Sept. 18, 2006

By TRACI BAUER
Deputy managing editor
(Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

For several years, our industry has worked on changing newsrooms' culture and transforming our approach to journalism for new audiences. Equally important – and the part that some editors are more likely to delegate – is making sure our journalists have the tools they need to move quickly and efficiently.

Most newsrooms have the "tech person" top editors and managing editors rely on to buy equipment and coordinate training. But as this portion of the business becomes more complicated, there' are reasons for top editors to be more involved in it.

In Shreveport, La., Editor Alan English says he gets intimately involved in The Times' decisions about equipment purchases along with developing a creative plan for paying for tools and training. And yes, even sitting at the top of the newsroom, he's had to learn about the technology.

"Every time we hear about a gadget or a new device we might want to purchase we try to find new ways to get it or some part of it in the newsroom to play with it before we commit," he says. It helps him make tough decisions about the soundness of a strategy and whether it is worth trimming other portions of the budget to make room for it.

At the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, we made some tough decisions about areas to cut to make room for an aggressive and strategic plan to bring in the tools and training we need to work on multimedia platforms. Along the way, we've discovered a tangled Web of systematic and technical headaches. Below are some points we'd consider if we were doing it over again:

• At the very beginning, compile a complete inventory of all equipment and software in the newsroom, and resources you can tap outside the newsroom. Find out which computers are suited for multimedia production and posting (Photoshop, Flash, audio and video editing programs, FTP, etc). We were able to save staff time, and ultimately dollars, by installing an inexpensive audio editing program in strategic areas. Editors could process audio clips between posting updates from their workstations instead of abandoning their spot in the middle of the newsroom to produce in the back room. Some projects, however, should be produced outside the fray of the bustling newsroom and souped-up workstations in the back room are exactly what's needed.

In your inventory, include notes on which versions of the software and operating systems are in use. Some programs, such as Flash, require same versions in order for producers and editors to share the workload on projects. For example, editors supervising a Flash interactive might not be able to open a graphic at their workstation if it was created in a later or more advanced version of the program. Rochester's photo editor, Scott Norris, finds unexpected road blocks on occasion because of incompatibility in operating systems:

"Like most papers, we are not up-to-date on every machine," Norris said. "We are running multiple operating systems on our Macs and that has caused some problems with multimedia training and production." And, he says, staff members trained on multimedia equipment can lose their new gained knowledge if they don't have easy access to the necessary software.

One other compatibility issue we ran into was with our cell phones. We purchased technology that lets us transmit images from the field with handheld PCs.

"This equipment required us to upgrade our cell phones," Norris said. "Unfortunately, that set off a set of new problems. Those who have new phones that work with the new Pocket PCs lost the ability to use the phone when connected with their older laptop."

• Build a long-term strategic budget for how you will purchase new equipment. The temptation is to go out and buy the video camera first-thing because we keep reading about how online users are coming more to the video on news sites. If funds are limited, we would recommend starting with equipment and software to produce interactives that incorporate audio and photo galleries. And then, when the time comes to incorporate video in a serious way and buy the expensive video equipment, you'll have the culture in place with photographers, multimedia editors, reporters and artists all on board.

If you do opt to go for the video camera first, keep in mind that you need a plan for storing and archiving the video you bring in. In most places, this issue is dealt with in the IT department, but it will become your problem if storage space is not available. In Rochester, we did not have a good plan for moving video off of the editing computers and were caught in a bind when the computers locked up during editing for a breaking news story.

• So, you need to buy equipment and put people through training, but you're poor. Realize that there are areas where cheap is OK. For example, the multimedia production editor who is only cropping, sizing and sometimes toning photos does not need the full-blown version of Photoshop. Something cheaper will do.

It's wise to invest money in better quality for at least some of your audio recorders and microphones, however. More than a year after we started buying a fleet of audio recorders and sending them into the field, we realized reporters in the field for breaking news preferred a different model than we were buying – so we switched gears to one that was cheaper but more functional. We now use the better recorders for interviews and studio work where the quality of the sound is as important as the information we're delivering.

English, the Shreveport editor, advises editors to take a close look at the "deals" in front of you before committing. They bought a couple of video work stations at a good price, only to find out the video cards they came with were less than what they needed. "We had to go out and buy two new video cards on top of it all," says English.

• Expand your bench and call your friends. It is risky to leave spending for equipment, software and training to one person.

"With a paper this size, we have turnover on staff and I could lose my expert tomorrow," said English, whose print edition circulation is about 62,000 weekdays and 76,000 on Sunday. "So part of my job as editor is to continuously be looking around the room and be developing those experts."

In addition to internal expertise, there's no better resource than peers at other news operations. About a year ago in Rochester we were faced with deciding between the Avid and Final Cut Pro video editing software. We talked to people in the industry who were using both before making our decision and those discussions actually changed our initial plan.

• Map out the daily print and multimedia workflow and the time involved in each stage of the workflow. Place a high priority on determining whether some processes are taking longer because of inefficient infrastructure, lack of training or inconsistencies in work habits. Top editors and managing editors do not have time for the details of multimedia workflow, but two hours of training on how things work will go a long way. Even at the highest levels of the operation, it's important to know which assignments will take 15 minutes and which will take five hours. Then, when it comes time to critique multimedia work like you would the daily print edition, your comments are more credible and more constructive.