By Anu Nathan

These were the questions addressed by the presenters in the Asian Media Leaders Summit session titled ‘The Newsroom in 2022 and beyond – Hybrid Newsrooms’ moderated by Andrea Tan – Asia Pacific Team Leader, Daybreak Bloomberg News, Singapore.

Kicking off the session was Federica Cherubini, Head of Leadership Development at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, UK. Referencing her research paper Changing Newsrooms 2021: hybrid working and improving diversity remain twin challenges for publishers, published last year, she spoke about the challenges to newsrooms and the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that are still impacting news organisations.

One thing is certain from the Reuters report – hybrid workflows will be the norm for the majority in the news industry. 

“Many people will find their newsroom a very different place to the one they left behind at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Some will no longer be returning to an office space at all, while others will find a reduced floorspace and have to adapt to hot desks as staff rotate between days at the office and days at home,” Cherubini said.

The general sentiment from respondents was that working from home was affecting creativity, collaboration and the sense of belonging, particularly for younger and newer employees who still had not had time to build strong bonds with their colleagues. Additionally, there were concerns of isolation and mental health issues, not just for junior employees but also managers who had to shoulder an even heavier workload when remote working.

The solution for some was to add more management positions, but the report also noted that around half the respondents (47%) felt that the pandemic has made recruitment and retention of media staff harder.

A better work-life balance 

For a young newsroom like the online paper elDiario in Spain (founded in 2012), hybrid was the go-to solution even before the pandemic. 

Deputy Managing Editor María Ramírez manages the World News desk and routinely works from home. She only pops into the office for meetings, events or to conduct interviews.

“We had been experimenting with hybrid work even before the pandemic. We have a law in Spain which encourages companies to opt for hybrid work to help people reconcile worklife with family time. So, we started with one person in every team working from home once a week,” Ramírez said

“All communication was done through our various Telegram groups, so we were well-poised to go fully remote on March 10, 2020. And we remained fully remote until September 2021.” 

elDiario now has a flexible schedule which requires teams to only be in the office two days each week. All meetings are conducted remotely to allow everyone involved to join in.

“Currently, we have a good structure. Each section works particular days in the newsroom – and we have managed to combine the schedules so that people from different sections can connect with each other, of course not everyone, at some point in the week at the office,” said Ramírez.

And contrary to feeling isolated, Ramírez said her colleagues became closer during the pandemic as it was a dramatic and intense period for everyone.

Grand dame of news tackles changes in her stride

One would think that larger organisations would have struggled more in switching to remote or hybrid work, but that was not the case for Agence France-Presse (AFP). 

As Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director at AFP put it, “It was a euphoric feeling to get 200 offices, some in very difficult locations, to go remote and to do work that requires a lot of bandwidth, such as video editing remotely.” 

The world’s oldest news agency kept the minimum required number of staff to run operations at its headquarters in Paris, down to 200 from the thousands who walked the floors daily. 

Chetwynd said there’s a possibility that in the future some jobs could be fully remote but not all. 

“A real-time news organisation needs a certain office structure,” he said. “You have to be on the ground to get and build relationships with your sources – you can’t ask that difficult question online or via chat. It’s much better, say, over a glass of wine, than remotely.” 

Proximity bias

There were worries among quite a few employees that hybrid working will reinforce existing disparities, particularly due to proximity bias – the idea that colleagues who spend more time in the newsroom will be perceived as better workers and receive preferential treatment. This concern is far from new, but could have been exacerbated by the pandemic and the resulting isolation. 

All three speakers also alluded to how much hybrid work has changed the meeting culture at their respective organisations.

One aspect they all noted was that managers worked harder to ensure that everyone connecting remotely could be heard – “democratising” participation to be more inclusive. As Cherubini said, quieter employees sometimes “disappeared from view when working remotely.”

Additionally, all said there was much effort into encouraging teams to balance “digital presenteeism” – as there were fears, especially among junior staff, that they should always be available and online.   

Furthermore, Chetwynd said, younger staff generally struggled with working from home , because unlike more established employees who had “homes in the countryside and enough space to work remotely, the younger employees were often in shared accommodation which made it harder to find a quiet space to work.” 

Pandemic shutdown was a time for change

On the plus side, AFP took the COVID-19 shutdown as an opportunity to revamp its main newsroom in Paris by cutting down real-estate and rearranging office space.

AFP combined two buildings into one and redesigned the space to be more open by removing several offices. 

According to Chetwynd, this redesign also gave people more incentive to return to the main office, a historic building in the centre of Paris. 

Across their teams, added Chetwynd, staff in the UK and US were in no hurry to return to the office, unlike their colleagues in France. 

There is also concern that some people might just “disappear” in this new culture, according to Cherubini. 

“The pandemic made us realise that we have to be more intentional in being inclusive. It was not perfect before, and one thing this pandemic has forced us to ask is what kind of structure we have for mentoring?” 

“I’ve seen a huge demand for training; people want to equip themselves with more skills. And managers know how easy it is to train people remotely, in an agile way,” added Chetwynd. 

Equity, diversity and flexibility 

Cherubini and Chetwynd noted that some individuals – such as journalists, who are used to working primarily alone – thrive when working from home, away from the distractions of the office, but that this was not the case for more time-sensitive roles such as producers and editors. They said that the more one works with a team and in a time-sensitive role, the better it was to work in the same room. 

Ramirez saw a clear gender disparity at her workplace with mostly male employees at elDiario preferring to work from the office rather than home. 

While the Reuters survey showed that news organisations were doing a good job with balancing the gender divide, it highlighted less success in tackling ethnic diversity and with hiring people from less advantaged backgrounds. 

“The glass ceiling is seen as the biggest challenge for many underrepresented groups,” said Cherubini. 

In this instance, remote and hybrid working could be the optimal solution, she said. Many news organisations are based in big cities, which are expensive to live in. But with hybrid working, there is a very real possibility of hiring people based outside the cities and even in remote regions. 

“We can now have more hubs across different time zones and end difficult shifts and overnight work,” Chetwynd said. “I was at home when tanks crossed over into Ukraine. I didn’t have to abandon my family and run to the office as I could still be on top of the story from home. I could do my work and be with my family in this breaking news situation.”

“Our coverage of the Ukraine conflict was a hybrid work success,” he continued. “We had Russian speakers working from their homes in various parts of the world. To do this we had to find the combination of what needs to be done on the ground and remotely exploit what we could do virtually – they have to go together in an intelligent way.” 

Lessons learned from the pandemic

Cherubini rounded off her presentation with 10 takeaways from the pandemic to make hybrid working possible and more inclusive:  

• Balance equity, flexibility and operational requirements
• Rethink what the office is for
• Be conscious of “proximity bias”
• Communicate more proactively and focus on wellbeing 
• Focus on culture 
• Invest in and support managers
• Reimagine meetings
• Foster a culture of learning and mentoring in hybrid settings
• Address the news media diversity problems
• Use hybrid work as a leverage to get the right talent

“To sum it up – we need to find a balance,” said Chetwynd. 

“We are concerned about losing people who are working too hard, the pressure on managers and general mental health. This pandemic has really put these subjects on the table, and it requires real work to create a culture that supports our staff.” 

For Ramírez, though, there is no turning back from hybrid work despite the uncertainties. 

“We don’t know exactly in what direction we are going with hybrid work yet, but it’s very probable that we are never going to be in the office the whole week.” 

For additional reading, see WAN-IFRA’s recent report: The Disrupted Newsroom (https://wan-ifra.org/insight/report-the-disrupted-newsroom/)

Main image credit: StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay