Cutting from Jeff Daniels to the real-world newsroom

Before dishing the dirt, I want to focus on “The Newsroom”, an HBO series written by Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) and starring Jeff Daniels that began televising in Thailand recently.

Critical reaction to the series has been mixed. Tim Goodman of the Hollywood Reporter writes that viewers’ response to the show “has everything to do with whether you like [Sorkin’s] style. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times commented that “at its best ... ‘The Newsroom’ has a wit, sophistication and manic energy.... But at its worst, the show chokes on its own sanctimony.” Maureen Ryan at the Huffington Post called the preview episode “a dramatically inert, infuriating mess, one that wastes a fine cast to no demonstrable purpose”. Los Angeles Times critic Mary McNamara said the show’s drama is “weighted too heavily toward sermonising diatribes.”

The critics all make valid points about the show. The series chronicles behind-the-scenes events at the fictional Atlantis Cable News (ACN) channel. The news crew is instructed to follow up on hot issues of the day. Of course, TV news is a very different animal to its print counterpart, which covers a much greater area of interest. A newspaper has to present many pieces of news in a day, so as to cover a wide range of events as deeply as possible. We can’t rely on reruns, as we can’t update news as frequently as TV channels can. 

Recently, I was invited to answer the questions of senior journalism students at Assumption University. The students had a lot of queries, mostly about my passion and the general nature of a career in the media. But they didn’t dig deep into the everyday duties it involves.

For every head of a newsroom department, each day starts with a question: “what’s the biggest story of the day?” 

The available candidates will deal with the key players whatever field the story concerns. In the business field, most of them deal with big organisations like the Federation of Thai Industries, Board of Trade and Thai Bankers Association, as well as economic ministries like Finance, Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, plus the Bank of Thailand. If its significant and its new, its news. 

About two decades ago, Alphatec Technology made the Business Section’s front-page headlines with its massive investment. At the moment, the same section is taken up with stories about the 3G auction and the private sector’s measures to counter the floods. Prior to the financial crisis, it was new highs reached by the SET Index that were making headlines. (Now, even as it hits a new 16-year high, few care.)

The real-world newsroom relies on constant news feed from the outside world. We set the agenda for the day, but that requires phone-calls and e-mails. They may or may not be answered. Sometimes stories can be kept for a later day. 

Newsrooms now receive mountains of invitations and news alerts each day. (In the days of “snail mail”, these came by letter or by fax, now everything’s strictly by e-mail.) Aside from the organisations cited above, companies out there who want the coverage e-mail us invitations to attend their own events – some purely marketing-related and others to make announcements. To announce its quarterly results, for example, Siam Cement Group will hold a press conference. 

These companies’ PR people also tip us off about imminent announcements. Yes, we have to wait and save some space for them. Wouldn’t you want to know how much quarterly profit Bangkok Bank, the country’s largest lender, has just made? (Yes, we think you want to know, so we wait. In some cases, we wait beyond the deadline.)

During the day, some reporters are busy with interviews, though these are mostly saved for Mondays. But don’t be surprised to find interviews in your Monday newspaper. These are usually “exclusives”. Exclusivity here means you can keep the articles for a “rainy day”, as weekday pages tend to be filled with announcements of the day and newsworthy press releases.

Yes, we keep close tabs on social media – particularly Twitter. Some reporters tweet so much of what is happening on the day that some readers may feel they already know what’s in the next day’s newspapers. But each Tweet contains a maximum of 140 characters, so serious readers tend to turn to newspapers for in-depth coverage. 

Yes, we are also aware of breaking news on Websites. But Websites often do little more than break news. 

Once a year, Switzerland’s IMD releases its much-anticipated competitiveness report. The report released on its website covers the status of nearly 60 countries, but to get deeper insight into Thailand’s competitiveness, you have to read the next day’s paper. Next week, the International Monetary Fund will release the World Economic Outlook 2012. We can expect a breaking-news version and a print-news version. 

The end of September saw us waiting for the Fraser and Neave shareholder meeting. And yes, two versions were presented.

Digesting all this in the newsrooms of Thailand are packs of seasoned reporters, whose instincts and speed have been honed by the explosion of digital journalism. The size of digital newsrooms remain largely unchanged from that of their inky predecessors. And sources can be rest assured that they won’t have to answer silly questions about, say, last year’s net profit. Yes, reporters can find all that stuff on the Internet.

That pretty much covers what is happening in Thailand’s newsrooms. 

Recently, “The Newsroom” got the green light to proceed with a second season. I myself have no idea how the real-world newsroom will change in 2013. That’s beyond my imagination.