Business news wires adapting in the new media world

By Elizabeth Conner

Business editor, The (Columbus) Ledger-Enquirer

(Editor's Note: Conner attended the fall SABEW conference at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on Oct. 20-21 and filed this report about a session she attended.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- New media is forcing news organizations to change and adapt to new ways to serve readers. Wire services are jumping into that role, and representatives from the leading wire services talked at the fall conference about the news-on-demand environment.

Kevin Noblet, (left) business editor at The Associated Press, said the Internet has allowed the business news department to grow; AP has hired 62 business journalists in the last two years. The AP is finding online consumers are more interested in financial news and it is providing content for Internet sites such as Yahoo! finance and MSNBC.

AP Business is providing more investment-oriented coverage, Noblet said. But the goal is still to provide readability and sensitivity to regular readers in the reporting and writing. There are also plans to expand real estate coverage.

Dave Wilson, a columnist for Bloomberg News, said Bloomberg works on telling stories through several different mediums. Bloomberg started from the ground up, and everyone was working together from the beginning, he said. The news department is always looking for ways to best tell the story whether it is an in-depth report in the magazine or a TV or radio report.

The goal in the organization is to get the news out first and then look for better ways to tell the story. Wilson said the immediacy of online news reinforces the need to plan ahead and be prepared for the news they know is coming.

Betty Wong, global head of editorial operations at Reuters, said the Web site has allowed the news organization to experiment with multimedia. Reuters was the first news organization online when it started with Yahoo!. As it enters Web 2.0, it is experimenting with what else it can provide readers. One of the innovations on the site is a partnership with Global Voices, a moderated blog. The site also has a feature called You Witness News that allows readers to give eyewitness accounts of events and submit photos.

The online world is allowing for new opportunities, but it is also requiring reporters and editors to think differently. Noblet said the AP has had to change its terminology to remind reporters and editors that they aren’t just transmitting stories but actually publishing stories online. The organization has changed the cycle of news, breaking away from operating on the newspaper cycle. Now they have to keep up with news all the time, and there is a push toward immediacy, Noblet said.

Wong emphasized the need to get stories right even in the rush to put news online. She said a mistake in a story online is caught by readers and is spread quickly.

Because most news is broken online now, newspapers are looking for more in the next day’s newspaper. Noblet said most papers are looking for the analysis or second-day story on the first day. It often takes a separate reporter and editor to work on what newspapers need while another reporter and editor keep the story updated online, he said.

Wilson suggested that the analysis story be planned for in advance because business journalists know most of the events that will happen every day. He said the bigger story should be written ahead of time and the latest news can be plugged into the prepared story.

Wong said Reuters has started outsourcing the commoditized news to an outlet in Bangalore, India. The staff there can rewrite press releases and handle the data for the wire service. The shift frees the reporters around the world to cover what hasn’t been covered before.

Noblet added the wire services are offering a similar service to local newspapers. He said the goal of the wire is not to occupy all the space in the newspaper but to free local newspapers reporters to allow them to work on local enterprise stories.

Posted Oct. 25, 2007