U and Me: Newsroom structure of Nepali Media

Q. Describe the general newsroom structure of Nepali Newspapers.

Ans: A newsroom is the place where journalists-reporters, editors and producers along with other staffers—work to gather news to be published in a newspapers or magazine or broadcast on television, cable or radio. Some journalism organizations refers to the newsroom as the city room.

Newsroom is the powerhouse of all media institutions, some prefer to call it the main controlling unit, and others seek to understand it as the main commanding area of the press. They like to compare it to human brain box. Simply defined, the newsroom is the place where reporters and editors along with their technical and management staffs work for bringing out a media product.

The main function of newsroom varies in different ways.

However, the concept of division of labour and technological revolution, the function of the newsroom have also undergone change overtime. It is sometimes said that “the publishers were printers first, editors second and reporters not at all.” In almost all newspaper newsrooms, editors customarily meet daily with the chief editor to discuss which stories will be placed on the front page, section front pages, and other pages. This is commonly called a "budget meeting" due to the fact that the main topic of the meeting is the budgeting or allocation of space in the next issue.

Also today, newsroom management is an important part of media organizations. In oder to perform smoothly, competitively and in a more professional manner certain structures are drawn in newsroom management. Here, let is understand newsroom structures under two main types:

Horizontal Newsroom Structure: This type of newsroom structure explains the authority and power distributed equally to the chiefs of every sections or beats of news. The newsroom consists of chief editor to reporters like in commonly understood newsroom but their position or the structure of newsroom varies. Mostly chief editor remains at the top and other editors or chiefs of sections or beats remain parallel to each other. Sub editors or reporters assigned to work for the relat

ed field or beat work under the supervision of those chiefs. In this case there is more interaction between chief and reporters of the same beat of sections as they have direct access to each other. The newsroom structure of Nagarik National Daily can be viewed as an example of horizontal newsroom structure. The gate-keeping process doesn't necessarily pass through all the members of the newsroom, rather it is limited to the staffs of the related field or beat only.

Vertical Newsroom structure: This type of newsroom explains the authority or the power

distributed vertically i.e. like an inverted pyramid. The chief editor remains at the top and the reporter and

stingers remain at the bottom. The every news related to every sections or beats are passed through every steps of hierarchy. Editors work under the supervision of chief editor while sub-editors work under the command of editors. Sub-editors supervise copy-editors and reporters. This is such a chain of relations between the staffs of newsroom that a reporter directly meet the editor. The news structure is depicted in the newsroom management of Kantipur National Daily and other several newspapers.

Thus, the newsroom structures of Nepali newspapers are changing with the advancement in journalism and mass communication process. Competition between the media houses have made them manage their newsroom in such an effective way that they try to stand themselves different from others. However, in most of the media outside the capital city and even most of them within the city still have traditional vertical structure of newsroom.

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