The Inside Out Newsroom @ ninemsn et al

ninemsn home
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The more things change the more they stay the same. I remember the original ninemsn journalism team of 6-12 people around the Sidewalk days a decade ago. Cut through bad economics. So it's an interesting feature piece today in The Australian paper on the successor to Kerry Packer as PBL Deputy Chairman Chris Anderson, who is driving the media business. Talk of relocating Ch9, ninemsn and ACP Sydney into one office. Magazines are having an interesting time globally.

"A move by ninemsn to fund six cadet journalists is seen by insiders as a 'trailblazer' for future staffing practices at Nine. These journalists will be able to shoot, edit, and write stories, and where necessary, perform their own pieces to camera." ('performing their pieces to camera' - how theatre.. camera switches to board room : are private equity owners more interested by the 6 cadet salaries @ $40k type each ? or the hundreds of millions of dollars of refinanced/sold/tax effectively consolidated property.. or like qantas, the mutual benefit/appearance is the key decider)

The real next step as well as integrated ninemsn-nine-acp newsroom is to engage "users" (that hideous term - even if they are unique, baboom) as 'reader-reporters' / 'consumer-creators' as they are called in 2007 on the East/West Coast. (and captured/driven multiple times a day by Jeff Jarvis) With related developments such as mentioned by Hugh re Telegraph UK (profile here), picked up by Mark Jones. Even if nothing eventuates from this it will make a good book, if not newspaper, magazine or website.