Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger is hosting a series of hour-long meetings with staff to consider the implications and ramifications behind the proposals to introduce 24/7 coverage. I went along to one this afternoon, which was attended by a mix of Guardian newsprint and online staff, and probably some Observer journalists too. We crowded into Rusbridger's office to air concerns and ask questions.
Rusbridger set the tone for the discussion with a bullet-point document setting out the themes and challenges the staff face in the future. He started off by saying that that response to the 24/7 announcement has been very positive, with almost no-one opposing the plan. He agreed that there were no hard-and-fast answers to the various problems raised by becoming one of the world's continuous news providers.
What became very clear once the staff spoke was the continuing division in culture and understanding between print and web, despite the advances The Guardian has made. Only full integration will sort that out. But this matter aside, the obvious concerns were about the demands that greater working flexibility may cause. How would that work? Would everyone become a multi-media hack?
This was expressed well by a feature writer who said: "I've already lost track of where my working week begins and ends... how do we begin to define what working week is, and what it will be?" He was referring to the demands on his time from various departments ahead of integration and ahead of 24/7 working.
A sub-editor said with some passion: "Our liberal voice is our strong point, and text is our strong point rather than TV or radio. That's what we need to be doing. Inserts of video are fine, but not the whole bloody thing."
Rusbridger was reassuring on that point. Unlike the Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis, he said, he did not believe everyone should be expected to do everything. Some might write and video; others might not.
What really emerged, crystal clear, was Rusbridger's restatement of the underlying reasons for making this leap into the future, even though the future itself remains unclear. He said: "The print-on-paper model [for newspapers] isn't making money and isn't going to make money. It's no longer sustainable. Though the future is unknowable, we are taking an educated guess about what we should be doing and where we should be going."
As an example of the speed of technological change he passed round an example of an electronic print reader (having downloaded the CIA handbook) to show what's already available. We all know that e-print is going to get much better, and very soon if Sony's experiments, and those of some rivals, work out.
But these staff meetings, with more tomorrow, indicate the sense of urgency. With ad revenue slipping gradually away from print and growing on the web (about 12% of Guardian revenue comes from web advertising and it's growing at 50% a year) it is of paramount importance that the websites are consistently upgraded and refined.
To do that, of course, all the paper's journalists must become familiar with the demands of providing news, features, comment and analysis for people across the globe whenever they want it. It's a big ask, of course. But it's also bloody exciting, isn't it?
.png?w=600)
