More and more big publishing houses in Germany have built central organized newsrooms lately that distribute national content (both for print and digital) for several regional outlets at the same time. The two biggest central newsrooms in Germany are Funke Zentralredaktion (Funke Media Group) and RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland RND (Madsack Group).
Funke Zentralredaktion, located in Berlin, provides national and international news (politics, business, entertainment, media,..) for 12 regional newspapers and 14 news websites. RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) provides international and national coverage for more than 40 daily papers and websites from central organized newsrooms in Hannover and Berlin. Another big publishing house is NOZ Medien who just founded centralized offices in Osnabrück (print) and Hamburg (digital).
Those centralized newsrooms help using synergies and competences - within a publishing house or as an external provider. They support regional newspapers in their effort to focus on local and regional stories by taking care of the nationwide and global news.
At the same time the challenges of producing news for several papers/websites changes the way journalists work. The results are, among others, an increase in communication, more logistics and a lot of compromise in order to fulfill the wishes and needs of different news outlets. The new centralized newsrooms approach those challenges with new structures, workflows, and new communication tools. They also change the media market since more and more regional outlets publish identical content, both print and digital.
What are the chances of centralized newsrooms? And what are the biggest challenges? And how do those central units change the way we work?
