SEVERAL Australian newspapers are gearing up to follow the lead of British counterparts in putting exclusive breaking news online before it appears in print and devoting more newsroom resources to the internet.
This week Fleet Street fired the first shots in a revolution that will fundamentally change the way newspapers operate and could even hasten the end of the newsprint era.
On Monday, The Guardian announced that its business journalists and foreign correspondents would file copy to the newspaper's online edition before it appeared in the paper.
The following day The Times followed suit, announcing that its foreign correspondents would file for its website first.
Both papers expect the main home news sections to eventually adopt the same approach.
Local print editors conceded that the dam had broken.
"It's a very interesting development," The Sydney Morning Herald's editor Alan Oakley told Media. "It's not really a question of if we move to posting unique breaking stories online but when and how we do it.
"How newspapers handle the transition and whether that content is free or part of a select, paid-for subscriber service is the real issue. It's really all about the pace of change and how we respond to that in the printed version of our brand."
Brisbane's The Courier-Mail's editor David Fagan said his paper is already tinkering with the model. "A recent investigation into the second runway at Brisbane airport was first run online, then it was in the paper, but we had a whole lot of resources on the website."
The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell was more sceptical: "I think some people are getting ahead of themselves. We will be using newspaper journalists to file breaking news online shortly. For instance, if there is a plane crash we file stories to the web.
"But if we get an exclusive interview with a survivor, we will save it for the print version."
Most newspapers have greatly expanded online news coverage in the past few years, but the British initiative represents a sea change for reporting and production staff.
Previously geared to a "file by three, home for tea" daily timetable, reporters will be required to start work earlier and file their first stories by the time most newspapers are preparing for their morning conference. Production staff, meanwhile, will work on a revolving basis, sub-editing copy and placing it on the website as soon as it is ready to go. The Guardian, which already has a team of dedicated online reporters, said it is likely to increase its staff as a result of the initiative.
The Australian Financial Review's editor Glenn Burge said: "We used to have a couple of dedicated online journalists and we have given it away after we realised we were not making any money."
This week the paper launched an online subscription site and Burge sees the AFR, with its financial news niche, as different to broad-based newspapers.
He conceded breaking news must go online but expects AFR journalists will add a few paragraphs to wire copy rather than filing 400 or 500 words online during the day. Comment and analysis would be seen in print before it appeared on the web.
"The Wall Street Journal and, to a lesser extent, the Financial Times ... are returning to the same model," Burge said.
Emily Bell, The Guardian's online editor, who was appointed six years ago to guide the paper into the internet age, said the move was a logical next step. The paper - in common with most other British broadsheets - already carries breaking news on its site, via agency copy. What will change is that for a breaking story, such as last week's assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an initial news report will be quickly followed by full coverage by the foreign correspondent on the scene, accompanied by the appropriate comment. Where previously this sort of package would not have been available until the following day's newspaper, now it will be made available on the website as soon as it has been written and edited.
Mitchell said: "You have to remember that the Australian market is very different to the UK, where there are a lot of daily newspapers. Here newspapers are profitable business whereas The Times and The Guardian are loss-making businesses."
Bell predicted the website would eventually become the main operation for The Guardian. "I'd be a very poor online editor if I didn't aim for that," she said.
"My entire raison d'etre here is to push the online operation from being the tail to being the dog. There will be competing pressures from other parts of the business, but I think that within 10 years most news organisations will be primarily online. It might happen faster."
She said the development had primarily been dictated by the growth rate of online readership: The Guardian's online edition has 13.3 million unique users a month and is growing fast in new markets such as the US and India.
Another reason to increase the focus on the paper's website, Bell said, was the increasing pool of advertising revenue flowing in from the online edition. Although it was only a fraction of the income produced by the newspaper, online advertising revenue was growing at 50 per cent to 60 per cent a year.
"The pace of change has definitely picked up," Bell said. "For three to four years we got a lot done but in terms of bringing the paper on board they were distinctly separate operations. Now the level of integration and discussion between the two is far greater and growing fast."
No matter where the model led and how fast it moved online, Fagan said, "It's good journalism that will win."
