Forward planning tips for media organisations

Created on Friday, 06 January 2012

Published on Friday, 06 January 2012

Written by David Brewer

What influences your news decisions?

Are you in control of your news organisation’s editorial agenda?

You may think you are, but an examination of what prompts or stimulates you to cover news may reveal flaws in your news strategy.

It could be that the majority of the news you cover on any given day is directly or indirectly controlled by others.

A simple forward planning strategy, based on original, issue-led journalism, can reverse this.

Sources of news

There are typically 10 sources of news:

1: The news wires
2: Diary events
3: News conferences
4: News releases
5: Following the competition
6: Unexpected events
7: Exploring unique angles to ongoing stories
8: Keeping in touch with contacts
9: Investigative journalism
10: Planned thematic news coverage

Too many media organisations depend on the first five sources. The sixth is common to all.

However, a responsible media organisation that exists to inform the public debate with thorough, objective, fair and accurate journalism (see our ethics section), will spend more time investing in the last four sources of news.

Check your own news sources

It's worth carrying out an analysis of what prompts or stimulates your news decisions. The results might make uncomfortable reading.

I have carried out this simple test with several news organisations in recent years and the results are sobering.

It could be that the majority of the news you cover is stimulated by others

Taking control of your news agenda

I asked colleagues who have worked at three global news organisations about the percentage breakdown for the news sources listed above.

Averaged out between the three the data returned revealed the following news source dependencies:

• Wires 37%
• General diary events 10%
• News conferences 6.5%
• News releases 6.5%
• Following the competition 20%
• Unexpected events (breaking news) 9%
• Original journalism 11%

An externally stimulated news agenda

As the pie chart below shows, this means that 89% of the news agendas are stimulated, prompted or inspired by others and only 11% of the news is original (the part marked in dark green).

The chart above shows a news agenda stimulated by others

A news agenda producing original journalism

The challenge for all news organisations, whether they are global broadcasters or local newspapers, is to reverse this and take control of the news agenda by increasing the amount of original journalism.

The pie chart below shows what news organisations should aim for.

The challenge for all news organisations is to produce more original journalism

Allocating resources for forward planning

The first step is to set aside resources for forward planning.

This doesn't mean hiring new staff. It will mean reassigning some staff by taking them away from following the leads of others and, instead, encouraging them to invest their time in producing original, issue-led, investigative journalism that focuses on the needs of the target audience.

The first position you need to fill is that of the forward planning editor.

This person can do other tasks in the newsroom and need not be dedicated solely to the task of forward planning, but this person will be the journalist who takes ownership of your forward planning news agenda.

Their job is to set out what will be covered tomorrow, next week, next month and three months ahead.

They attend all news meetings and must have a major say in what is covered.

The person in charge of the day’s output needs to be able to rely on the forward planning editor to supply a large part of the day’s news coverage.

You will then need to allocate resources to this forward planning effort.

Staff are always more motivated producing original journalism

Forward planning resources

In the case of a TV station, the forward planning editor will need at least one reporter, a camera crew and the use of an editing suite.

This is the hard bit, because prior to the setting up of your new forward planning effort these resources would be dedicated to news on the day and responding to the news agenda set by others (as set out above).

Warning:  It will take about three weeks before the efforts of the forward planning team start to filter through; only then will the benefit of shifting news resources, usually used for covering the same news agenda as the competition, become evident.

In the next module, 'Issue-led journalism', we look at what the forward planning editor does, how they help manage the news brand's editorial focus and how they act as the guardian of the news brand.

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