Breaking down resistance is the key to success in the essential process of merging broadcasters’ newsrooms, according to speakers and participants at an EBU Network & Learn event, which opened Monday.

The EBU’s Integrated Media Production Strategies (IMPS) initiative has brought news and technical staff from 16 EBU Members to Geneva for two days to seek solutions to the colossal but unavoidable task of converging the way content is handled at every stage. 

Broadly speaking, integrating technical and editorial production resources and having a single newsroom for radio, television and online is potentially more cost-effective. It also makes it much easier to produce tailored content for the different platforms.

Executives from VRT (Belgium), YLE (Finland), NRK (Norway) and the BBC (UK) described the mountains their organizations had to climb to amalgamate television, radio and online news staff and workflows.

Simon Ward, Assistant Editor for BBC Newsgathering who runs a cross-platform team called News Intake, said job swaps and a strategic prioritization of online had done much to change mindsets.

He added: “In 2008, Online moved to the newsroom. To counterbalance the very powerful TV and radio editors, a multimedia editor position was created. The TV editor and radio editor would serve as daily multimedia editor on a rotating basis. As they wanted to be seen as very scrupulous, they didn't favour their own programme or their own platform, but favoured online. This helped online gain strength and power in the newsroom.”

Brigitte Vermeesch, who managed the VRT News Project to digitize and integrate its radio, TV and online newsrooms, said she had encountered resistance at all levels, from veteran journalists to middle management.

She said that winning hearts and minds had been difficult, but that it had been a fundamental element of their strategic to make convergence work.

And the same hurdles had been met in Finland, YLE Director of News & Current Affairs Atte Jääskeläinen told the audience, and that specialization had been identified as a solution.

He said it was a matter of “finding the right balance between fully integrating platforms and media and preserving a second layer of TV, radio and internet specialists. You should have very highly skilled specialists in all the media, but also highly skilled specialists per topic."

The IMPS programme will continue in 2013 with Member visits and will specialise in two subgroups – technical and editorial – for about four months in order to analyse workflows and define the technical implications.