NewsBeat

6 NewsBeat March 2016 The role of project managers in the newsroom at FT and WSJ he traditional layout of newsrooms has undergone numerous changes, first to reflect the transition to digital, then to cater to the increasing popularity of mobile and more recently, the rise of distributed. Some teams such as developers and product managers, who might not have worked directly alongside journalists and editors before, have also moved into the newsroom to make the process of building new initiatives more efficient. At The Wall Street Journal, the role of a product manager or developer will sometimes overlap with that of a project manager, Katharine Bailey, the outlet's head of news products, told Journalism.co.uk in a recent podcast. "The product person is really thinking about why we are doing that specific thing and then defining the requirements around it." "Frequently, that person wears both hats, but a project manager is making sure that the project is executed smoothly on time, within budget, from beginning to end," she explained. Bailey's team started working alongside the editorial team in May 2015, in order to "bring a 360 view of our products into the newsroom." 'Seeing a project or product through its life-cycle' If a journalist has an idea for a new article page, or they want to cover a certain topic differently in terms of formats and technologies, the team's task is building individual products or features to achieve that. "Basically, what we do is see a project or product through its life-cycle." That involves determining whether you are going to do it, comparing it to other similar initiatives available on the market, building it, putting it out there and then assessing how it's performing, reporting that back to the newsroom and determining how you want to enhance it or develop a similar project in the future." Bailey said the best way to find out whether a product or project manager is needed for a particular initiative is knowing if that element or capability can be reused in the future for other experiments. If a story requires a one-off infographic to illustrate the data better, that would be created by the graphics team. But if it contains a function to quickly share information from it, for example, the product team would build it if required. It's a big deal to even call something a project in the newsroom, separate it and say that it's not just the general course of news production — Katharine Bailey, Wall Street Journal Each reusable design is collected into the Journal's style guide, a set of guidelines that developers, editors or other members of the organization can use in the future to request or build similar products for their toolbox. How can project management help news outlets improve their workflow and manage their time and resources better? T By MADALINA CIOBANU

• Cover