Changing journalism for the likely present

Media convergence and newsroom integration have become industry buzzwords as the ideas spread through newsrooms around the world. In November 2007 Fairfax Media in Australia introduced the newsroom of the future model, as its flagship newspapers moved into a purpose-built newsroom in Sydney. News Ltd, the country’s next biggest media group, is also embracing multi-media forms of reporting. What are the implications of this development for journalism? This paper examines changes in the practice of journalism in Australia and around the world. It attempts to answer the question: How does the practice of journalism need to change to prepare not for the future, but for the likely present.

Early in November 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Sun-Herald moved into a new building dubbed the ‘newsroom of the future’ at One Darling Island Road in Sydney’s Darling Harbour precinct. Phil McLean, at the time Fairfax Media’s group executive editor and the man in charge of the move, said three quarters of the entire process involved getting people to ‘think differently’ – that is, to modify their mindset so they could work with multi-media.

The new newsroom symbolised the culmination of a series of major changes at Fairfax. In August 2006 the traditional newspaper company, John Fairfax Ltd, changed its name to Fairfax Media to reflect its multi-platform future. In March 2007 Fairfax launched Australia’s first online-only daily publication in Queensland, brisbanetimes.com.au. In May 2007 Fairfax completed its merger with Rural Press to become the biggest media company in Australasia, with annual revenues of about $2.5 billion and market capitalisation of about $7 billion. Two months later Fairfax got even bigger when it acquired at least one radio station in all Australian capital cities plus television studios when it bought Southern Cross Broadcasting. Fairfax is expected to bid for one of the two digital television licences made available by the changes to media ownership laws promulgated in May 2007.

The aim in moving Fairfax from a print to a multi-platform company was to reach as large an audience as possible. ‘We have a total readership in print of over 4 million per day and online of over 5 million per month’, CEO David Kirk said at the time of the Rural Press merger. ‘Our brand of quality, independent, balanced journalism will serve and support more communities than ever’ (Kirk 2007). A few months earlier chairman Ron Walker had written in the company’s annual report: ‘Fairfax is evolving into a truly digital media company’ (2006: 2). Within five years Fairfax would be a significantly bigger Internet company that distributed its content ‘over more media’, Kirk wrote in the same report (2006: 5).

Kirk developed a three-pronged strategy. The first part of the strategy involved the need to ‘defend and grow our newspaper publishing businesses’ – that is, to consolidate and develop the existing newspapers, whose circulations were holding steady during the week and improving on Saturdays. The second part involved plans to ‘accelerate the revenue and earnings of our digital business’. The third part was ‘to build a digital media company for the twenty-first century’ (Fairfax annual report 2006: 3). In June 2007 Kirk appointed Tim Mannes project leader for the Fairfax Media-Rural Press integration. ‘The purpose of the integration work is to bring the two companies together and build what is truly Australasia’s leading media company’, Mannes wrote in a memo to all staff on 7 June 2007. ‘It’s vital throughout this process that we maintain continuity and momentum and protect the interests and needs of our customers’ (2007: 1).

The business model appears attractive. Kirk said Fairfax’s increased scale and diversity would mean it relied less on classified lineage advertising in major metropolitan newspapers, so it could ‘rapidly develop the best online response to changing media advertising patterns’. In the two years to 2006, online’s contribution to Fairfax’s profits had grown from 1 per cent to 14 per cent with ‘much more to come’. Online’s share of the national advertising pie had grown from 2 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent in 2006 (Beverley 2007: 6) and had jumped to 14 per cent in 2007. Analysts said they were happy with Fairfax’s move ‘from a newspaper company to a media company’ and banks such as Credit Suisse upgraded their profits forecast (AFR 19 September 2007: 37).

Planning for the move to One Darling Island Road in Sydney’s Darling Harbour started early in 2006. Fairfax CEO David Kirk took personal responsibility. He and chairman Ron Walker visited integrated sites around the world, along with a group of editorial bosses. The favoured site was The Daily Telegraph in London, which embraced convergence from June 2006. CEO Murdoch McLennan hired a consultant from Ifra, Dr Dietmar Schantin, director of the Newsplex, to facilitate the move from mono-media to multi-media at The Telegraph. Schantin said change was less about new technologies and more about altering the established mindset. The focus must be on the audience: ‘The whole idea of audience orientation seems to be quite new for some newspapers. In the past it was more “we know what is good for our readers and so we distribute the content”.’ Newspapers were a service industry whose service was information and news, he said. Newspapers had to learn to ‘serve’ its audience with the things the audience wanted to know, on any appropriate platform. ‘We start from the audience. What they want is a very important point. That does not mean that a newspaper should just do what the audience wants. The newspaper [also] needs to stick
to its core values’ (Luft 2006, Coleman 2007: 5).

Tom Curley, CEO of the world’s biggest newsgathering organisation, Associated Press, gave an important speech to the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner in New York in November 2007. The news industry had come to a fork in the road and needed to take bold steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role for both the economy and democracy, he said. Otherwise the media industry would find itself ‘on an ugly path to obscurity’. He similarly emphasised the need to serve the audience: ‘Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people’s 24-hour news needs. That’s a huge shift from the we-know-best, gatekeeper thinking. Sourcing, fact gathering, researching, storytelling, editing [and] packaging aren’t going away’
(Curley 2007).

Kirk appointed a ‘newsroom of the future’ committee from editorial (reporters and photographers), IT and HR. The committee initiated a study tour by editorial executives of leading integrated and converged newsrooms in the UK and the US in April 2007. This became known as the ‘Tier 1’ course and involved the editor and deputy editor of The Age, and the news editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald’s editor went to the annual conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Cape Town, South Africa in June 2007 because that event featured convergence as one of its main themes (PANPA Bulletin June 2007: 6). The committee designed a two-day awareness course for senior editorial managers, known as ‘Tier 2’, that was run in Sydney in July 2007. The ‘Tier 3’ program for all editorial staff started in August 2007 and this ‘multi-media awareness program’ continued until the end of the year. A ‘Tier 4’ course for about 10 per cent of editorial staff (about 40 journalists), where they learned a range of multi-media skills, was scheduled to start after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The author facilitated most of the Tier 2 and 3 courses.

The Tier 3 and 4 courses have profound implications for journalism education in Australia because they represent the start of major changes to how journalists work in Australia. The process reflects evolution in newsroom practices around the world. In November 2006 Ifra, the international media research company, asked newspaper executives worldwide about their priorities for 2007. The survey attracted 240 responses from 43 countries and results appeared in January 2007. Integration, editorial convergence and cross-media strategies attracted the most attention. Four in five executives rated it one of their top priorities, and half made it their main priority in terms of allocating ‘significant’ funds (Ifra 2007: 34). Ifra repeated the survey in November 2007 and published the results in January 2008. Expanding web strategies was first on the list for 2008, just ahead of editorial convergence strategies, which topped the list in 2007. Improving video and audio content jumped 14 places, and mobile phone strategies leapt 9 places between 2007 and 2008 to be near the top of the list (Ifra 2008: 8).

Unrealistic optimism and event threat

Individuals typically exhibit “unrealistic optimism” (UO), the belief that they are less likely than the average person to experience a negative event. This may be because, fearing the event, they try to reassure themselves by distorting their reasoning to conclude that they are at comparatively little risk. If this is so, the greater the “event threat” (i.e., the more serious the event's consequences and/or the greater the likelihood that those consequences will be experienced), the more reassurance should be required, and the greater the UO that should be observed. This prediction was tested in a study in which students (N = 148) were informed about a type of heart disease that could develop in later life due to inadequate diet when young. The risk attributable to diet was stated to be either slight (low-threat condition) or great (high-threat condition). Participants were asked to rate their own risk and that of the average student of developing the disease; question order was counterbalanced. The effects of event threat and question order were found to interact: event threat affected UO in the predicted way, but only when the question about own risk came first. The results are explained in motivational terms. Implications for health education are discussed.

Changing perception of average person's risk does not suffice to change perception of comparative risk

The direct method of assessing “unrealistic optimism” employs a question of the form, “Compared with the average person, what is the chance that event X will occur to you?” It has been proposed that when individuals construct their responses to this question (direct-estimates) they focus much more strongly on estimates of their own risk (self-estimates) than on estimates of the average person's risk (other-estimates). A challenge to this proposal comes from findings that interventions that alter other-estimates also change direct-estimates. Employing a novel intervention technique, we tested the possibility that such interventions may indirectly also change self-estimates and that this is what accounts for their effect on direct-estimates. Study 1 (n = 58) showed that an intervention which was designed to (and did) affect other-estimates also affected self-estimates, while Study 2 (n = 101) showed that it affected direct-estimates. Study 3 (n = 79) confirmed that we could modify the intervention so as to maintain the effect on other-estimates, but eliminate that on self-estimates. Study 4 (n = 112) demonstrated that when this was done, there was no longer any effect on direct-estimates. The findings are consistent with the proposal that direct-estimates are constructed largely just out of self-estimates. Implications for heath education programs are discussed.

Assisting independence with "the latest and greatest" of technologies

A case study of a long term wheelchair user: This presentation will highlight the difficulties associated with matching client's environmental access, seating and mobility needs using multi-functional systems, which also happen to be the "latest and greatest" technologies. The paper addresses the issues experienced by these clinicians when prescribing systems with minimal trial history (due to their newness) and the compatibility issues encountered by the supplier when matching the new with the old of the current powered wheelchair for a particularly motivated wheelchair user.

Has the ban on smoking in New South Wales restaurants worked? A comparison of restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne

Objective: To evaluate compliance with a legislative ban on smoking inside restaurants by comparing smoking in Sydney restaurants (where it is legally banned) with smoking in Melbourne restaurants (not subject to a legal ban).

Design and participants: Unobtrusive observational study of restaurant patrons, and interviews with restaurant staff, carried out by 159 volunteers.

Setting: 78 Sydney restaurants with smoke-free indoor environments (as required by legislation) and 81 Melbourne restaurants not subject to legislation preventing smoking. The study took place from 20-31 October 2000.

Intervention: Legislation to ban smoking in indoor areas of restaurants was introduced in New South Wales in September 2000 (about six weeks before our study).

Outcomes: Observed incidents of smoking inside restaurants; staff attitudes to the ban; customer satisfaction as indicated by comments to staff; staff perceptions of restaurant patronage.

Results: No restaurant patrons were seen smoking in 78 Sydney restaurants during 156 hours of observation of 2646 diners, compared with 176 smokers among 3014 Melbourne diners over 154 hours of observation. Thirty-one per cent (24/78) of Sydney restaurants had experienced smokers attempting to smoke indoors after the legislation was introduced; 6% (5/78) reported instances of smokers refusing to stop smoking when asked; 79% (62/78) of restaurants had received favourable comments from patrons about the smoke-free law; 81% (63/78) of restaurant staff interviewed either supported or strongly supported the law. Since introduction of the legislation, 76% of restaurants reported normal trade, 14% increased trade, and 9% reduced trade.

Conclusions: Smoke-free restaurants do not require "smoking police" to enforce bans, present few ongoing difficulties for staff, attract many more favourable than unfavourable comments from patrons, and do not adversely affect trade.

Evaluating New Zealand sports stars as celebrity endorsers : intriguing results

Celebrity athlete endorsement of products and services has become prominent in the promotional mixes of New Zealand companies and organisations. For years advertisers and researchers have pondered how successful celebrity athlete endorsement really works. Most suggest some form of transfer of positive images takes place between celebrity and the product or service they are endorsing and source-credibility models have become the preferred research design. The overall objective of this research was to assist sport marketing managers and their advertising agencies in matching celebrities with products and services. An ancillary objective was to compare results obtained from multiple-item and single-item scales. An exploratory study with tertiary students was conducted, using both Ohanian’s (1990) 15 item source-credibility scale and two single-item measures to examine potential “endorsement fit” for four New Zealand sporting heroes. They were Bernice Mene (recently retired national netball team captain), Dean Barker (America’s Cup yachting defender’s helmsman), Mandy Smith (recently retired national women’s hockey team star) and Justin Marshall (All Black rugby’s most capped halfback), all of whom were adjudged by students as physically attractive sports stars. The product reported here against which these athletes were scored was an isotonic sports drink. Results were mixed; the Ohanian source-credibility scale yielded selection of different celebrity athletes to the single-item measures. The research results show that matching celebrities to products for potential endorsement opportunities is a complex issue, leaving scope for judgement and intuition alongside quantification. Still unresolved is the question of multiple-item measures versus single-item measures in advertising and service research.

Sport sponsorship

OBJECTIVES
By the end of this chapter, readers will be able to:
• describe the nature and role of sponsorship as part of a company's marketing mix;
• be familiar with terminology relating to sponsorship and integrated sponsorship marketing;
• discuss the background and growth of sponsorship as a marketing discipline globally and in New Zealand;
• understand corporate methodology for measuring sponsorship effectiveness;
• identify models for sponsorship selection, planning, management and evaluation;
• understand the role of research in sponsorship;
• describe techniques for developing a sponsorship proposal;
• be familiar with global and local trends in sponsorship;
• understand legal implications, including contracts/agreements, ambush marketing and cause-related sponsorship.

Sport marketing

OBJECTIVES
By the end of this chapter, readers will be able to:
• appreciate that sport marketing follows basic marketing principles but with a change of emphasis to suit particular sporting contexts;
• recount how marketing's role can be applied to sport and sport organisations with special emphasis on marketing's '4 Ps';
• evaluate the application of marketing strategies and tactics to chosen sport codes;
• identify different groups of sport fans;
• understand the role marketing planning and marketing management play in staging a sport event.

Caprice versus standardization in venture capital decision making

This study examined the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate business plans in order to make investment decisions. A literature survey revealed two competing theories: 'espoused criteria' where evaluation decisions are based on what venture capitalists say are the decisive factors, versus the use of 'known attributes' that successful ventures actually possess. Brunswik's Lens Model from Social Judgment Theory guided an empirical investigation of several different evaluation methods based on information contained in 129 business plans submitted for venture capital over a three-year period. Data evaluation culminated in the comparison of the percentage of correct decisions ('hit rate') for each method. We found that decisions based on the known attributes of successful ventures have significantly better hit rates than decisions made using espoused criteria. Discussion centered on the goal of achieving consistency in the conduct of venture analysis. Process standardization can aid in the achievement of consistency. Future research will both deepen and broaden insights.

Performing masculinity and leadership : male academics' work practices and identities

In this thesis, a folio comprising a major dissertation and three elective tasks, issues including masculinity(ies), identities, leadership and academics’ work practices are considered against a backdrop of change in the higher education sector. Narrative research methods are applied throughout the folio. The first elective, a discussion and commentary arising from an interview with an experienced practitioner in gender education, amounts to a feasibility study for the dissertation, whereas the second elective experiments with the use of computer mediated communication as a means of interviewing a small number of male academics about their inclusive teaching practices. Primarily curiosity-driven research, the conclusion is drawn that computer mediated communication, if used at all, ought provide a complementary, not primary means of data collection. The third elective conveys the life story of an Asian-Australian academic who expresses different masculinities according to the social settings in which he finds himself. The conclusion is made that there is neither a single colored masculinity nor a single working class masculinity. The milieux of race and class need to be considered together. The research described in the major dissertation was undertaken with a group of eleven male academics from a number of rural and metropolitan universities – men who were thought by their colleagues and peers to practice collaborative approaches to leadership. Whereas the majority of the men practised what could be described as transformational approaches to leadership, a small number exploited the process of collaboration mainly for their own protection. Very few of the men engaged in discourses of gender. One of the principal conclusions reached in the paper is that there are ramifications for future leadership training that universities offer so that it becomes more relevant and socially inclusive. Another main conclusion relates to the intimidation reported by some of the men in the study, and that there are implications for universities in the way they protect their employees from such incidents. A third significant conclusion is that there is some way to go before gender is integrated into the discourse of male academics. Until this can occur, limited opportunities exist for alliances to be formed between most male academics and feminist academics for the advancement of socially just workplaces.

Wear attributes of cashmere single jersey knitted fabrics blended with high and low crimp superfine merino wool

In a replicated experiment, we investigated the impact of cashmere in blends with superfine wools on the wear attributes of single jersey knitted fabrics. We also investigated the relative performance of low crimp/low fiber curvature superfine wool when compared with cashmere and also when compared with traditional high crimp/high fiber curvature superfine wool in pure and blended knitted fabrics. Wool type, blend ratio and fabric structure affected fabric air permeability, resistance to pilling and change in appearance, relaxation shrinkage, hygral expansion, and dimensional stability during laundering. The responses to variation in fiber crimp were much greater than previously reported. The fabric properties of low crimp wool differed significantly from those made from high crimp wool, and low crimp wool fabric properties differed significantly from, but were closer to, the fabric properties of cashmere, compared with high curvature wool.

Toward the standardization of venture capital investment evaluation : decision criteria for rating investee business plans

This study examined the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate business plans in order to make investment decisions. A literature survey revealed two competing theories: “espoused criteria” where evaluation decisions are based on what venture capitalists say are the decisive factors; versus the use of “known attributes” that successful ventures actually possess. Brunswik’s Lens Model from Social Judgment Theory guided an empirical investigation of several different evaluation methods based on information contained in 129 business plans submitted for venture capital over a 3 year period. Data evaluation culminated in the comparison of the percentage of correct decisions (“hit-rate”) for each method. We found that decisions based on the known attributes of successful ventures have significantly better hit-rates than decisions made using espoused criteria. Discussion centred on the goal of achieving consistency in the conduct of venture analysis. Process standardization can aid in the achievement of consistency. Future research will both deepen and broaden insights.