Suggested Speakers
- Pras Rajagopalan | @rajagopp
CBC Toronto - Marie Caloz
CBC Toronto
Take it from people who have done it: Here's how to flip broadcast newsroom culture to digital in under a year.
Session Description
It’s easy for news organizations to say they are digital-first or mobile-first. But for multidisciplinary news organizations that weren’t conceived as digital entities, achieving digital-first culture is no easy task.
At CBC Toronto, we knew we had to make dramatic changes in order to be truly mobile-first and serve our audience. And we want to show you how you can spark meaningful cultural change in your organization.
CBC Toronto is the local news affiliate for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Canada’s largest city. As a result of the changes we implemented last year, the newsroom, which was focused very heavily on broadcast journalism, now privileges digital and original storytelling.
The results are striking: we have grown our audience and have developed our identity so we are setting the news agenda in Toronto. We’ve also developed a culture of collaboration so that separate units in the newsroom are sharing ideas and aren’t just focusing on their own work as they used to. And our staff are happier and more engaged than they used to be.
There are lessons here for a variety of news organizations. We can walk through concrete things you can do to change culture, including:
– The structure and mandate of assignment.
– Training, development, and engagement of staff.
– Audience-focused editorial process.
– The role of data.
– Soft beats.
We will also explore some of our biggest challenges we encountered and lay out where we still need to develop.
How does your submission contribute to the diversity of the conference?
The topic is cross-disciplinary. The focus is on digital, but is centred on people and organization. It will detail how we were able to train and focus people who weren't traditionally digital storytellers. There are many lessons for people from diverse professional backgrounds who want to develop a digital, audience-focused strategy. We are also a public broadcaster, which brings with it a whole set of advantages and challenges.