The newsroom's new dilemma
The increasing addiction to online social networking has created a Catch-22 situation in newspapers across the country.
ANINDYA RAI VERMAN asks if “no access†or “restricted access†is the only solution to the problem.
Newsrooms in Delhi, on both sides of the fence--news desk and reporting--and in the rest of the country as well, have increasingly become “addicted” to Facebook and other social media networks. Senior friends and colleagues who have moved to other news organisations, in many cases outside Delhi too, paint a “grim scenario” as far as news operations are concerned. Only that it’s a Catch-22 situation, but we will come to that later.
Many juniors can be found spending hours on Facebook and other social media even as they simultaneously “edit” copy and make pages, or file their reports if they are in reporting. That is the height of multi-tasking, you might say. The trouble with such multi-tasking is that devoting time to networking on social media and at the same time editing stories or making perfect pages or filing reports is often seen by many senior newsroom editors, the bosses, as not gelling at all--certainly not conducive to quality work. In fact, online networking is considered as a distraction to “quality editing” and page-making or “quality reporting”, depending on which side of the fence you are in. That’s perhaps why I myself am not on any social media, except LinkedIn, a professional network.
Once a trainee journalist, who had just joined a prominent English daily, inadvertently pasted a previously copied Facebook message into one of the stories she was “editing” in a hurry and in the “mad rush” to release pages, her senior checking the page overlooked that and the page got printed.
But that is only one side of the newsroom scenario. The “addiction” to social media and online networking is definitely not limited to the junior editors; it extends to their seniors as well. It’s a Catch-22 situation where many senior editorial staff are themselves on social media and are, therefore, mostly forced to restrict their “cribbing” to private conversations. Sample this actual conversation between a News Editor with clout in a well-known English daily on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and one of the “seasoned” sub-editors with “attitude” working under him.
News Editor (NE): Can’t you close your Facebook page and concentrate on editing the copy better?
Sub-Editor (SE): But sir, you are also on Facebook.
NE: I don’t do Facebooking while editing copy or checking pages.
SE: But sir, one day I saw…
NE (raising his voice to cut short the conversation): How dare you argue with me? Just do your work properly, okay?
The sub-editor fell silent, but he had made his point. However, the episode did not end there. The NE, goes the story, did not forget the sub-editor’s retort and when the appraisal time came, gave a negative feedback, effectively making sure the sub-editor didn’t get an increment for that year. The sub-editor left the organisation soon after. The NE is still on Facebook and in the same organisation, but has subsequently ensured that there has been a ban on access to social sites there. The ban still holds.
While this might be an extreme case of “Facebook victimization” of a junior, there is no escaping the fact that many newsroom bosses are coming to grips on a daily basis with the issues revolving around the reality of online social media networking. The trouble is that in most cases they don’t know how to deal with it at an individual level. Some media organisations have completely “banned” access to social media networks in their newsrooms, while others give “restricted” access.
How does the “restricted” way work? In one prominent English daily, two computers in the systems room (meant to fix computers and other technical problems) allow sub-editors and reporters access to social media networks, but only after the edition is gone for that day. One can imagine the perpetual rush of junior sub-editors and reporters and the queue to access those two computers once the edition is over, often leaving many dissatisfied and complaining as they have to catch their office-provided night cabs to return home. It’s like a full-blown water crisis at the height of summer, when, despite a long queue of people waiting to fill their buckets and containers, only some at the front will get their share, and the taps suddenly run dry.
Is a total ban on access to social networking sites in newsrooms the right solution? Or is a “restricted” approach the correct middle path? Or is there a third or fourth approach to tackle this newsroom challenge? While it is clear that there are no easy solutions, it is also a fact that editorial bosses in some organisations privately recognise that there is a newsroom “problem”, but wouldn’t go to the extent of making it official at the management level, preferring rather to resort to a reprimand here or a mild rebuke there, recognising that they themselves are on social media networks. In this complex and evolving newsroom ethos, varying from one organisation to another, it is thus perhaps anybody’s guess as to what can be the “right solution” to what, for many, is a “Catch-22” situation.