@SteveatLFPress

I was particularly drawn to the idea and importance of making a story personal and singular across many channels. I think one of the challenges moving forward for news editors may be how to tackle the idea that people use different channels for different reasons, and that for the content to really hit home and be engaging, it needs to be edited to match the channel on which it is being broadcast.

For example, a person’s mindset and expectations when reading print may be totally different than his/her mindset/expectations when reading the same story on a mobile phone, through tweets, or even online. When we understand not only how we are engaging with each channel, but also what we expect and what we believe that channel is capable of providing, editors can better “make it personal” (point 5), which I agree is another fundamental step needed to grab attention in the face of mass fragmentation.

In other words, when consuming news, different channels are more relevant/important to different people, and that may frame how the article is edited. I suppose one of the problems here is how realistic it is to edit the same story to deliver the same message across different platforms and come away with the same product. Does adapting the story to fit the channel inherently change the story as it was originally reported?

Interestingly, when I brought this up briefly with Chris Lloyd at TMG, he commented that they wouldn’t have been able to build or own the massive MP expenses story in the way they have without the significant operational and cultural changes they’d put in place. Aside from the impact and newsworthiness of the story alone (a classic ‘scoop’ in old parlance), their carefully timed dripfeeding of the story over time and channel, the blogging every possible angle, the invitation to MPs to video their own ‘right to reply’, the packaging up of the story for TV news channels etc (no doubt there’s a bunch of other stuff I have missed here) has given them real ownership of a powerful story that has run and run.

The obvious point I’m making here is that the value of delivering change is felt first and foremost in the ability of a business to produce better, faster output and to feel confident in doing so (not to mention the ongoing experimentation you mention).

In this respect, TMG seems well on its way. No doubt the rest will follow.

That the Telegraph would be blazing a trail in the vanguard of the whole of UK media plc is probably surprising for many, who might lazily pigeon-hole them as a bunch of fusty Edwardians. No way! They’re mental in a good way). They’ll try anything. Much more radical than the boring old Guardian, and in my hugely biased opinion much smarter about the way they applied, for example, community models and social media.

Certainly more than any other other newspaper in the UK, I think the Telegraph’s readership shares a homogeneous tribal identity. And unlike the Guardian, their communities exist at a local level all over the country: the UK’s biggest local newspaper. They are of course, also a global media brand with massive audiences outside the UK. Newspapers faced the digital tsunami first. They’re still getting hit of course, but ad agencies can learn a lot about how to “protect and survive”.