! Editing for web requires the multimedia producer to rewrite some

of the text (usually this is limited to rewriting the first paragraph, standardising date references,

inserting links and editing the length), packaging multimedia content, selecting news sections

and assigning related links for background information. Mostly this is limited to photo

galleries, but the multimedia producer occasionally shoots and edits short news videos for the

website. The editor and some reporters have also explored the possibilities of taking short

video or audio clips at protests, community and sporting events. Multimedia content is stored

alongside pictures in the webshare day folders, which still come with their own set of problems

associated with the limitations of unorganised folder-based systems. Stories that are designated

web-only are bumped through directly to the ‘On the Page’ directory, skipping ‘Layout’ in

order to be bumped into the online moderation queue. They are usually marked: in the

screenshot of the Nika user interface, items called “ONLINE” or “POSTED ONLINE”

represent stories that are in different stages in the digital publishing process, and should be

ignored by layout designers unless otherwise stated. Stories that are designated web-first can be

sent through to the final directory, and when the multimedia producer has picked up the story

in the moderation queue it stays there when the document is kicked back from On the Page to

the Layout directory for print processing. Stories that are published online after print

publication are picked up from the moderation queue in forms that require more or less editing

for web. A freelance website editor publishes weekly print galleries (‘Our community’ and vox

pops), a local community rainfall blog, civic updates and crime briefs after they are printed in

the newspaper.

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When the N2 national road collapsed just outside Grahamstown, Grocott’s Mail had one of its

first big opportunities to test its multimedia mettle. Referring readers to its website, the

newspaper provided them with constant updates containing pictures, videos, articles, and other

crucial information like alternative route information and Google maps on their social media

platforms. But convergence is by definition a two-way street: they also received countless

pictures, videos, text messages and other updates from eyewitnesses and stakeholders via the

internet – be it with an email or a tweet. This event caused a massive spike in traffic to

Grocott’s Mail Online’s various platforms, and illustrates what news can look like for a small

community news organisation in the 21st century. It demonstrates the effects of Grocott’s

Mail’s moves towards institutional convergence as a multi-platform media organisation, its use

of interactive social media platforms and multimedia content, and technical convergence in the

use of computers and cellphones. The systems used in this instance of crisis communication are

also radically different from what the newspaper would be able to do just ten years ago. As

described above, the content packages delivered to users was a true digital experience:

immediate, multimedia, interactive updates on cellphones, tablets and computers. It even made

it into the newspaper! The same process has been implemented and streamlined to deal with

other important breaking news events and ‘crisis’ situations, such as the recurring, long-lasting

water outages experienced by nearly every Grahamstown resident at least once this year. Using

the website and social media streams as platforms for constant back-and-forth engagement with

users and Grahamstown residents during the two main water outages this year (March and late

September to early October), we established the scope and severity of the water outage and

relayed important (albeit infrequent) communiques from Rhodes University, Makana

municipality and other stakeholders. Crisis communication almost invariably leads to a sharp

spike in traffic to all our platforms: I discussed this phenomenon (and how we responded) in

greater detail in a paper written in fulfilment of the requirements of the Mobile

Communications in Africa Honours course this year (Roux, 2013: 1). In my daily work, I take

time to consider the “timing of updates” (Garman, 2006: 107), using audience feedback

alongside Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and HootSuite auto-scheduling outlines to

inform my decisions about what to post when and where. When stories are published online, I

share links and pictures on our Facebook page and Twitter profile, tweeting at relevant parties

and interacting with followers on these platforms. While the basic social media policy

(Appendix 1) I drafted this year is usually enough to guide my posts and responses on social

media, I often have to refer to the production manager, editor or specific reporters for guidance

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in order to give accurate, helpful and polite responses. Often, users highlight errors in reports

which are incorporated with a note in order to retain chronological integrity. I employ an online

social media managing tool called HootSuite, which allows me to schedule posts on Facebook

and Twitter. Lining up the news stories for the day saves me time and allows me to choose the

most effective times of the day and week to publish stories when I’m not able to publish them

at the right times myself. Tools like these can be accessed by multiple kinds of users who

interact with the interfaces differently according to their publishing permissions.

4. 3. Benchmarking convergence at Grocott’s Mail Online

So, how does the newsroom fare in a convergence benchmark test? Where do we sit on a basic

convergence continuum? Brewer provides a practical description and guidelines for converged

newsrooms aiming to provide multimedia content across multiple platforms. He has

reimagined the converged newsroom as a “content factory delivering to multiple devices”

(Brewer, 2012: 1) through multi-skilled reporters and editors. His ideal newsroom is powered

by a ‘superdesk’ and an associated web-based CMS, newsroom layout, responsibilities and

work flows. He outlines three newsroom models along his convergence continuum: Newsroom

1.0 (the ‘multiple-media newsroom’) “provides dedicated editorial resources for each platform

that is serviced by the publishing house”, forming “separate editorial units” for each platform

(Brewer, 2012: 1). Journalists in Newsroom 2.0 (the ‘cross-media newsroom’) “generate

content for all channels” (Brewer, 2012: 1). Newsroom 3.0 (the ‘integrated newsroom’) “aims

to provide content on multiple channels by integrating the complete news flow across print and

digital media from planning to production” (Brewer, 2012: 1). In practice, this is even harder

than it looks and many theories exist about how to go about creating this integrated newsroom

– and whether it is really the way forward at all. Brewer is convinced. He believes convergence

to be essential to any multimedia news operation, bringing improvements to “quality control,

more efficient work flows, cost savings and new business opportunities” (Brewer, 2012: 1). He

envisions a “central superdesk… responsible for ensuring that one set of sourced, attributed

and verified facts are made available to the widest possible audience on multiple devices”

(Brewer, 2012: 1) which is created and packaged by a “multi-skilled production team using

multiplatform authoring tools” (Brewer, 2012: 1).

39

Figure G: Brewer’s “typical converged newsroom” (Brewer, 2012: 1)

This converged newsroom does not consist of a cluster of isolated platforms, but of a

cooperative team creating and packaging stories for all platforms. The diagram above

illustrates Brewer’s conception of a typical converged work flow, with the superdesk made up

of different channel editors (Radio, TV, Interactive, Print), an Intake Editor, a Resources

Manager, a Planning Editor and a Secretary. The Intake Editor and Resources Manager

coordinate incoming sources and story ideas and the Planning Editor coordinates multimedia

outputs in close partnership with the Print Editor and the I/A Editor. On the right are picture

four desks – one for each channel – where content is being generated. There is a constant work

flow between right and left, the superdesk conceptualising and shaping content for all

platforms and the platform desks sending it back for final approval when they have packaged it

with the appropriate content: newspaper articles need a headline, byline, text and visuals like

photographs, infographics, illustrations and normal graphics; online articles need a headline,

byline, metatags, visuals and embedded URL links, and they can incorporate galleries,

slideshows, video, audio, maps, interactive infographics, graphs and more. On the technical

side of things, Brewer suggests “tried, tested and proven open-source tools for news

production”; “a central CMS” accessible to all reporters and editors; free tools for audio and

video embedding; a “central database” that delivers multimedia content to multiple platforms;

social media integration on the website and social media monitoring tools such as HootSuite,

Social Flow or TweetDeck; and finally CMS and social media use and monitoring training for

all staff (Brewer, 2012: 3). The website and the social media platforms used to share its content

should offer “an interactive experience that gives background information to all stories covered

on air or in print” with the appropriate multimedia and interactive elements (Brewer, 2012: 2).

40

Dietmar Schantin for the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-

IFRA) also developed a convergence continuum and parts of his CTPS (culture, tasks, people,

and structures/systems) approach to measuring convergence from within the newsroom are

useful in the context of this paper. His continuum resembles Brewer’s and Dailey et al.’s, with

newsroom models being measured according to the level of integration between production for

different platforms. Schantin provides tools for “a quick newsroom convergence check-up and

benchmarking” which is “based on an analysis of the cross-referencing strategy between the

different channels [front-end] and the analysis of the newsroom organisation [back-end]”

(Schantin, 2010: 1). Dividing his analysis into ‘front-end’ and ‘back-end’ considerations, he

looks at the level of cooperation, cross-promotion and interaction within the newsroom’s

different operations.

Figure H: An editorial operation’s “back-end” or “work flow” and culture (Schantin, 2010: 1)

From the ‘back-end’, aspects such as “journalistic practice, newsroom management, working

organisation and convergence” and newsroom culture are analysed by way of questionnaires

and observation (Schantin, 2010: 1). An analysis of back-end or work flow convergence

requires a detailed look at four significant aspects in “newsroom organisation...: Culture, Tasks,

People and Structure [and] Systems” (Schantin, 2010: 1). For the purposes of this study I

focused mainly on the structure and systems of a converged news operation and the tasks it

requires, but it is important to acknowledge that these aspects are in reality inextricable from

the newsroom culture and the people who inhabit it. In my discussion of the day-to-day

newsroom practices at Grocott’s Mail below, I have focused more on the structures and system

used, the kinds of people that work in them and the tasks they need to fulfil than the cultures

41

informing and being shaped by these people and practices and the organisational structure as a

whole. This discussion does not leave much room for an analysis of front-end engagement with

the audience or target group, as illustrated below, except for a description of the cross-

referencing strategy between print and online (Schantin, 2010: 1).

Figure I: An editorial operation’s “front-end” or “audience flow” (Schantin, 2010: 1)

The figure above illustrates front-end convergence and audience interaction as imagined by

Schantin, who uses the level and efficacy of cross-promotion and inter-platform referencing as

a benchmark for convergence on this level. (Schantin, 2010: 1). I will discuss elements of

front-end and back-end convergence in the section below, using Daily et al.’s convergence

continuum and its overlapping practices as the basis for a discussion of the current processes at

Grocott’s Mail.

Figure J: Dailey et al.’s convergence continuum (Dailey et al., 2010: 151)

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The convergence continuum as described by Dailey et al. consists of five stages outlined here.

They are each characterised by a “wide range of [behaviours] that can overlap as interaction

and cooperation increase” between organisations (Dailey, 2010: 153) and platforms. Grocott’s

Mail’s news operation clearly straddles more than one of these spheres, with some aspects

working better than others, and with products and processes displaying different levels and

characteristics of convergence at different times and in different places. Cross-promotion, the

lowest point on the convergence continuum developed by Dailey et al., is quite a self-

explanatory process (Dailey et al., 2010: 151). It is encouraged whenever a Grocott’s Mail

reporter creates multimedia content or when a big scoop appears in the newspaper. Reporters

who create photo galleries, videos, soundslides or maps are obliged to write accompanying text

for the newspaper to direct readers to the website and social media platforms to engage with

the content. The inverse happens when the editorial team identifies an exclusive story that is

likely to sell newspapers and is unlikely to be scooped by a competing news organisation.

Cloning is the “unedited display of a partner’s product” (Dailey, 2010: 153), which occurs to

an extent with some newspaper content which is ‘shovelled’ onto the website (although no

story is duplicated without any changes). In the middle of this convergence continuum,

previously separate news organisations (or platforms, in this case) lies coopetition, “the stage at

which [they] both cooperate and compete” (Dailey, 2010: 153-154). This is in some sense

reflected in Grocott’s Mail’s processes: the editor and production manager constantly have to

keep both platforms in mind, strategically planning content publication on both platforms in

order to maximise its effectiveness (and to avoid selling out our 143-year-old product!). This

means that the platforms sometimes ‘compete’ for content, but since no real digital ‘team’ has

been formed who work on exclusive stories, the information-sharing structures between

platforms at Grocott’s Mail are quite open. I am the only multimedia journalist and editor, and

I share all my information in the print product, cross-promoting multimedia content there and

using social media to gather information for stories as well as promote upcoming content in the

newspaper with teasers. This is characteristic of the fourth stage in the convergence model in

question: content sharing. At this stage, a media organisation “shares information gathered by

its cross-media partner and publishes it after it has been repackaged by the organization’s staff

members” (Dailey, 2010: 154). In the case of Grocott’s Mail, I often act as the so-called ‘cross-

media partner’. But this has also happened to an extent with stories, videos, podcasts, picture

galleries and soundslides made by students of the School of Journalism and Media Studies

(often in cooperation with CueMedia), which have been repackaged for our website and

published in things like the Festival newsletter. The pinnacle of this convergence continuum –

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full convergence – is “the stage at which the partners cooperate in both gathering and

disseminating the news”. They share the aim of…

“…[using] the strengths of the different media to tell the story in the most

effective way. Under full convergence, hybrid teams of journalists from the

partnering organizations work together to plan, report, and produce a story,

deciding along the way which parts of the story are told most effectively in

print, broadcast, and digital forms.”

(Dailey, 2010: 154)

4. 4. Old and new problem sets

The print editing process has clearly been streamlined since 2006. Whereas wrong versions of

stories were often picked up or edited twice because all the revisions were kept in the same

undifferentiated folders, Nika orders stories well and locks them when somebody is busy

editing, eliminating the possibility for duplicated efforts. Compiled pages are now saved onto

the server, creating an easily accessible digital archive (Garman, 2006: 102). Some of the

problem sets Garman identified in the print and digital processes are still with us today, while

others have been tackled with great success. Regarding print, the advertising grid is still not

available early enough in the week to accurately plan the amount of pages per edition and the

number of stories per page, a problem identified by Garman in 2006 (Garman, 2006: 102) and

echoed by the production manager today, who says it’s “impossible to determine the space and

structure of the next paper” without it (Maclennan, 2013: 1). This has a knock-on effect for the

entire publishing process, as stories continually need to be sent back from Layout to Subbing,

sub-editing staff working twice or even three times to force stories to conform to new space

restrictions. The production manager feels like a lack of staffing and proper time management

are the two biggest problems she faces in her daily work (Maclennan, 2013: 1).

When the newspaper started publishing only once a week instead of twice, Grocott’s Mail staff

used the opportunity to start using its website more proactively in keeping its audiences

informed about breaking news, cross-promoting digital and print content. Shifting attention

online has proved to be even more beneficial than this: social media interactions keep our

audience engaged and these very people often inform stories and add value to our reporting

44

with eyewitness accounts, tip-offs, pictures and stories. Now, web publishing forms a small

part of the daily diary meeting, and reporters are required to produce web-first and web-only

content for specific kinds of news. Although this symbolises and important shift in the editorial

mindset, it is still hampered because reporters often stick to the print deadlines they are used to

pushing as late as Wednesday and Thursday – even for stories that happened over the weekend.

They are also reluctant to take video footage, even though the multimedia editor could edit and

publish it to accompany their stories and add value to users’ online experience. I am well-

acquainted with the Nika CMS and I am acutely aware of the inefficiencies and limitations of

the online publishing process. As Lang explained,

“Nika was robust and reasonably quick. But then, the developers stopped

working on the program [due to a lack of funding] and it became

impossible to change anything anymore. On the downside, it is clumsy

with photographs: you can’t search for pictures, [format text], and it

doesn’t accommodate videos or sound. It’s just clunky: not very elegant

and sophisticated at all.”

(Lang, 2013: 1)

One of the clearest problems hindering convergence in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom is the

lack of dedicated, web-oriented staff working on the organisation’s digital operations, and a

lack of engagement on the part of the already over-dedicated staff body. As Brewer points out,

there is no single person managing convergent operations in an integrated newsroom (Brewer,

2012: 1), but rather an editorial group with the interests of all platforms in mind, who are

responsible for providing the same information and multimedia content in different forms to

different channels. While I am the only staff member dedicated to digital, I also produce most

of the video content for the site while writing for the paper on a weekly basis. I also design

web-tailored adverts, often resorting to hacking apart newspaper adverts for a lack of available

design files to ease the repackaging for the space requirements on the website. On Thursdays, I

assist the production manager with sub-editor with sub-editing and proofreading. Not only does

this speed up the print process, but it also ensures that I am well-acquainted with the week’s

print product for web-publishing purposes. The cross media-marketing manager oversees

Grahamstown NOW! and monitors social media; and the freelance website editor packages the

newspaper regulars (letters, SMSes, events, and the rainfall, civic updates and crime briefs

blogs) from home. Although this helps, it still leaves a large portion of relatively important

45

digital operations in my care. The lack of a digital strategy documents and dedicated staff at

Grocott’s Mail means we have not been able to explore the different configurations digital has

to offer in terms of different content, different platforms and different audiences. Ancer and

Maher discussed the possibility of the latter: “We thought it would be read by students and ex-

Grahamstown residents and there was a [DRPEJ] discussion about the possibility of putting up

a paywall” (Ancer, 2013: 1). Although these strategic moves had already been discussed as a

possibility for widening the media organisation’s reach in 2006, more intensive discussion on

the topic has yet to be discussed in a meaningful way. Many of the organisational problems

Garman identified in the print process are echoed in the relatively young digital publishing

work flow and have yet to be smoothed over. In 2006, the Grocott’s Mail Online website was

not even functional. It contained a number of broken links, and there was no agreed policy on

its use – let alone social media platforms. Today, the website has undergone two complete

overhauls. The screenshots below show the current website as it has looked since Tuesday 18

June 2013, with many more interactive aspects and much fewer broken links. We even “used

the latest [device-responsive] technology so the site adapts to whatever device you’re reading

on. Perfect for desktop. Fantastic for tablet. And brilliant for cellphone” (Grocott’s Mail, 2013:

1b).

46

Figure K: A screenshot of the recently redesigned Grocott’s Mail Online website on 1 November 2013

New interactive aspects include the weekly poll, easy access to newsletter subscriptions, and an

anonymous ‘Tip us off’ box. This box offers a more immediate, more confidential and more

effective way of relaying information to Grocott’s Mail staff than the website contact form or

emails. A rotating display of multimedia content, and clear calls to action (social media

buttons, ‘Log in’, ‘Sign up’, ‘Advertise’ and ‘Subscribe’, for example). MyMakana MyStory

user-generated content module allows registered users to submit their own stories with

embedded multimedia content for review for publication on the website and/or in the

newspaper. Users can also access collaborative calendars for community events, sports and

sports results. The calendars not only give users an overview of what’s going on in town, it also

enables them to submit their own events and results for moderation and possibly publication in

the newspaper. We have also created a “third revenue stream” (Garman, 2006: 107) on the

47

internet, albeit limited: we have a rotation of about three to six adverts on our website and in

our newsletter, and we also offer a digital subscription to an exact replica of the print edition.

Creating viable e-commerce business models and the strategic publication of content on

different platforms is an ongoing and difficult process – one that is definitely not unique to

Grocott’s Mail.

Figure L: A screenshot of our digital replica weekly newspaper, which is hosted by a digital publisher in Canada called Newspaper Direct.

48

Figure M: A screenshot illustrating our new ‘Tip us off’ anonymous contact box

The digital publishing process can be confusing and sometimes the wrong versions are picked

up and stories are duplicated. Editing and problems that are picked up after pages are printed

out (and fed to the online moderation queue) do not translate to the earlier website revision and

mistakes often slip through. Garman saw this happening to the print version in 2006, when

“stories [were] usually different to the ones on the pages as they have been subbed on the

pages” (Garman, 2006: 102). The process has been streamlined for print, but the archived

stories – which are transferred to the website – still contain errors which are only picked up on

paper. Often, corrections only arrive as unconnected story items and do not always get

incorporated into the corresponding stories on the website. Sometimes editors opt to create two

versions of the same story – a short ‘burst’ for breaking news or a hard news update for web,

and a longer or more in-depth version for print – which causes confusion as well. At other

times, stories that need to be shortened to fit onto ever-crowded print pages are published in

full on the website, and readers are directed to read more there. This means there are a good

proportion of web stories that consist of indigestible blocks of texts – often without pictures.

But page layout is only done on Thursday afternoons, when designers send stories back to be

cut down in length by the sub-editor. Duplicating the story within the same document –

creating a clearly marked short print version and a longer web version – has proven relatively

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simple, with layout designers picking up the short version and the multimedia producer

publishing the longer web version in time for readers to get background information on print

stories on Friday morning. Although the Nika system has addressed many of the shortcomings

of the 2006 folder-based system, it is still limited. While content flows relatively well in one

direction, content from external sources needs to be submitted manually, for example MyStory

submissions, online-submitted events and the like. Because he is not in the newsroom with

access to Nika and webshare, the freelance web editor uses the digital replica edition to publish

the week’s regular content which often leads to low-quality photographs and pictures being

used and extra work being done.

Hopefully many of these inefficiencies can be addressed given time and dedicated effort, most

of all with the implementation of a universally accessible web-based CMS – as Garman had

hoped for in 2006 (Garman, 2006: 110). This kind of CMS should ideally be backed by easily

updated code and accessible support. Reporters can easily use a web-based CMS to format

their stories for two platforms: web and print. This means choosing pictures, shooting and/or

editing short news video clips for channel packagers to embed, and editing two slightly

different text versions of their reports. This is not a big task for individual reporters, but has

been at times an overwhelming task for me alongside creating content and managing other

digital aspects of the news operation. A relatively small increase in reporters’ responsibility

will greatly increase efficiency in the newsroom. This could also decrease the amount of

miscommunication that takes place when stories are saved in different revisions in different

places and edited by different people who cannot always practically communicate changes that

need to occur. The implementation of a social media management platform like HootSuite,

Tweet Deck or Social Flow can also give students experience in crafting social media posts,

which they can schedule and flag for the staff member in charge of social media to edit, sign

off and publish. This ensures that reporters – many of which are students – obtain some crucial

experience in the multi-skilling (multimedia), multi-platform, interactive elements of

journalism while there is still an adequate system of checks to ensure a straight line of

accountability for interaction with the public.

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4. 5. Students and student contributions

Finding a way to incorporate experiential, real-world learning into the journalism curriculum at

the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University has proven to be very

complicated, academic and editorial staff struggling to bring the demands of their respective

projects in line with each other. While the experiential learning process requires time, patient

training, collaboration and communication, the demands of putting out a weekly newspaper do

not always allow for this kind of engagement – although it is ideal. In 2009, Anthea Garman

described the first steps the school made towards incorporating the newsroom into their

curriculum:

In 2004 Rhodes teachers put their first batch of students into the Grocott’s

newsroom for “experiential journalism” and discovered just how

complicated an exercise it was to take over a newspaper with its “centuries”

of tradition and marry that to the educational desire to provide an excellent

and nurturing space for apprentice journalists.

Ancer echoes her description of the problems of introduction students to the newsroom,

pointing to the lack of continuity and follow-through:

“We had two or three permanent reporters but we also had groups of

students floating in and out the newsroom. We spent a lot of time

introducing the students to the paper, explaining the vision and mission –

and as soon as they ‘got it’ they would leave and the next crop of students

would be coming in and we’d have to start the process all over again.”

(Ancer, 2013: 1)

The students who move through the newsroom engage – or fail to engage – with digital

technology and convergent practices on an individual basis. While some approached me to

work with them on multimedia projects like soundslides or videos and made an effort to

promote their stories on social media platforms, others hardly took the pictures needed to

accompany their print articles every week. Lang gave the experiential learning process so far a

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mixed review: while it was stimulating to have fresh, enthusiastic students moving through the

newsroom and many produced fantastic stories and pictures, individual initiative still ruled

engagement and those who did not want to work did very little (Lang, 2013: 1).

Apart from these interactions, student content has also found its way onto the Grocott’s Mail

website with more or less success over the years. Intermittent communication and collaborative

projects with the Radio, Television and New Media specialisations have resulted in the

publication of their projects on the website, but the fact that the stories were often incomplete

multimedia packages (eg. videos without accompanying text), their sheer number and the

awkward publication schedules they necessitated (a big batch of similar, time-bound videos

every term and then nothing for the rest of the year) often resulted in failure. It seems as though

the problem with these processes was the fact that story planning and creation happened in

isolation from the newspaper’s existing processes and could not always be ‘made to fit’.

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5. Conclusion

In this research paper, I have sketched a basic work flow outline and newsroom structure to

provide those who will be working at and with Grocott’s Mail in the following years with a

comprehensive record of its digital developments to date. Such a study has not been conducted

since 2006, and many things have changed since then. Drawing on my year-long experience as

the multimedia producer for Grocott’s Mail, I have given a detailed account of the day-to-day

processes at work in the newsroom to lay the foundations for further research into digital

business models, newsroom practices and experiential learning techniques. Although I have

only provided a brief discussion of student engagement in the newsroom here, a longer version

of this paper addresses the upcoming transition of Grocott’s Mail’s editorial operations and its

envisioned role in the academic curriculum. The training mandate of the DRPEJ necessitates a

concerted effort on the part of the Grocott’s Mail news operation and the Rhodes University

School of Journalism and Media Studies towards a more converged newsroom. If these two

organisations pool their knowledge, skills and technological resources, they may very well be

able to formulate an impressive response to the demands of the digital age. In this paper, I have

used my experience as the multimedia producer for Grocott’s Mail to inform a discussion on

the work flow and newsroom organisation at the media organisation. I have situated this

research within a framework of multimedia logic, a journalism studies approach to studying

media ‘convergence’ and its significance to newsrooms in the 21st century. Because I am so

deeply involved in the processes I have studied, this research could be called action research: a

method which is a “practice for the systematic development of knowing and knowledge”

(Reason & Bradbury, 2001: 9) and focuses on the marriage of practice and theory. Usually it is

facilitated by the close relationship between researchers and practitioners. I have followed this

approach to an extent in terms of conducting interviews and observing digital publishing

processes, but I have taken it further into a stream of action research called participatory action

research. Having worked within the structures in question, I have tried to incorporate them into

my studies as much as possible throughout the year. In this way, my practice and theory have

constantly informed each other – this is the essence of action research. Apart from my

experiential and observation research, I have also conducted research into convergence in the

newsroom as part of a wider ‘multimedia logic’ framework in order to provide an analysis of

the current digital convergence practices in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom. I have used the

concept of a convergence continuum as discussed by various theorists in order to give

53

Grocott’s Mail a much-needed benchmark test, looking at the logical workings of convergence

on an institutional and organisational level.

54

6. Works cited:

Avilés, J.A.G.; Meier, K.; Kaltenbrunner, A.; Carvajal, M.; and Kraus, D. 2009. "Newsroom

integration in Austria, Spain and Germany: Models of media convergence." Journalism

Practice 3.3: 285-303. [Online]

[Available: http://0-

www.tandfonline.com.wam.seals.ac.za/doi/abs/10.1080/17512780902798638]

[Accessed 26 July 2013]

Berger, G and Sibanda, M.S. 2006. “Preface”. What the Newsroom Knows. Cape Town: Mega

Digital cc

Brewer, D. 2012. “Creating a converged news operation”; “The uneasy but essential evolution

of news”; [Online]

[Available: http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources]

[Accessed 17 March 2013]

Brydon-Miller, M., Greenwood, D. and Maguire, P. 2003. “Why action research?” Action

Research [Online]

[Available: 1: 9 http://arj.sagepub.com/content/1/1/9.refs.html]

[Accessed 4 September 2013]

Dailey, L.; Demo, L. and Spillman, M. 2005. “The convergence continuum: A model for

studying collaboration between media newsrooms.” Atlantic Journal of Communication 13.3:

150-168. [Online]


www.tandfonline.com.wam.seals.ac.za/doi/abs/10.1207/s15456889ajc1303_2]


Deuze, M. 2007. “What is multimedia journalism?”. Journalism Studies 5:2,

139-152. [Online]

[Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670042000211131 ]

[Accessed: 12 October 2013]

55

Dupagne, M., & Garrison, B. (2006). “The meaning and influence of convergence: A

qualitative case study of newsroom work at the Tampa News Center”. Journalism Studies,

7(2), 237-255. [Online]


www.tandfonline.com.wam.seals.ac.za/doi/abs/10.1080/14616700500533569]


Garman, A. 2010. “When 140 years of small-town newspapering meets journalism education”.

Rhodes Journalism Review 30 July 2010. 58-60.

Garman, B. 2006. “Grocott’s Mail, South Africa”. Berger, G and Sibanda, M.S. 2006. What the

Newsroom Knows. Cape Town: Mega Digital cc

Hirst, M. 2007. “One Big Newsroom: curriculum, convergence, training and scholarship”.

School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology. [Online]

[Available: http:/hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30041257]

Mathurine, J. “Understanding convergence strategy for legacy media”. Mavhungu, J. and

Picard, R.G. (eds) 2013. Media Management in the New Age. Grahamstown: Dupliprint

Schantin, D. 2012. “A tool for a quick newsroom convergence check-up and benchmarking”.

[Online]

[Available: http://schantin.wordpress.com/tag/convergence/]

[Accessed 17 March 2013]

Quandt, T. and Singer, J.B. 2009. “Convergence and Cross-Platform Content Production” in

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. and Ianitzsch, T. (eds) The Handbook of Journalism Studies. Routledge:

New York


Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. 2001. Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and

practice. London: Sage Publications.

56

Verweij, P. “Making Convergence Work in the Newsroom A Case Study of Convergence of

Print, Radio, Television and Online Newsrooms at the African Media Matrix in South Africa

During the National Arts Festival.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into

New Media Technologies 15.1 (2009): 75-87. [Online]

[Available: http://0-con.sagepub.com.wam.seals.ac.za/content/15/1/75.short]


Convergence and education in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom: Mapping the digital future for a small community newspaper

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