Here is an important paper on ways to build innovation in Australia. The author is Elias Bizannes.

Frédéric Filloux, a Paris-based editor with the Norwegian media house Schibsted, writes a considered piece on how it might be possible to make money from delivering content on a mobile phone. Filloux points out that news-related apps are the fastest-growing segment in the iPhone world.

Journalist Eric Shackle, 88, of Ettalong on the NSW Central Coast, proclaims on his website that “Life begins at 80.”

Mr Shackle has now been a journalist for seventy years and is the creator of the world’s first multi-national e-book.

He’s the oldest reporter for Ohmynews, the groundbreaking South Korean online newspaper at the forefront of citizen journalism – and he urges seniors to go online.

“You will be read by countless Internet users around the world. And it’s a great way of letting your friends and relatives know you’re still alive,” he chuckles.

Like Mr Shackle, a surprising number of Australian seniors are taking to the digital age, replacing traditional retirement pastimes like golf or bowls with online gaming, digital imaging, genealogy and blogging.

But for seniors who missed the computer revolution in the workplace, there is a digital divide that is making a computer-free existence increasingly difficult.

“Every time you read an article or watch an ad there’s a web address,” says Tony Lenn, the technical co-ordinator at the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association (ASCCA), a not-for-profit peak body for Seniors and Technology.

“People who come to our clubs feel that if they don’t use email and the web, they are missing out.”

The seniors who do use the internet are keen and interested users, says publisher Kaye Fallick, who owns the website ‘About Seniors’ (www.aboutseniors.com.au).

“Older people get very bad press when it comes to technology. They are a fabulous audience to serve on the web, though – they are the web’s stickiest users, so they are happy to spend some time on a site.”

Mrs Fallick says that there is just no comparison between older web surfers and teens like her own sons who are looking for “instant gratification and the quick click.”

But the 2.6 million Australians aged over 65 are still the least likely group to use the internet, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Usage among adults aged between 20 and 54 averages around 45%, but usage drops to 28.6% for those aged 55-64 and then drops to less than 20% of those aged 65-74. The usage rate for Australians over 75 is around 3%.

The Senior Digital Divide is closing, however, with ABS figures showing that older people were the strongest growth group in home internet access between 1998 and 2003.

The proportion of over-55s who owned a computer and had internet access from home more than doubled, from 11% in 1998 to 23% in 2003.

“We seniors may start by dogpaddling, but it is not long before we are surfing the net with the best of them,” says Nan Bosler, who is the President of ASCCA.

She estimates that there are more than sixty member computer clubs around Australia, which have helped over 30,000 seniors learn to use a computer since 1998, with a further 20,000 seniors currently in training.

“I think seniors feel that they have to catch up, it’s almost forced on them,” says Tony Lenn.

Australian seniors were children in last century’s Depression, survived World War Two, raised families with the threat of Cold War and nuclear apocalypse hanging over their heads and watched the moon landing on TV.

Many had limited schooling. “Many of our older seniors have never been in the workforce. In their day it was inappropriate for a wife to work,” Nan Boswell points out.

Australia’s colonial history is littered with tales of explorers and settlers braving wild frontiers – a rendition of national identity at odds with today’s tech-driven world.

But some Australian seniors have grasped the new technologies with enthusiasm, becoming boundary-riders at the frontiers of the digital divide.

At 107, Olive Riley is believed to be the world’s oldest blogger. She is 12 years older than Spain’s Maria Amelia, the previous titleholder who dethroned Sweden’s Allan Lööf, 94.

Olive’s blog, www.allaboutolive.com.au  gets about 10,000 hits a day and is ranked 6,800th among the world’s 75 million blogs.

Olive was born in Broken Hill on 20 October 1899 when Queen Victoria was still alive, yet now she is embracing 21st-century technologies.

These days, she lives in a hostel at Woy Woy, 80km north of Sydney.

Film-maker Mike Rubbo, 69, helps Olive publish her blog. He made a documentary, “All about Olive,” that screened on the ABC in February last year. “The film had a great effect on her. It seemed to pump life into her.”

Mr Rubbo said Olive’s blog was having a major impact around the world.

“It’s inspiring others to take more interest in their own old folks, to go out and record their stories before it’s too late.”

It was journalist Eric Shackle who first had the idea for Olive’s blog, after reading about Spain’s Maria Amelia.

He proof-reads Mr Rubbo’s transcriptions of conversations with Olive and Mr Rubbo posts them.

Mr Rubbo said the blog had done a lot for him personally. “It has forced me to master the business of posting text and photos, something I thought was beyond me at almost 70.”

Mr Shackle also continues to embrace life. “My GP has just certified that I’m fit to drive my car for another year. All drivers 85 and over in NSW have to present a medical certificate before having their licences renewed.”

A grove of olive trees grows near the railway station at Broken Hill. The first crop is expected in 2010.

Olive Riley says she plans to return to her birthplace to pick the first fruit.

Ken Thomas is 79 and retired from banking about twenty years ago. After two hip replacements, he says that he’s not that keen on golf any more and fiddling around with computers is his main hobby.

These days, Mr Thomas co-ordinates over a hundred seniors in his “Ripper” group – the Retired and Interested Persons Special Interest Group, which is a sub-group of the Melbourne PC Users Group.

The Melbourne PC Users group is the world’s second-largest computer user group, with around 9,500 members, with an average age of around 60.

“A lot of the fellows are interested in the technical side of computers. You used to be able to mend your own car, these days we’re trying out Windows Vista,” Mr Thomas says.

“It’s a bit of effort to keep up with all the new technology but you do have more time for it when you’re retired.”

Despite his keen interest in computers, Mr Thomas scoffs at mobile phones. “I think they’re an expensive con,” he says, although he admits that many of his ‘Ripper’ colleagues use a mobile.

However, while older people value the security that a mobile brings, most shy away from SMS because tiny keys and little screens available are difficult to use.

In the US, retailers were taken by surprise when a simple children’s mobile, the Firefly phone (www.fireflymobile.com) with five large keys including an emergency call button became popular with the elderly.

US mobile company GreatCall quickly commissioned Samsung to create the Jitterbug mobile (www.jitterbug.com), with a big keys, a large screen and loud audio.

Meanwhile, Japanese mobile company DoCoMo has released a new Seniors mobile with audio features like ‘Slow Voice’ and ‘Clear Voice’ that adjust sound levels and speed.

Mobile phone companies in Australia have been slow on the uptake, although mobile retail giant Fone Zone now offers a Seniors Card discount.

“The whole mobile world is geared towards young people, which I think is a mistake,” says Lyn Goodall, who is the President of the Melbourne PC Users Group.

“A lot of our members use a PDA with built-in mobile and that gives them a bigger screen,” she says.

Ms Goodall says that the Group’s members, many approaching retirement age, use technology to keep in touch with society.

“As we get older, we tend to lose social connection. Our families move away, our friends die and it’s very easy to become lonely.”

Social connection came in spades for retiree Robyn Rogers, 64, who registered with ‘Friends Reunited’ (www.friendsreunited.com.au) to find an old college friend.

A former stenographer, Mrs Rogers is a switched-on senior, using the internet for online banking, shopping, trading on eBay and making travel bookings.

Technology usually holds no fear for her, she is in regular email contact with friends and family and carries a mobile phone wherever she goes.

But Mrs Rogers was astounded when she received an email last year via Friends Reunited, from a half-sister she had never met and discovered her long-estranged father and two other half-siblings.

“A lot of older people are afraid of technology, they are frightened to try new things,” she says. “But there’s nothing to fear. Through the internet, I’ve gained a whole new family.”

* Written with freelancer Fran Molloy. Published in The Age and SMH on 11 May 2007

In mid  April 2007 a new wireless form of broadband known as WiBro will blanket South Korea. WiBro allows people to get multimedia content like movies wirelessly while travelling at 120kph, at download speeds most Australians could only dream of.

Korean transport engineers have trialled a train that travels at up to 300 kph. Jean Min, a senior executive with OhmyNews in Seoul, said trains and buses would be the best places to access WiBro because this form of wireless Internet was nomadic and everywhere. “You could sit in your seat and access the Net for three hours as you travel around the country. It will also be available in express buses.”

South Korea has been testing WiBro since the middle of last year. WiBro has upload speeds of at least 1 megabit a second. Download is even faster. “They have tested it for several months and are confident they can do it,” Min said.

South Korea has the world’s second-lowest broadband costs. Most people pay about $12 a month for speeds of at least 1 mbs. In many parts of Seoul, the capital, wireless broadband is free.

Meanwhile my home “broadband” service from Telstra costs five times that amount for download speeds about an eighth of what South Koreans get. Often my speeds are as low as 30 kps, about the same speed as dial-up at the turn of the century.

In terms of broadband, Australia runs the risk of being left behind, complacently “releaxed and comfortable” while our Asian neighbours race ahead.

South Korea’s broadband applies across the country, not just in the major cities. About 50.6 million people live in an area of 99,313 square kilometers, so the country is small enough to cover easily.

South Korea has achieved remarkable growth since the 1960s. The economy was impoverished and rural when the Japanese occupation ended in 1945. Much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed during the Korean War from 1950-53. By 1960 South Korea’s per capita GDP lagged behind countries like Zambia, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

But since then, sustained high economic growth has transformed the country into a highly industrial and internationally competitive economy. Measured by GDP, South Korea was in the top 10 economies in the world in 2006. Earlier this year the Economist Intelligence Unit predicted Japan and South Korea would have identical GDP per head by 2050.

Suk Hoick, president of Korea’s Information Society Development Institute, said information and communication technologies contributed 16.1 per cent of GDP last year. By early 2007, 85 per cent of households had broadband, the highest number of broadband connections per capita in the world. The country was an early adopter of “triple play” models that provide cable television, broadband Internet and voice telephony as a package from a single provider.

The South Korean government is committed to transitioning the country to digital terrestrial, digital cable and digital satellite TV by 2010. Indeed, the government has promised a robot to every household by 2010. The robot would advise about expired food in the fridge, monitor electricity consumption and vacuum the floor.

South Korea is considered a world leader in third generation (3G) mobile technology. It has the world’s highest percentage of mobile users with 3G phones. WCDMA, the second 3G standard to enter the Korean market after CMDA2000, became commercially available in December 2003.

Because of the high penetration of mobile telephones and digital technology, South Korea has become a hothouse for infrastructure developments. It sits at the “bleeding edge” of the digital revolution, acting as a trailblazer for high-speed and wireless Internet services. The country has also pioneered the distribution of television via mobile devices. Online gaming is a national passion.

More than 95 per cent of people aged 6 to 29 regularly go online, compared with 86.4 per cent of people in their thirties, 58.3 per cent of people in their forties and 27.6 per cent of those in their fifties.

Many of the country’s newspapers are looking at providing multimedia through Internet protocol television (IPTV) via the web.

Jean Min said OhmyNews used live web-casting extensively. “We use wireless modems that allow us to video-cast from anywhere. That kind of content is very popular with our audiences. Whenever there is a big event we send a camera. When reporters walk around the streets of Seoul they can access high-speed Internet from anywhere. Uploading and downloading web video is easy for us. Live webcam TV is one of the killer applications for getting people glued to our screen.”

Dr Eugene Pak, vice-president in charge of the chief technology office at Samsung Electronics, has the enviable job of focusing on the future.  He is fond of quoting his CEO, Lee Byung-Woo: “The future is not to be predicted; it is to be created.”

Samsung’s revenues last year were $US 55.3 billion, with profits of $US 7.5 billion. It invested $US 6.01billion last year in research and development, about 9 per cent of revenue.

The company employs more than 36,000 people in its 16 R&D centres around world, including 3,100 PhDs. To put the number of doctorates in perspective, that is more than the number at Korea University, and more than the total number of Victorian academics with doctorates.

The main research unit is the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, SAIT. Dr Pak said one of the latest developments to come out of SAIT was a bio-chip used to monitor people’s health. An individual puts a drop of their blood on this chip, which gives an analysis of their overall health.

Samsung has been experimenting with building smart apartment blocks that allow residents to turn on their stove via their mobile phone as they journey home. Technology known as Amoled could produce a new form of flexible display technology that is able to be rolled like paper.

Samsung has experimented with the use of radio frequency identification (rfid) tags placed on food in the fridge, which advises residents when food is past its use-by date. Tages have also been put in taxis. The tag reads an individual’s mobile phone number when they enter the taxi, recording the location. “Think of the applications for ensuring the safety of individuals at night,” Dr Pak said.

The IT megatrends for the second half of this decade would include digital convergence leading to network convergence (think a blending of telecoms with broadcasting and wireless devices), leading to high levels of personalisation. “We will see the emergence of all-in-one phone handsets,” Dr Pak said.

Samsung staff refer often to Hwang’s law, named after a vice-president for research and echoing the famous Moore’s law that says that memory capacity doubles every 18 to 24 months. “Hwang’s law at Samsung means we double the capacity of flash memory each year,” Dr Pak said.

But all is not perfect in this technology wonder-world. South Korea’s birth rates are low by world standards. The fertility rate in 2005 was 1.08 child per woman compared with 4.53 a generation earlier.

Dr Woo Cheonsik, senior counsellor to South Korea’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said slow population growth was the country’s major concern. “A dramatic fall in fertility rates and longer life expectancies will soon make South Korea one of the most aged societies in the world,” he said. As with Australia’s ageing population, this has major long-term consequences for the economy.

* Published in The Age of April 2007

Blogs are not a threat to journalism, but an opportunity. So says Kevin Anderson, head of blogging and interaction for Guardian Unlimited, the award-winning web site of The Guardian newspaper in London.

For almost a year Anderson has been responsible for strategy and “leading by doing” for the Guardian’s blogging network. He is helping Guardian journalists realise the power of engagement and the opportunities that social media make available.

“An increasing number of people not only want to consume content but also create and rate content,” he said. “They also want to communicate and interact with people, not only with journalists but also with each other.”

Most journalists saw these changes as a threat. “They have this vision of armies of citizen journalists wanting to do our jobs for free.” But few citizens wanted to be journalists. Most simply wrote about their experiences when news happened, such as the bridge collapse in Minnesota.

These people were committing “random acts” of journalism, Anderson said. “They have a camera phone and happen to witness an event.”

Blogs opened up new ways to partner with audiences, he said. Social networks gave journalists the chance to renew their relationship with readers and viewers because journalists had lost the public’s trust.

“The erosion has happened for a number of reasons around the world, including a general loss in trust in institutions as well as challenges from bloggers who fact check the mainstream media. Social media can allow us to rebuild that trust through transparency and direct connections with readers and viewers.

“At The Guardian we’re trying to help our casual online readers to become committed users of our communities as well as catalysts, recommending Guardian journalism through their social networks.”

Anderson pioneered online journalism at the BBC from 1998 to 2004 as well as reporting about technology for radio and television. In 2004 he wrote one of the first blogs at the BBC and in 2005 he developed blogging and interactive radio strategies for BBC news.

He is in Melbourne to speak at the conference “Digital worlds: Social, virtual, mobile” at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image tomorrow (Subs: August 10).

The conference is organised by XMediaLab (Subs: Organiser’s title has vertical slash between X and Media and between Media and Lab), and aims to showcase emerging forms of community building through digital media.

Anderson said few people apart from professional journalists wanted to be reporters, which was one of the problems underlying news organisations’ enthusiasm for “citizen journalism”.

“News organisations cannot and should not expect crowd-sourcing to replace the work of paid journalists. One of the greatest risks to news organisations is that, in developing channels for user-generated content, they alienate their audiences by leaving them with a feeling of being exploited, that they are doing for free what others are paid for.

“I don’t like the term user-generated content. It’s corporate speak and it creates a wall between contributors and the organisations using their content. Some people are beginning to use the term community-created content, which has a better ring to it.”

Anderson said media companies focused too much on technology. “They believe that all they have to do is make blogs and social networking tools available to their audience and an online community will form on its own.”

Newspapers and their readers needed couples’ counselling, Anderson said. They should ask: What ties your community together? “If you don’t know, that’s your first problem. Get out from behind the desk. Talk to people about what they are talking about.”

Successful Web 2.0 sites were designed so that the value of the site to users rose as the level of participation grew. “How can news organisations design websites and web services that encourage participation through increased value to their users? The future for news organisations lies in both tapping expertise and enhancing their content with community contributions.”

That is precisely what happens at STOMP in Singapore. About 85 per cent of content came from the audience, the bulk from the cameras in mobile telephones.

STOMP stands for Straits Times online mobile and print. The Straits Times is the 162-year-old broadsheet flagship of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), the country’s major media company.

Editor Jennifer Lewis is another conference speaker tomorrow. She said STOMP was the only platform in Asia that focused on social networking and user-generated content.

SPH editorial managers decided the company’s future was via online and mobile because that was where young readers were. STOMP launched in June last year and within a year was attracting 7 million page impressions a month, more than the hits for the web sites of major American newspapers.

Lewis said Singaporeans lived in a 24/7 world so with breaking news it was inevitable that people would go online.

“Audience-generated content is going to be, if not already, key to how journalists remain relevant,” she said. “Expect to see more pro-am collaborations as professional journalists team up with the community at large.”

“The seasoned journalist would offer perspective and analysis, while audiences provided snapshots of individual experiences. With UGC, the flood of personal experiences will give the journalist an even better understanding of what is going on. UGC is going to make the journalist even smarter.”

Other international speakers at the conference include Dr David Liu, founder of Beijing’s Cyber Recreation District, China’s biggest government-supported digital media initiative, and Professor Lizbeth Goodman, director of the SMARTlab digital media institute at the University of East London.

Film director Shekhar Kapur, co-founder of Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation, will also speak. His first English-language film, Elizabeth, received eight Academy Award nominations, including best picture. Shekhar recently directed a sequel, The Golden Age, starring Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush.

* Interview with Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of The Guardian. Published in The Age August 2007.

This article originally appeared in the 2008 edition of Innovations in Newspapers published for the World Association of Newspapers by Innovation International.

It’s important to recognize from the start that the transition to a multimedia newsroom is a change management process, and INNOVATION believes change is a holistic process.

These 14 recommendations are not a formula that can be followed step-by-step, like instructions for building a model airplane. Yet they need to be embraced as a group, and INNOVATION believes the first is the most critical. Without management buy-in, any hope of introducing successful integration is doomed.

1. Get management buy-in
Without support from the top, adoption of multimedia newsgathering by a newspaper cannot succeed. Reporters must see that editorial managers believe in what they are proposing. This means managers must do as they say, and attend training courses. They cannot say they are too busy. They must explain why change is needed, what needs to be changed, and how the process will unfold. Individuals also need to know what is in it for them and what they will gain from the experience. Managers need to introduce milestones and clear benchmarks of success.

Convergence pioneer Gil Thelen of the Tampa Tribune often pointed out that his integrated newsroom was an extension of his work in team building and change management. “This really is a huge change process that’s got a multimedia ribbon on it,” he said. Similarly, Ifra’s Kerry Northrup believes a boardroom mandate is needed for any “serious convergence conversion” of a media operation. The introduction of multimedia newsgathering is not about saving money. It must be seen as an investment in the future. A converged newsroom is a way to reach more of those scattered audiences that are the result of media fragmentation. And multimedia needs to be driven by the editorial team.

2. Establish management priorities
The company must establish priorities. Editorial staffers need to see evidence of a vision for a new kind of company – with journalism still at its core. In a knowledge economy news becomes a service, and audiences place value on services that inform, explain, simplify and evaluate news for busy people.

Convenience is a key attribute of a valuable service. So news must be available in whatever medium a customer wants. But news and information remains the driver, not the delivery system. The priority is to supply news and information to whatever platform it needs to be on. Only in English does the word for newspaper carry the concept of paper. Journalists must learn to choose the most appropriate medium for telling the stories they need to tell. Multimedia newsgathering involves a change of mindset, as reporters face constant deadlines and produce different types of stories for different platforms.

3. Changing mindset
A key way to change mindset is to concentrate on journalism’s core values. Regardless of the medium they work in, good journalists have the same fundamental values. Managers must surface those values and make them paramount. Begin by asking people why they became journalists. Their values remain consistent irrespective of the medium they work in.

Not all journalists in a newsroom must be multi-skilled.  In many newsrooms around the world only a minority will work across all platforms. But all journalists must become “multimedia minded”. This means they all must understand the strengths, weaknesses and capabilities of all platforms available for telling stories. This helps them choose the most appropriate medium for telling the story.

4. Clear and direct communication
For change to happen, everyone involved needs to understand why the change must take place. Managers can never communicate too much. Thelen said managers had to repeat the same thing hundreds of times in dozens of venues before the message reached all levels of the organization. “About the time you’re getting bored hearing yourself talk, you’re just beginning to really communicate effectively.” Paul Cheung, former chief editor of Ming Pao in Hong Kong, emphasized the need for clear direction from managers. Though the decision to embrace multimedia came from his group’s senior management, change was “editorially driven,” he said. “We knew we had to move on.”

Managers must create awareness by communicating values and intentions, reducing uncertainty. Humans dislike change. Keep stressing how multimedia newsgathering offers journalists a way to tell more powerful stories and better fulfil the media’s democratic responsibilities. Multimedia skills also improve an individual’s professional qualifications and standing, and tend to re-energize jaded print reporters.

5. Identify influential people
When deciding whether to adopt a new idea, people relate to subjective evaluations by others like themselves. Managers must identify “opinion leaders,” those influential individuals in any newsroom structure, and get them “on board” to help influence their peers. People likely to interfere with the integration process also need to be identified.

6. Produce a mission statement
A clear mission statement that tells people where the company is going should be displayed in large type where everyone can see it. If you have multiple floors for the newsroom, duplicate the statement on every floor. Use the intranet to remind people of the core mission, so that the statement appears every time they log on to their computer. The core statement The New York Times produced in 1992 is still relevant. It details in a mere 13 words the company’s aims: “Editorial excellence and independence are essential to our profitability and profit sustains them.”

7. Invest in training
Training needs to be seen as an investment instead of a cost. Create a training program and follow through. No need to re-invent the wheel. Plenty of models are available to be copied. A formal program is evidence of the organization’s commitment to change. It also provides journalists an outlet for expressing their fears and concerns during courses. It is easier to deal with issues in the classroom than in the newsroom. A knowledgeable instructor can allay people’s concerns and demonstrate the benefits of this new form of journalism. Fear is usually the biggest barrier that stops people from learning a new technology. Some newspapers have hired TV journalists who become a resource when course attendees return to the newsroom.

8. Blow up the newsroom
Many newsrooms that have embraced multimedia newsgathering have re-arranged the structure of the newsroom, placing key editorial managers on a “super-desk,” such as at the Daily Telegraph in London or The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, improving communication and coordination. Managers can communicate by simply turning their chairs, rather than wasting time in long meetings in distant conference rooms. The desk serves as a continual reminder of the changes taking place.

9. Co-locate journalists and encourage staff interaction
Put people with similar beats together. If you have separate online and print newsrooms, amalgamate them and sit the online and print reporters together. Establish common desks, so that you put all political reporters in the same location. Proximity promotes trust, which in turn leads to sharing of information and story ideas.

Move the desks so that reporters and copy-editors work together. This helps to break down more barriers. Schedule some copy-editors to arrive before reporters leave. It is important to erase the barriers between copy-editors and reporters. Proximity breeds collegiality.

Establish coffee bars or other “magnet locations” where people can socialize and get to know each other. The need to build trust cannot be over-emphasized. People are more likely to embrace new ideas in an atmosphere of trust. In South Korea, for example, the Maeil Business Daily in Seoul opened a fitness club. Dr. Dae-Whan Chang, president of the Maeil Business Group, said journalists spent time in the club socializing with colleagues, often discussing work. “Often journalists come to work early to talk about a project they are working on.”

10. Publicize successes, and provide incentives and rewards
Journalists respond to challenges and competition. They also like being appreciated. Recognize the most innovative multimedia stories. Track consumer responses to particular stories by measuring page impressions, and email details of successes to all editorial staff. Small, symbolic, prizes such as a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates each week go a long way to improving morale.

11. Install a “newswall”
All multimedia newsrooms should have a series of large, highly-visible screens, to display the organization’s home page, satellite feeds, rival sites and television stations. Use them to display the next day’s newspaper pages as they are being built. The extra sets of eyes of all those people in the open-plan newsroom can alert copy-editors and the online team to mistakes, or rivals’ exclusives.

12. Listen to dissenting voices
Journalists are paid to be sceptical. They will find fault and point out problems in any new project. Be patient with them. Journalists have been socialized early in their career. They form groups or tribes, and tend to be suspicious of new ideas. Common issues will include journalists’ concerns that working in multimedia will force them to work harder for no more pay, and could lead to a dilution of voices in the community. These issues must not be ignored. One of the best places for discussion is in regular training courses.

13. Use databases
Multimedia content produces big digital files. The best way to store all information in a newsroom is in one database, or inter-connected databases. Use the opportunity of a new newsroom to introduce a sound integration system.

14. Remember the audience
Finally, continually remind journalists to remember their audiences. They are the key people in the multimedia revolution journalists are embracing.