Fortress Newsroom v. Transparent Newsroom: Which will prevail?

Whilst researching my segment of our final presentation, I stumbled across this article which identified two distinct newsroom models; the fortress newsroom and the transparent newsroom.

Entitled “A Newsroom’s Fortress Walls Collapse”, journalist Steven Smith recognises that tradtionally, newsrooms are a place of privacy, where news collecting and article construction is done behind closed doors. However, as the article progresses, he acknowledges the new phenomenon of the transparent newsroom sweeping newsrooms across the globe.

According to research conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (A.S.N.E.), “one of the key findings suggested that newspapers could slowly rebuild citizen trust by better explaining news values and decision-making and by engaging in conversations with readers about journalism”- trust that was lost through the ‘erection’ of those ‘fortess walls’.

Towards the end of the article, Smith explains the measures that himself and his newsroom have undertaken, in a bid to become more transparent. The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington have made several changes to their daily routine, including ‘(having) daily news meetings open to the public‘, ‘hir(ing) a local journalism professor with no connections to the paper to independently critique our work and respond to citizen complaints once or twice a month’, and ‘ (having) five citizen bloggers representing a cross-section of political and social views critique the paper daily in an online feature called “News Is a Conversation.” ‘

Although the verdict is still out on whether transparency in newsrooms will catch on, readers of the Spokesman-Review are certainly supportive of this innovation, as readership intensity has increased over the last three years.