FT's Newsroom 2009 to focus on staff, explains executive editor

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The Financial Times' Newsroom 2009 project will focus on training staff for work in a digital newsroom and not involve wide-scale restructuring, the paper's executive editor has said.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Hugh Carnegy said the roll-out of Newsroom 2009 would involve a fairly comprehensive training plan for editorial staff on 'how to manage people and how to edit in a digital world'.

The project, which was outlined to staff earlier this month, will see the introduction of a 'web ready workflow' and greater integration between print and online operations.

But Carnegy stressed the changes will build upon the integration and physical restructuring of the newsroom that began in 2006.

"Our approach on this particular project is this is really about a workflow change, a process change rather than a very heavy restructuring," he said.

"The approach this time is less about changing teams and job descriptions and much more about working within existing site operations."

An extra trainer will be taken on for the rest of the year to help lead lunchtime workshops, one-day and three-day sessions of training, including more multimedia learning. New roles for four 'news integrators' will also be created as part of the project.

"We have some very effective video and interactive features on FT.com that we want to see developed. We are looking at extending therange and availability of multimedia content," Carnegy said.

The expertise of staff will be at the heart of the Newsroom 2009 project, from using in-house experts to train others to the revamp of the production process, which will see reporters drafting headlines and adding links to articles.

"These days the technology is there. We have this fantastic, transparent, integrated publishing system (…) The onus is on us to use these tools to the ultimate benefit of our journalists and product," he said.

"The people that are best equipped to know what the most effective links [for example] are, are the reporters."

The changes under the plan will also be reviewed in response to feedback and consultations with staff, he added.

The FT will also introduce a more sophisticated metadata content mining engine to improve navigation on the site, said Carnegy.

"It [use of metadata] makes sure that our online content is navigable and that we can organise it more simply. We've got to make sure that we are making our content as available and accessible to people as possible. This should be easy and instinctive for our users," he said.