Enter the starship

I promise a food post next week, but there are a few bloggy/mediary posts coming up - avert your eyes NOW if the paints peeling/drying etc... The Daily Telegraph, the UK's largest clever clogs national, is quietly revolutionizing the way it produces the newspaper. New premises, new methods, new, new, new, it's all so new. Unfortunately, the quiet and the secrecy surrounding the opening of the new office is relative. It's a murmur compared to the cacophony of editorial changes, sackings and (possibly) strike action.

A couple of weeks ago, I phoned a contact at the Telegraph about a story I was writing. In passing I asked if I could take a peek inside Starship Telegraph - as I call it, not them - I mentioned I was in London and fancied a look around the starship. Columnist Peter Preston, media twitcher Roy Greenslade and the Press Gazette had already pawed their way through the swing doors, but as I arrive at 111 Buckingham Palace Road I'm told I'm the first outside media/blog person to visit the starship under working conditions. I was there last Tuesday afternoon. It was only the second working day at the new premises adjacent to Victoria station. And only the second day the newspaper was produced from this spot.

I was politely, but firmly, asked to keep my camera in my bag and most of our discussion was off the record - alors, there's not an awful lot I can tell you here. However, the newsroom is far more lively than the (photoshopped) photos that leaked out(?) would suggest. I was expecting a paperless, clutter-free office, but I found books, files, papers strewn around much like any other newsroom - journalists aren't by nature the tidiest of animals. However, I was told the "spoke and wheel" layout is "designed to be paperless" and the shelves had yet to arrive. The best view is from above as in the picture... errr.... above and to the right a bit.

Along one side of the newsroom floor are studios for TV and podcast output. I talked to the Telegraph's podgod Guy Ruddle. He's been training print journalists in podcasting techniques. He told me they plan to broadcast audio reports from embedded journalists in Iraq. He also told me of plans to 'rebrand' the podcast end of the Telegraph and call it "Telegraph Talk" - I think they are the only 'exclusives' I'm allowed to reveal :) At least I think I can reveal them... Oh well... too late.

A couple of things struck me as innovative, although a bit gimmicky too. The paper offers a downloadable 'click and carry' 4pm pdf newspaper with embedded video. Looks great - far better than The Guardian's G24 thing - more on The Guardian tomorrow - but when I asked if the video was iPod compatible I was told by the tech guy that it was not - bang went my visions of picking up my Telegraph video on my iPod and watching it on the way home. (NB: here's a great video and you can get onto your iPod in a jiffy... I digress)

At the centre of the starship - as I wrongly describe it as it's not *that* futuristic - is a large round desk for meetings. The keyboards are hidden Bond-style under the beige wooden table and rise up when pressed. The screens, visible in the shot above, were not yet installed but will appear above the desk. Two massive plasma screens will also grace the wall opposite the visual/audio studio. They will show news channels and (I think) some in-house production work going on.

Clearly the new office is still a work in progress - the canteen was a buidling site with just a soup kitchen style trestle table offering up sarnies, pastries and snacks - and this is probably part of the reason why they didn't want some blogger snapping willy-nilly all over the place. I've no doubt the starship will be a great working environment.

The newspaper has "lots of plans" and "plenty of ideas" of where they're going and what they want to change. They have the very young and, seemingly, very driven head of Will Lewis - who politely grilled me about photography on the escalator as I entered the building - to steer a course through this period of unprecedented change at the paper.

I do work as a journalist - but I didn't ask to see inside the Telegraph offices for work. I wanted to see the newsroom purely out of personal interest and I was open with them about that. OK - so they were cagey, perhaps a bit *too* wary about snaps and we had a lot of "off the record" moments, but they let me in and they really didn't have to. I'm not sure I would have let me in. My wife often doesn't let me in. But they did and for that I'm grateful. They also know I sometimes write/blog for the opposition and I don't doubt this clouded some of our discussions. I did get to chat briefly with Shane Richmond who has some very keen insights into all this media changing thing. Shane gases emminently well about one area that particularly fascinates me at the moment - the embryonic journalist as blog brand movement.

I learned yesterday that, since my visit, the shit has hit the proverbial. There'll no doubt be a lot more pain coming the paper's way. That said, there can't be a more exciting (and terrifying) time to work in the British media industry. Meanwhile more photos of the outside of an office building.

Comments

[Hsien Lei]

I enjoyed this post because I like to see what goes on behind the scenes of everything. Although I read The Times....