2005 EBU Training DR integrated newsroom project

Digital newsroom: thematic visit
Visit to DR News (TV-Byen and Dr-Byen)
Copenhagen, Denmark, 14 -15 November 2005

Visit report
Introduction

The visit of DR News provided a unique opportunity:
to assess what the future of digital news could look like in terms of strategy, content,
values, organization and multimedia outlets
to see how the archives are being put at the centre not only of the News production, but
of the overall DR production
to discover the new Media City and see how it was designed to meet the needs and
strategic goals of DR.

Outline
1. DR: a unique position on the European PSB market
1.1 Facts about DR
1.2 DR output
1.3 Market shares in 2004

2. DR Digital Production system and the central place of the Media Archive
2.1 DR Digital production system
2.2 DR Media Archive

3. DR News
3.1 Overview of the organizational structure of DR News & Sports
3.2 Training for digital news: training: "training, training, retraining and still training"
3.3 Multimedia reporting demands routine, skills & experience

4. The Digital future in DR–Byen
4.1 DR New Media City
4.2 News & Sports of the future in DR-Byen

41

1. DR: a unique position on the European PSB market

1.1 Facts about DR
• The oldest and largest electronic media company in Denmark, it was founded in 1925 as a
public service organization.
• DR is exclusively financed by the revenues of the license fees: 2.3 million Danish households
(93 % of all) pay a daily license fee of DKK 5.59 (0.75 ) and DKK 4,90 (0.65 ) per day goes
to DR.
• Annual budget: DKK 3 billion (~ 400 million euros).
• Has produced Radio since 1925 and TV since 1951.
• 3600 employees including 3000 in Copenhagen. They will all be moving to the New Media
House.
• DR is "vertically" organized with a TV Directorate and a Radio Directorate, and
"horizontally" with a Department for Programmes (~ 45 % of the employees) and a
Department for News & Sports (~16 %).

Director
General
Kenneth
Plummer

TV director Radio Director Programme Finance
Lars Grarup director News & director director
Leif Sports Lars Bent Fjord
Lønsmann Lisbeth Vesterløkke
Knudsen

1.2 DR output
• DR enjoys a particularly strong position in Denmark, quite unique in Europe. On any given
week,
o 85.2% of Denmark's population watches DR TV
o 81% listens to DR Radio
• DR TV comprises 2 channels:
o DR1 via terrestrial network; its main competitor is TV2
o DR2, via satellite dish reception or cable TV .
o A growing number of television programs are broadcast in wide-screen 16:9 format.
• DR on the Internet
o DR radio on the Internet started in 1996; DR TV on the Internet started in 1997.
o Very strong position on the Internet: DR website ranks no.2 or 3 on the list of the
most frequented websites in Denmark.
• Overall TV & Radio output, in broadcasting hours, has recently increased
o On average DR offers 29 hours of television and 360 hours of radio during a 24-hour
period (2004),
o DR TV: + 117% since 1996 for a total number of broadcasting hours of 6 455 in
2004,
o DR Radio: +31% since 1996 for a total number of hours of 8 784.

42
© EBU International Training / 15 December 2005

Report written by Hélène Rauby-Matta, EBU International Training, Geneva, Switzerland and
Jean-Noël Gouyet, Technical Writer, Paris, France

To keep up with such a growth rate and continue developing, DR has just asked for a
rise of 1.5% of the license fee.

1.3 Market shares in 2004

- TV 3 and TV DK are commercial competitors
- Others channels include international TV channels such as CNN, BBC World etc.
Source: Lisbeth Knudsen, Director News & Sports, November 2005

Sources
Presentations made by Lisbeth Knudsen, Director of News, DR and by Steen Rabing, Managing Editor,
DR on 14 & 15 November 2005
- 'Facts on DR' print out.
- http://www.dr.dk/omdr/index.asp?sektion=eng

43


2. DR Digital Production system and the central place of the Media
Archive

In the past 6 years (2000 - 2005), and before moving to a brand new 'Media City' , DR has gradually
implemented a full digital production system. The investments amount approximately to 16 million
euros.

2.1 DR Digital production system

• The digital DR project focused on 4 points:

o Same technical platform for News, Sports, Children, Drama, Documentary, Current
affairs, etc.
o Content sharing between TV, Radio, iTV, Web and mobiles
o Complete change of workflow in production and archiving
o 100% non-proprietary hardware and software.
o Built on standard IT components.
To attain these aims, DR has implemented:
• A multi-level media quality

o In the DVCPRO 50 Mbit/s format for Sports, Programme production, Legacy
(film/video) digitization, allowing digital post-production (special effects, …). 1 hour
of DVCPRO50 programme requires approximately 25 Giga Bytes (GB) of storage
capacity.
o In the DVCPRO 25 Mbit/s format for the News, allowing simple editing. 1 hour of
DVCPRO25 programme requires approximately 12.5 Giga Bytes (GB) of storage
capacity.
o In the MPEG-1 1,5 Mbit/s format for browsing and searching.
o In the Windows Media format for Internet distribution.
o In the 3 GP format for distribution to mobile phones

• A central digital media mass storage
The architecture of the system is built around a short-term and a long-term media storage

The DR digital Timeline
DR Byen
Tapeless TV rec.
Newsroom computer sys.
iTV, mobile, outdoor
iTV,
The digital correspondent
Tapeless radio rec.
Graphics for journalists
Digital TV play out
Digital TV editing
Media archive
Web CMS
Research and Planning
Radio digitized

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
44


o The short-term storage consists of:
1
SGI Media Server for broadcast systems .
Two magnetic disks storage systems SGI TPS9500, partitioned according the
different departments.
A SGI Data Migration Facility (DMF) software. It automatically moves data
from magnetic disk to tape, when space is required. This is transparent from
a user perspective, since the file is accessible in both cases.
o SGI also integrates:
2 3
a scheduled ingest automation software ARDCAP and DART from Ardendo,
a Swedish company;
a transcoding software including keyframe extraction;
Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Liquid Purple and Liquid Blue nonlinear editing
systems.

o In addition, SGI Broadcast Integration Service, provides interfaces to all the different
client software and systems, including the Web front-user Graphical User Interface
developed by DR for the Media Archive.

o The long-term storage consists of :

a StorageTek automated tape library 'StreamLine SL8500', containing up to
6,500 tapes of 200 bytes each (StorageTek 9940B tape format), offering a
total capacity of 1.3 Peta Bytes (PB) = 50,000 hours of DVCPRO50
programmes = 100,000 hours of DVCPRO25 programmes ! (1PB = 1 million
of Giga Bytes).
Four independent arms, with grips running in 5 seconds along the robot
gallery, allows a very high hourly throughput.

• A common Radio & TV Master Control Room (MCR) and Play-out Centre

o Situated in the Segment 1 of the new DR Byen, the MCR is common to Radio and TV.
The MIRANDA system can control up to 256 input (feeds, feedback)) / output
(playback) lines, with a programmable switcher of Broadcast Solutions.

o Excepted those from the EBU, the satellite feeds are coming from two very
impressive MultiBeam Antennas from CSIRO, an Australian organisation, installed by
TST, a German company. Each can simultaneously communicates with up to 20
geostationary satellites (with a 2° minimum spacing) over multiple frequency bands –
4
compared with one antenna for one satellite in conventional systems .

o Just besides the MCR, the common Play-out Centre is supervised by Harris software.

1
http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/3452.pdf
2
http://www.ardendo.com/?page=products&subpage=ardcap
3
http://www.ardendo.com/?page=products&subpage=dart
4
http://www.csiro.au/index.asp?id=MultiBeam&type=mediaRelease
http://www.tstsat.com/Multibeam.pdf
45


• An optimized integrated workflow
5
In the new DR Byen, the entire production workflow will be controlled by Dalet plus . The
News & Sports department is presently using NewStar
Overview of the Technical Platform
600 pc’s for editing
8484 High End NLE’s
High End NLE’s and archive search
600 pc’s for editing and
archive search

90.000 hour central production-
system
production-system

34 dedicated VTR
34 dedicated VTR &
& P2 P2 Ingest
Ingest 6 studios
2222 channels
channels scheduled 6 studios
scheduled feed
feed ingest
ingest

5
http://www.dalet.com/index.html

46


2.2 DR Media Archive

The Media Archive is not the "end-of-the-chain depository" but the Central Resource Centre of
the Digital Production system. 80 people are working there: 20-25 for News & Sports, 20-25 for
Programme Production. The service is open from 5:30 until 22:00.

• A Multimedia Resource Centre

A team of librarians is proceeding to "up-front" archiving, selecting and indexing sequences
from the incoming feeds.
'Fresh' material will be kept on the SGI media server, then transferred after 48 hours onto
the tape library robot. Material which does not get the 'Archived' status will be "killed" after
30 days.

The Media Archive contains:

o The new Digital Productions:
Radio programmes with metadata
TV News & Sports programmes with metadata
Big events in special 'folders' (Sports championships, elections,…)
VIPs, who may die soon !
Edited raw material
Selected stories from APTN / EV / EBU feeds with metadata
External stock shots
Trailers (in project)
Programme production (in project)
Foreign films, with a "kill date" (in project)

o Legacy material digitised 'on demand' (requested extracts or whole programmes are
digitised). Until now, only 3 - 4% of legacy material have already been digitised. The
cost of a systematic digitization of the Radio & TV legacy (473,000 hours of audio +
28,400 hours of film + 69,000 hours of video) has been estimated to DKK 300
million (~ 40 million euros), inclusive storage capacity and metadata handling.

o Photographs (in project).

o Production documents (Legacy rights documents). LIBRA is a 10-year project (ending
2012), with an estimated cost of 1.7 million euros, aiming at scanning 1 million
documents, concerning 60,000 titles, issued from the programme production. 5
people are working on it. The Libra database is connected to the archive database.
Within a year, it will hold the rights documents of new production (in project).

o Newspapers articles

o Books, references

o DR web sites (in project)

• DR Metadata model

o DR Archive has developed a metadata model after having studied 7 to 8 different
models (for example, SMPTE Metadata Dictionary, BBC-SMEF, EBU-P/META, TV-
Anytime, Dublin Core, …).
47


6
o The DR Metadata standard is defined as an internal standard for DRAMS (DR Asset
Management Systems), for relations to international standards for System-to-System
(S2S), Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) exchange, and as
a set of requirements and guidelines. The DRAMS specifications are developed for
managing material in both the production and archiving domain. The DRAMS
specifications describe multimedia content such as productions, items (pieces of
material), programs and articles with focus on core descriptive metadata.

o A list of around 20,000 keywords with a simplified hierarchy and 19 different
headlines help for the indexing.

Media Archive Graphical User Interface and metadata

6
DR Metadata Standard http://www.dr.dk/omdr/index.asp?appflag=force&aid=517
48


o The rights related to each document are specified according to three categories,
represented as green-yellow-red "traffic lights"

repeat and reutilization require
special permission(s)

repeat and reutilization require
payment of fees (according to
agreement codes) on top of
payment to the composers'
society
may be repeated and reused
(clips) according to the usual
practice

o Experience has proved that it is difficult for the journalists to introduce metadata.
The minimum required for a 'story' would be: Title - Subject - Reporter/Photographer
- Location -Name of the person interviewed - "Traffic light"/rights.

• Educating and informing on the access to the Media Archive

o A team of 9 librarians/researchers arranges about 60 courses per year, with 350
participants in 2005, a little less in 2006.

o Budget has been about 77,000 euros for the first year, including the technical
equipment.
o The basic user course concerns various participants: reporters, graphics designers,
producers, editors, technicians, staff members – both from Radio and TV.

o The Media Archive Web site on the DR Intranet delivers information about the search
tools, policies and rules.

Sources :
- Torben Lundberg, Head of Technology, News & Sports
- Visit of the present DR TV Centre in Soborg (North-West of Copenhagen)
- Visit of the new 'Media City' DR Byen in Orestad (South-East of Copenhagen) with Erik Dixen.
- Jannie Lehmann, Archive and Research Manager
- Visit of the Archive Department at the DR TV Centre in Soborg (North-West of Copenhagen)

49


3. DR News

3.1 Overview of the organizational structure of DR News & Sports

DR news & Sports internal organization as of 1st January 2006

Director News & Sports
Lisbeth Knudsen

TV News News and Sports Production

Radio news News and Sports Technology

Sports DR Archive

New media news DR Text

Research and Planning Administration

o Programmes with the objective of providing news, current affairs and information
constitute 60% of all DR TV programmes and 59% of DR Radio programmes.
o DR is with DR Interaktiv (www.dr.dk ) the largest Danish Internet news provider
and offers an increasing number of radio and television programs.
o DR also offers services on mobile phones and other new media devices (e.g.,
mobile phones).

o Traditionally the archives were separate, but as of January 2006, DR archive will
fall under the responsibility of DR News & Sports because News & Sports is the
biggest user of the archives.
o 550 out of the 3600 employees of DR work in News & Sports
o DR has a 24-hour radio news channel, but as yet, there is no 24-hour TV news
channel in DR or in Denmark

3.2 Training for digital news: training : "training, training, retraining and still training"

• 3 different tracks for training

o When changing the workflow from analogue to digital news in 2003, staff
training was organized along 3 tracks:
• before going on air, courses to teach people to use the tools and give an
idea about self-editing,
50


• after going on air, one year later, reporters were trained on self editing,
still on-going. Reporters were trained on Pinnacle Blue (?). That proved much
more efficient.
• in parallel, journalists/reporters were trained to do efficient and precise
archive searching

o At the beginning the news management did not think that every journalist and
reporter should take up editing but journalists started coming and asking all to be
trained

o Before going online, DR News had already trained craft-editors and photographers
to be multitaskers. Some photographers even had to be trained on basic computer
skills and very soon after on craft editing.

o DR News started training the more IT-minded people first which did not mean the
youngest ones. Results don't depend

• Training in practice

o About 400 people were trained altogether
o From the Media archive ingest to training journalists for editing

o Craft editors
• 10-day-training course divided in a 5-day training with trainers from Pinnacle,
and 5 days during which craft-editors did some training with DR Super-users.
These two periods were interlaced: "craft editors were learning a bit, -1 day
or 2- then putting it into practice with super-users, then going back to
training with Pinnacle an so on"
• mixed feelings from the part of craft-editors. Those who found it most
difficult got some more training

o editorial staff
• 2-day training courses
• covered ingest methods, archive searching, pre-editing on Easy-Cut so as
give reporters the ability to know what they would like to use when going to
the craft editor

o Gallery staff
• 1 day-training and that was all needed
• already before: DR News had managed to cut down from 2 key persons to 1
key-person in the gallery: the producer was already doing picture mixing

o Archive searching
• Very successful: not only do journalists do their own searches they also have
learned to use the system more efficiently and to better formulate their
searches, to ask better question

51


• Training in perspective

o Ingesting & Searching
• Staff felt that the system for ingesting and searching archive was not too
difficult to adjust to.

o Self-editing for editorial staff

• Journalists do their editing either on Easy Cut (simple voice-overs) or on
Pinnacle Purple (for longer and more traditional stories). Craft editors do
their editing on Pinnacle Blue.

• Doing the editing oneself was considered as being the most difficult part.
Most reporters felt that self editing was taking too much time.

• In addition, the EasyCut system did not prove very good, it was not fully
ready at the time DR wanted to use it, it was not as stable as had been
hoped. The design, the layout were also challenged by the journalists.

• The management pushed very hard at the beginning for the journalists to do,
at least, pre-editing so that they could go to the craft-editors with a time line
and major chunks of what they wanted in their story. Many of them argued
that "4 eyes are better than 2 eyes".

• All the young journalists coming out from schools have been taught to edit
themselves; for a number of them, editing is natural at least on short stories.
EasyCut is used by a lot of young people, especially for the short bulletins.
Other journalists, those coming from print or those who have always worked
with craft-editors have a harder time to adjust. They argue that they won't
have anytime left for researching, investigative, for being a real journalist.

• Shop stewards (representatives from the unions) were the ones to ask for
everyone to be trained so as to pressure the management no to leave
anyone on the side.

• Offices were turned into editing rooms.

• People were trained 4 by 4 by one of the 2 supers users (one was a
journalist/one was a craft editor).

• Overall positive results

o faster news,
o more outlets and more programmes
o improved and easier content-sharing
o increased diversity in the programmes
o successful archive integration
o tri-media integration

52


o barriers between the staff, between technicians and journalists, between
producers and producing assistants, between graphic staff and journalists have
been broken
o About 50 photographers do editing as well, only 2-3 are just photographers.
o Some people in the archives can also do low resolution editing

But it was a "tough road" to take

• Final objectives
o barriers between the staff, between technicians and journalists, between
producers and production
o 25 % of the packages of the evening bulletins should be edited by journalists,
now 15%-20%.
o much more stories in the morning news are self-edited. Journalists actually think it
is faster for them to edit stories made from EBU and bureau material rather than
go to a craft editor for this.

Sources
Presentations made by Lisbeth Knudsen, Director of News, DR and by Steen Rabing,
Managing Editor, DR on 14 & 15 November 2005

53


3.3 Multimedia reporting demands routine, skills & experience

• The multimedia reporter

o Asbjørn Date, 49 years-old, has been a journalist for the past 20 years, first on local
and national radio.

o Since 1997, Asbjørn Date, has worked as a traditional TV news reporter, then as a
"one-man band (one man, one DV camera)

o For the last couple of years, Asbjørn Date has been self-editing his own stories.
Occasionally, he also works as a newsroom editor or sub-editor. He also still works
with craft editors on certain topics and more complex stories.

He is overall quite satisfied with the editing aspects as he likes "to put things
together" himself: " And I like to work with the computer, like to edit my own
stuff . It’s a good feeling to have a hand on the final cut. I like the opportunities. But
there are a couple of problems: It’s a time killer, and self-editing demands routine,
skills and experience"

• Challenges

o The fundamental knowledge is easily learned: "If you know anything about a
normal Word processor program - then you know lots of the shortcuts and a lot
the basic editing system".

o "self-editing" is a time killer, "it will leave you no time at all. Time is an essential
factor in the news production chain and self-editing reporters tend to finish their
story very late. .

o This is a typical day for the multimedia reporter:
• 9:10: editorial meeting
• 10:00 : research begins on the story and interview arrangement
• 12-12:30: you are on the road with a cameraman
• 15:00: you are back to your station if everything goes well
54


then the ingest needs to be done and raw footage needs to be
viewed
story writing; producing graphics
• 16:15: Self-editing
• 18:30: newscast "TV-Avisen" is on air

o the hardest stories for a self-editing reporter are the new stories, the stories which
are still developing.

o self-editing reporters, having no time left, usually finish their story very late which
can be a problem for newsroom editors who only see the story shortly before
broadcasting, if they can.

o "The worst story for a self-editing reporter is an “on going” news story. A story
witch is developing over the day. It’s not possible, at least not very easy, for the
reporter to update, to rewrite the story - or to make new interview arrangement.
That kind of stories needs a skilled editing technician".
o And the lack of skill is also a stress factor close to deadline - and a mayor problem.
A lot of wrong bottoms have been pressed and a lot stupid mistakes had been
made in the few busy minutes before “On Air” .

o good video editing requires talent and skills: one needs to understand picture
language and be a good storyteller in the right visual way. Otherwise one will end
up with a static structure.

o it takes a lot of time for a journalist to master editing and it will always take time

Sources
Presentation made by Asbjørn Date, Multimedia Reporter, DR on 14 November 2005

55


4. The Digital future in DR - Byen

4.1 DR New Media City

• Project background

o The decision was taken in 1999 to relocate the 12 DR sites in Copenhagen to a new
home in Ørestad Nord (South-East of Copenhagen).
7
o In 2006 three thousand DR staff will be moving into a new DR 'Multimedia House' .

• DR New Media City floor organization

o The building, representing a total area of 132,500 m2 (including basement), costs
450 million euros.

o The complete digital production platform costs 94 million euros. It will be
inaugurated in December 2006 (the concert hall being completed mid 2007).

o It is divided in 4 segments :

Segment 1:

- Large studios: a 720 m2 TV studio,
tandem studios with shared
production rooms;
- 3 film studios (800/400/250 m2;
radio studios);
3 - Editorial areas (Children / Youth,
2 Culture, Current Affairs & Science,
4 Documentary, Radio Drama,TV
1 Drama, Education);
- Technical facilities (MCCP: Master
Control & Channel Production;
editing facilities)

Segment 2:
st nd
News and Sports editorial teams, Archive & Research Centre (1 + 2 floor),.Heads of Radio / TV,
DR Interactive (Web, teletext, mobile phones, iTV)
Segment 3
Copenhagen Radio, Broadcast technology & IT, Service and Administration, Courses, Staff
restaurant, etc.
Segment 4:
Concert Hall with 1,800 seats0 seats (designed by Jean Nouvel), Music editorial offices

7
http://www.dr.dk/drbyen/english/ + Exhibition in DR Byen
56


• New approach to workplaces

o With digitization, many members of staff are no longer tied to a specific workplace
or desk. They can decide whether a job is best done at DR Byen, at home, or
somewhere else.
o If staff decide to get together to work in meeting rooms, atria or café settings, they
can log onto wired and wireless networks. If they obtain programme material they
can store it on the servers via "ingest stations" on every floor.

• "HD Ready" Control Rooms

o The TV programme production is "HD ready".
o For example, the control rooms for the TV production studios are equipped with the
8
SD/HD multi-format switcher KAHUNA from Snell & Wilcox. It offers simultaneous
High Definition and Standard Definition operations in the same mainframe, via the
same control panel.
o Thanks to a new technology called FormatFusion, it is also the first production
switcher capable of integrating SD material into HD productions seamlessly, in the
same mix effects (M/E) bank, without the need for up-conversion.

4.2 News & Sports of the future in DR-Byen
" We must re-invent journalism as we know it... and we must reinvent the way we
work and the way we put our organisation together" Lisbeth Knudsen

• General overview

o Including the archive staff, 650 people will be part of DR News & Sports
o November 2006: News & Sports should be in DR-City
o It was decided long before that the entire DR production should be fully digital
before the move should take place

• Content strategy (2005-2007): How DR wants to make the difference.

o Put the story back at the centre: "It's the story and not the Media that is
important"
go from mono-media to multimedia production
focus even more on content rather than on production
focus on the “receiver” rather than on the “sender”
in terms of organization, go from divisions and segmented departments
into a Matrix
TV Radio @ Mobile Other
Media
National
TV Radio New Other Foreign
Media media
Money
Politics
Culture
→ Crime
Sports

8
http://www.snellwilcox.com/kahuna/data.pdf
57


Move from a static to a truly dynamic company which keeps adapting
to the market

o From the traditional news production line to the new production line

Radio
Story Production Editing On TV
demand

Story Production Editing ? Inter
net

Story Production Editing
? S News-
aper

Story Production Editing
→ iTV Telet
ext
Mobi SMS
le

o Three headlines

Classic News: everyone can do it, to be different, you need:
Originality
Knowledge for in-depth news
Be able to provide an overview
Verification of the origin and accuracy are crucial

Fast News
To be always “on”: on DR Radio 24, on DR website and maybe,
in the future, on DR TV 24
Instant News
Mobile News
Keywords: first & relevant & accurate

⇒ Prompted the creation of DR News Agency: staff will produce the fast news, Internet News, SMS,
Mobile phone news etc; 3-minute news and Flash news radio programmes, short TV news
programmes and “coming-ups”

Interactive News
Individualised and customized news
Special segmented news e.g.: news for children, young people
Increased interactivity and possibility for the audience to
contribute content.
Keywords: creativity, diversity and involvement

58


o New organization

A multimedial organization of News and Sports to share the content
and facilitate new content production, diversity an multiplicity not just to
duplicate stories

National desk with
Radio news
a combination of special
multimedial teams and
a special ”news lab” team

TV news
Multimedial Foreign desk

New Media
Multimedial Money desk

DR’s
Multimedial Political News Agency
desk

DR New Media City "DR-Byen" - Segment 2 - Newsroom
Visual rendering: DISSING+WEITLING

59


News lab team: staff will not be appointed there on a permanent basis and it will be
for specially innovative and creative people

Staff will be specialized not by permanent topics, but by issues of
importance over a certain period: e.g., integration, welfare reforms etc…
and other key and hot thematic issues.

Multimedial Political desk will be situated at the Parliament

DR New Media City - "DR Byen" - Segment 2 - Inner Atrium
Visual rendering: DISSING+WEITLING

Quality strategy: How DR wants to make the difference

o Quality principles in News

“Being a multimedia journalist (…) is the opportunity to tell stories in
different ways, formats and concepts to different people in different
situations”

Research and planning are shared in order to develop new ideas from
more sources: rather than have the same politician be interviewed in the
morning and in the evening, or on TV or on radio, find more people to
be interviewed
60


Daily, weekly and/or monthly goals are set out to stimulate staff &
reporters and help them constantly develop their creative ability and their
storytelling skills

Quality control system and measures have been put in place to prevent
mistakes from happening and to take action very fast when a mistake
ahs been made to avoid the mistake from being replicated on different
media

o Quality in Money programme output

Overview of the Money Department
created in 2003
20-25 reporters
all reporters are multimedial (TV, radio, Teletext etc.)
issues covered are domestic business and economy

Quality process
Set up in 2004
The quality process started with a staff meeting: everyone had to
identify whet he/she thought was the most important quality
goal. The goals identified by everyone were discussed and
eventually prioritized.

Objectives
Official objective: to set the agenda in Danish media & society on
these issues
DR makes its own stories and does not copy what is in the
specialized press

Goals
Goals are fixed and need to be measured
Radio: at least 1 unique radio story every day in the Radio
morning programmes
TV: At least one of the 3 top stories in the evening news
programmes (18:30; 21:00)
Online and Teletext: no.1 at breaking news
Specific money programme: at least the same share as TV News

61


The way quality is measured:
Every morning staff and journalists start filling out a form such as
the one below
has been implemented for a year
it took time at the beginning, now it is more part of the normal
way of working

Online: no Teletext: no Money
1 at 1 at programme: at
Quality Radio solo stories TV among the 3 top breaking breaking least the same
Project stories news news share as tv-news

December: 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 18.30 21.00 yes/no yes/no
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

o Quality in Morning News

Over view of breakfast News
15 journalists
7:00: short news broadcast; 8:00-9:00: morning hour
12:00 newscast

Quality process
Set up in 2004
Everyone sat down and defined his/her priorities; at the end 4
crucial objectives were identified
1 person has been appointed to be responsible for one of the 4
points
the results are checked a few times a month

Objectives
Make the overall morning news more interesting.

4 Quality goals
More live coverage from reporters on the field
62


Stronger News broadcast at 12:00 (more new stories, fewer
reruns)
More dynamic broadcast; that is more stories with
interviews/stand-ups in the morning, less library pictures
Better language

Preliminary results
More live:
- the use of live coverage has almost doubled
- the use of guest in the studio and lives by telephone has
gone down by 40%

Stronger news broadcast at noon
- nearly 100% more interviews than a year ago (Fall 2004)
- the amount of new pieces has gone up by 70%
- live-coverage has gone down by 15%

More dynamic broadcasts
- 70% only of the stories in the morning hour include library
pictures, it used to be 100%
- the use of quotes from newspapers has diminished as well
as "voice-overs" lasting more than 25 seconds.

Better language
- much harder to measure
- no figures yet

o Quality in News

The overall primary objective was, through the quality project, to talk
more about content and less about technical problems.
When the overall concept of quality control was presented, everyone
agreed on the concept, but everyone was sceptical regarding the way
quality could actually be measured,
There is not one quality project; each programme has its own quality
checking process.
Standards and goals vary from one programme to another, they have
been identified with the staff at the programme level. What was most
difficult was to identify measurable goals

63


Production strategy: How DR wants to make the difference.

o Digital media archive at the heart of production

o An outstanding research & planning system

o Access to production systems that can be managed and used across different
media

o Very flexible structure: this means that the structure which is being designed for
2006 may be changed in 2007 or 2008

o “Must-haves”:

multimedial expertise, need for new functions and new media skills
in-depth knowledge and investigative journalism
great storytelling expertise
extremely good and updated knowledge of the market trends in news
skills to manage many complex & different IT systems
production systems with friendly interfaces
production systems that are fully integrated

Sources
Presentations made by Lisbeth Knudsen, Director of News, DR; Suzanne Hegelund, DR News-Money
programme; Philip Khokhar, news reporter on 15 November 2005


Report written by Hélène Rauby-Matta, EBU International Training and Jean-Noël Gouyet, Technical
Writer, Paris, France

64


2005 EBU Training DR integrated newsroom project

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (11)

Destacado

Destacado (6)

Similar a 2005 EBU Training DR integrated newsroom project

Similar a 2005 EBU Training DR integrated newsroom project (20)

Más de European Broacasting Union

Más de European Broacasting Union (20)

2005 EBU Training DR integrated newsroom project