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A thread about physical offices and newsgathering.
Yes, yes. There are many reasons why we don’t need offices the way we used to. Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, even good old Outlook and text messaging are decent ways to communicate with your coworkers.
But really, when your business is gathering news, nothing beats being actually present in the same room with people who know how to do the same thing, but who have various strengths and weaknesses, skill sets and levels of experience.
First, on the basic level, collaboration (embodied in morning conversations).
As a reporter or editor, you really should come into work having read/seen/familiarized yourself with the competition’s work. But if you haven’t, it’s easy to catch up on what you need to read if you chat for a few minutes with your coworkers-many have done your curating for you.
(An aside: Kick-ass reporters come into work knowing what’s been online/in the paper since they were last on duly. That’s part of what makes them kick ass. Not curious about the world around you? Consider another profession.)
Also part of the morning conversation is what your coworkers are doing and what news we expect today. An editor might not know a reporter has particular contacts or sources on a story.
If it’s not the reporter’s story, while they might check a story budget or see in a Slack channel that it’s being pursued, a lot of the time they wouldn’t necessarily know about the story beforehand when we’re all working remotely.
Second, avoiding duplication when you have limited resources. When you’re in a physical newsroom, it’s a lot easier to check in with other people about what they’re doing, especially on fast-breaking news.
The one-minute, shouted conversation over who’s calling whom and doing what and going where can take 20 minutes online/on the phone/through text. You can set up systems to designate people to do particular things in these situations.
But with fewer reporters and editors, these systems just won’t work a lot of the time.
Third, getting people to the right place. One of the reasons to have a newsroom is to have people centrally located near where a lot of the news you cover happens.
You can have people spread out in neighborhoods/suburbs you cover, able to run to places on breaking news. But for a lot of relatively routine breaking news—say, a sudden news conference by a public official—you need people where the news is most likely to happen in your city.
When people are working out of their homes, that doesn’t work. If they don’t have a car, they have to start out from home, go downtown, then go to wherever the news conference/sudden demonstration/high-rise fire/capsized boat is.
4th, presence in the community. You want to be an integral part of a community? You have to be there--important for marketing purposes, but also for newsgathering purposes. People are more likely to take you seriously as a reporter if your company has a stake in the community.
Withdrawing from the community by doing away with your company’s physical presence there sends a signal to sources, to government agencies, to your readers that you do not have a commitment to their community. It is BAD BUSINESS, despite its adding to the short-term bottom line.
Finally, morale. Having a place to go to, to check into when you’re working on the street, and see your coworkers face-to-face, speak to people about solving issues you have with your job, get pens and paper, charge up your laptop somewhere warm. Also, free coffee.
Speaking of which: Without an office, where will the election night pizzas be delivered?
All that boosts workforce morale. Workers are more likely to stick with you. Your company won’t have to go through the expense and trouble of hiring new people all the time.
Which, again, is good business. In the end, with a physical, communal place to work, investors and workers both win. -- 30--
