3 Strategies for a More Efficient Newsroom Workflow

We have helped some of the industry’s top news broadcasters — like the BBC, Sky News, and CBS — make their newsrooms more efficient — and we’ll go deep into how we do that in this article — but here’s a quick summary if you don’t have time to read the whole article:

• Keep Pace with the Fast-Moving News Cycle: Adopting the right technology can help you adopt the best industry practices without breaking the bank.  
• Improve Newsroom Productivity with Automated Workflows: Automating workflow reduces workload while prioritizing creative work.  
• Insist on Native Integrations: Implementing custom technology helps you customize your production process to match demand.  
• Invest in Flexibility and Agility: Adopting the right technology bolsters your ability to adapt to changing market needs.  
• Look at Integrating Cloud-Based Solutions: Migrating some of your workflows and infrastructure to the cloud could help you adapt to changing demands without significant upfront costs.  
• Create an Agile Production System: An innovative production system lets you integrate emerging technologies and meet your viewers’ expectations.  
• Upholding Quality in a Fast-Paced Production Environment: The right technology helps you ramp up and diversify production without sacrificing quality.    

Keeping Pace with the Fast-Moving News Cycle 

Control Room directors, VPs of Engineering, and news production teams struggle to match fast-paced news cycles on tight budgets. The challenges include: 

• More Channels and Formats/Transition to Digital-First: The proliferation of channels requires you to produce content in different formats.  
• More Competition: You must differentiate your offerings to retain viewership and grow market share.  
• Resource Constraints: A tight budget hinders technology adoption and affects content production and distribution.   
• Changing Consumer Preferences: Streaming services are steadily battling broadcast media for viewership.  

1. Insist on Native Integrations 

Increasing regionalization and mediums require news producers to prioritize mobility and integration. You’ll need to produce more localized content catering to the interests and preferences of diverse audiences. The explosion of distribution mediums requires you to prioritize a mobile-first approach so your producers can create, edit, and distribute content on the go.  

Deep native integrations with industry-standard tools can give your newsroom a much-needed edge. Native integrations simplify complex tasks while increasing efficiency for multiple connected teams and systems. They facilitate data automation for flawless information exchange while helping you build efficient workflows. You can efficiently overcome regionalization challenges and deliver quality content across diverse channels.  

2. Invest in Flexibility and Agility 

Increased localization requires your news production team to embrace mobility so you can remain competitive. Your team needs to:  

• Get to more places faster than ever 
• Scale up and down to meet changing demands. 

Switching to hybrid on-site and cloud-based solutions provides the agility to match changing market needs. You can quickly scale your resources to accommodate spiking viewership and scale down during off-peak periods.  

Video media asset management (MAM) systems and remote production capabilities constantly evolve to accommodate growing market needs. Cloud MAM systems let you scale without substantial upfront costs, while remote production capabilities bolster remote broadcasts.  

The Ultrix hyperconverged platform is an innovative solution that allows you to scale your production resources up or down based on your news team’s requirements. It’ll effortlessly combine separate products into a single frame while letting you conceptualize your workflow and hardware allocations in real-time. It uses a Software Defined Production Engine (SPDE) to help you condense space requirements to let you broadcast from any location.     

Investing in hybrid on-site and cloud-based solutions gives your team the agility and flexibility to adapt to changing demands driven by localization and dynamic broadcast environments. Leveraging technologies such as Ultrix can help you cover more locations and consistently deliver news-grade content.  

3. Integrate Automated Production Workflows 

Using MOS workflows can help you streamline your processes and dominate the market. The automated workflow integrates an XPression graphic system with your Media Object server (MOS) protocol. MOS is a communication protocol that lets you incorporate a newsroom computer system with other broadcast equipment. XPression is a specialty graphics system that creates and plays out broadcast graphics. 

MOS XPression workflows help streamline your news production process by automating repetitive tasks. It’ll integrate your computer systems with the graphics system to facilitate seamless data transfer. It supports automated graphics triggering and real-time updates to let you insert custom graphics on the fly during live broadcasts.  

Overdrive is another newsroom productivity tool that integrates with your Newsroom Computer System (NCS) to help you automate and manage your news production software system from a centralized control interface. 

Upholding Quality in a Fast-Paced Production Environment

Highly integrated systems and automated workflows help uphold quality in a dynamic production environment. They facilitate collaboration, improve turnaround times, and eliminate costly errors.  

Automation lets editors and producers focus their talents, skills, and creativity on producing quality content. They can reiterate and polish their system to ensure a flawless process.  

In a hybrid ecosystem, your news team will likely use Inception for news gathering and reporting, Utrix hyperconvergence for production, and XPression for editing, and Streamline Pro for general video asset management. They’ll probably defer to multi-channel playout servers such as Media I/O for broadcasting.

Innovation & Integration: The Keys to Success

Innovations in technology and production processes enhance your creative capabilities, streamline your workflows for productivity and efficiency, and improve quality control to help build an engaged audience. They power your ability to create immersive and customized viewing experiences that resonate with your audience and grow your market share.  

Better, faster, and more integrated solutions are crucial to building an efficient news production system. Integrated solutions also offer a higher return on investment and are more cost-effective because they: 

• Offer improved support and accountability.  
• Have a lower learning curve.  
• Have lower maintenance costs.  
• Have fewer licensing requirements. 

Want to learn more about optimizing your newsroom workflow? Read the full guide.