Structure And Organizational Hierarchy of The Newsroom

Structure And Organizational Hierarchy of The Newsroom

INTRODUCTION

Reporters write at typewriters receive information by telephone from field reporters, wait for assignments, and study various newspapers at desks in the newsroom.

A newsroom is the central place where journalists, reporters, editors any producers along with other staffers work to gather news to be published in a newspaper and or on online newspaper or magazine or broadcast on radio television or cable-some journalism organizations refer to the newsroom as the city room.

The concept of newsroom may now be employed by some public relation practitioners as representatives of companies and organization with the intent to influence or create their own media.

Newsrooms often have an assignment desk where staffers monitor emergency scanners, answer telephone calls faxes and emails from the public and reporters. The newsroom can either be the print newsroom or the broadcast newsroom.

An organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals. All organization have a management structure that determines relationship between the different activities and the members and sub divides and assigns roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out different tasks. Organization are open systems, they affect and are affected by the environment.

An organization is made up of multiple groups of people who work together to achieve a common goal. Each goal has different responsibilities within the larger goal and these groups are called departments or function.

NEWSROOM HIERARCHY

When we read our morning paper or watch the evening news, it can be easy to forget that the reporter or anchor is not the only professional responsible for bringing us our information. Behind the scenes are the professionals who share in the process. Together, they work to soft out important events and facts and bring us the headlines of the day, the hierarchy of the newsroom helps ensure the news is delivered in a timely of manner and that the material shared as fresh, relevant and informative.

Within each department, there are people with different level of experience responsibility and authority. Experience is the number of years and types of industry explosive, responsibility is the area and outcomes for which the person is accountable and authority is the extent of control he has one functions and departments.

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE OF THE NEWSROOM

Before explaining the structure of the organizational hierarchy of the newsroom let try to know that these help various departments to understand their duty and make every work easier and faster.

By definition major news is the one that matters to the readers, news hierarchy is fixed by the perimetre inside which the journalist works as a news maker. But, which ever the newspaper, some facts are interesting only to some readers. New hierarchy is not fixed but rather functions. It is not the same in every newsroom.

Head of news: The head of news or news director is an individual at or broadcast station or network or newspaper, which is in charge of the department. In local news, the news director is typically in charge of the entire news staff including journalistic news, presenters, photographic, copy writers, television producers and other technical staff. The news director also help track of how the show is going as well as values to the producer to get things going.

Typically, the only individual at a station/control who wields more pure than the news director is a general manager or company presides. The head of news as responsible for the editorial content, ethics, presentation and staff of the news department.

The news director as the person in charge of the news department at a station. He must be skilled at all aspect of news from how to get a story to how to avoid being sued. This requires a basic knowledge of media in addition to being an expert at journalism.

While the news director hires staff and is a manager, she is also a coach, that means knowing everything from the basics of shooting video to how to write compelling news stories. A news director also needs to be an expert at branding. Simply presenting stories is not enough in today’s competitive media environment. It takes more research and knowing how to reach the target demographics of your audience.

News director play key roles in keeping news studios running. The sub requires knowledge and expertise to oversee a wide array of news studies tasks.

SUPERVISOR: Directly supervise and coordinate activities of sales workers other than retail sales workers. Many perform duties such as budgeting, accounting and personnel work, in addition to supervisory duties.

They provide staff with assistance in performing difficult or complicated duties, hires, train and evaluate personnel, plan and prepare work schedules and any assign employees to specific duties.

The supervisor in media outfits or newsroom make sure that the news stories are well and properly written. They make sure that errors are corrected with every alacrity and also make sure that editing is done in time and the news is ready before the time it will be needed. The supervisor doesn’t waste anytime to putting everyone in other rather they make sure that everyone is doing his or her duties as suppose. Though the supervisor does not have a specific time to come to work but one their attention is needed and editing and proofreading needs to be done, they do them well.

EDITOR: The news editor is one of the most important persons who plans a daily newspaper. His wile on any newspaper office whether it be weekly or daily as all pervading. To a national newspaper an active, intelligent and enterprising news editor is the vital spark which energizes its news coverage and out look.

He is responsible for a steady and continous inflow of up to the minute news into newspaper office. Although most of the news supplied is a mechanical process covered by daily nations. But like all machinery of news gathering, the news editor is responsible for watching its smooth functioning. The news editor keeps a careful eye on the routine side of his news collection as well as on the other side of his work or the news desk which calls for more imaginative emulation.

The news editor is called upon to use his discretion, discrimination and imagination in reading the public mind and select the stories which have readiness value and can be called important by his readers quite a large number to be allotted a splash position on the main new pages according to the subject matter.

An intelligent news editor has to make a judicious follow up of a seemingly promising paragraph or sometime even make further enquiry before finding the story and give the perfect shape the want.

The news editor is also responsible for final security of important new stories submitted by different correspondents feature, writers and outside correspondents. He gives special attention to the facts and figures included in the write-ups and whenever he is in doubt, he takes pains to check up their accuracy from the authentic source.

SUB-EDITOR: Sub-editor or sub-desk written before it is published in newspapers, magazines and a websites. If you’ve got a good standard of English and can work quickly to tight deadlines, this job could be idea for you. To be at this job. A sub-editor, this is responsible for giving the finishing touch to the to be published material. He turns the try will facts or information into interesting and readable ones. He dresses the news and the information that is containing to make it sweet and attractive to the readers. He guards the newspaper world against the charged of libels, misrepresentation, silly grammatical and spelling errors and more he ensures accountability, responsibility and professionalism on the organization and finishes accurate and objective news. The sub-editor is well educated, talented, skilled and creative. He does a little of writing himself although he knows all the techniques and methods of writing. He has great command over language and is very diplomatic.

Sub-editors receive large number of news from news agencies, reporters and correspondents. He also receives press releases and handouts. He cannot publish all those therefore he selects important and interesting new stories. After the selection he calls the news properly. The function of revising and editing is called sub-editing or subbing. Sub-editor is called the back home of a newspaper due to his most important job. To present a news in an accurate and adequate way is the need is good newspaper.

REPORTER: A journalist is a person who works with collecting, writing and distributing news and other current information. A journalist’s work is referred to as journalism. A journalist can work with general issues or specialized in certain issues. For example, a sports journalists covers news within the world of sports.

A reporter is a type of journalist who researches, writes and reports on information to present in sources, conduct interviews engage in research and make reports. The information-gathering part of a journalist’s job is sometimes called reporting, in interest to the production part of the job such as writing articles. Reporters many splits their time between working in a newsroom and going out to witness events or interview people. Reporters may be assigned a specific beat or area of coverage.

Reporters sometimes expose themselves to danger, particularly when reporting in areas of aimed conflict or in states that do not respect the freedom of the press organization.

Reporters always make sure that they get the right news at the right time to give to the people. They make sure they are cultivating news stories and sustaining the old ones.

Under the types of reporters, we have the junior reporters and the senior reporters. Each has different levels of operations, tough they are both reporters but senior reporters have more level than the junior reporters. They know and have more acknowledge about the porting and every Crum and crannies but the junior reporters are more like learners, they are still learning and also the senior staff/reporters try to take them along while covering a particular beat.

However, while the exact structure of a paper newsroom may vary from one paper to the next, a general structure applies to most of them. The editor in chief typically sits atop the newsroom hierarchy of a newspaper. She oversees the development of a newspaper content coverage, scheduling and the personnel that bring it all together. The managing editor in conjunction with the editor in chief ensures the layout of the newspaper is properly structured and its production is completed on time.

How the structure and organization hierarchy contribute to the socialization of the professional communicators

Shoemaker’s and Reese’s 1996 volume mediating the message. Theories of influences on mass media established a theoretical framework for analyzing levels of influences that shape media content. The levels range form micro to macro, gung from individuals, over routines, organizational level, extra-media level, to ideological level. A similar approach was used by Hanitzsch in his extensive cross national journalisms culture study worlds of journalism. The world used by Hanitzsch allows for influences on journalistic reporting decisions on a super level. A macro-level of societies or nations (political teams, legal social, and cultural contexts as well as media system).

Results from the study among 2100 professional journalists found that organizational professional and procedural influences are perceived to the more powerful limit to the journalists work than political and economic influences. This produces the micro-level of professional hierarchy. The editorial organization and medium’s organization, as the most influential factor of journalistic conduct and thus the biggest influence of the professional part of journalism culture.

In every establishment there are need for socialization and division of labour. Division of labour makes the work more easier and faster it makes every body involved in production without stress.

Mere looking at the question vividly one can say that the socialization has to do with the relationship that exists among the professional communication. That is to say everyone involved in the production come together to make sure that the news is given and status give as maintained in the production.

For instance, the reporters go out in search of the news, after they must have gotten the news from every possible place, they go back to the newsroom or the better still their office and write down all that they have gone in search for. After the writing of the story, they give it to the editors who read through and do also of proofreading, editing and others on the writing. Every department to the newsroom put themselves into work and make sure they are busy. The editors, the sub-editor, the chief editors, the supervisor and the typewriters, all of these people are involved in making sure that all the dos and done are well executed in the story. They edit the story because the mind as faster than the hand and a reporter can omit some words or sentences which is not suppose to be and while editing such errors can always be detected and brought to book.

An adage says two heads are better than one. Different people with different contribution and different knowledge can help and go a long way. By the time all these hierarchy come togs the with their different knowledge, they bring out their professional communicators.

The socialization of professional tells about how they socialize, this is because the media house is a system and other departments under the media are sub-unit and all these different units cannot do without the other. The reporter cannot do without the editor, the sub-editor etc. All of them are very important and useful to each other, no one is more important than the other; its no one can do without the other.

REFERENCES

(1) Wikipedia

(2) Sociology of mass communication by Stella Okunna

(3) Personal research carried out through phone from Silverbird television

(4) Self Research

(5) Goggle