The Corporate Newsroom: Steering Companies Efficiently Through Communication

By Christoph Moss

Breaking down barriers, creating transparency in digital communication and effectively targeting different audiences is critical to today’s successful organisations. Establishing a Corporate Newsroom is the answer.

The first part discusses the different theoretical approaches of communication and the corporate newsroom model. Special emphasis is given to efficiency and effectiveness as the main pillars of this strategy.

The second part presents case studies to illustrate how the corporate newsroom system can be used in the communication departments of organisations. The authors discuss real life examples from Swiss Life Germany and the Dutch Police among others and show how the corporate newsroom method impacted communication strategies and results in these organisations. 

This book will be of interest not only for PR professionals but also for marketing specialists and business leaders trying to bring corporate communication to the next level.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9783030676421

Book preview

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

C. Moss (ed.)The Corporate NewsroomManagement for Professionalshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67642-1_1

1. There Will Never Be a Newsroom: The Discussion About Topic-Oriented Control in Corporate Communications

Christoph Moss¹  

(1)

International School of Management, Dortmund, Germany

Christoph Moss

Email: [e-mail]

There will never be a Newsroom. When this sentence was uttered, the author of this article was in the middle of presenting a Newsroom project. The representatives of the company did not like the idea that there could be open spaces, defined processes, a conference system and perhaps even an operational control unit in their communications department: There will never be a managing editor either was the seemingly clear message. The controversial discussion lasted an entire day. In the evening, the wind changed. The Newsroom was decided, developed and built after several months of intensive planning. The bottom line was that it was a successful project, even though the beginning was more than bumpy.

The initial scepticism is understandable and typical for Newsroom projects. On the one hand, there is the desire to manage topics, to overcome the isolation in one’s own department and to create new, transparent structures. On the other hand, there is also the fear of change which goes hand in hand with the concern of losing control and perhaps even power. This conflict can only be resolved if all participants actually support the new concept. Otherwise, there is the danger of a compromise motivated by domestic policy: Newsroom is not always the answer in such a case. Only those who manage to actually place content and no longer function at the centre of the organisation with a newly structured unit for communications will be able to control communication permanently.

For a long time, the desire to send uniform messages and to speak with one voice seemed hardly feasible. Business efficiency and communicative effectiveness were in a permanent conflict. This book will start at this interface. The authors want to show ways in which topics can be efficiently managed in a company in order to facilitate integrated communication. The articles look at the phenomenon of Newsroom organisation from various angles.

The book is based on the thesis that integrated communication significantly increases the value of a company. However, as the first article shows, this has so far been implemented inadequately in many companies. Niklas Stog and Christoph Moss therefore see the Corporate Newsroom play a central role in developing the strategic value of integrated communication in the future. In addition to economic concepts, the authors also draw on approaches from social science, organisational psychology and information technology. This interdisciplinary approach leads to the insight that the human factor plays a central role in Corporate Newsroom projects. The statement quoted at the beginning about the Newsroom, which will never exist, proves this very well.

The phenomenon of the Corporate Newsroom has so far been insufficiently examined from a scientific point of view. For this reason, the publisher, together with Lara Behrens and Mona Sadrowski, will first take up the current state of research on the journalistic Newsroom, whose basic concept plays an important role in the development of the Corporate Newsroom. In fact, many media houses now operate a journalistic Newsroom. This fact has recently been reflected in research literature. Nevertheless, an end to this development is not yet in sight: while in the past publishers and broadcasting stations often differentiated between online and print editorial departments, a trend towards the integration of both disciplines in a common Newsroom has yet begun.

In the third article in this book, Christoph Moss addresses the Corporate Newsroom as the basis for topic-oriented management. Based on the question of the meaningfulness of conventional structures in communication departments, the Corporate Newsroom is worked out as a suitable alternative. Its central element is the organisational separation of topics and channels as well as the operational control by a managing editor. The introduction of the Corporate Newsroom is divided into three phases which focus on the human factor in particular:

Preparatory phase

Communication design phase

Implementation phase

When establishing the processes in a Corporate Newsroom, a conference system will be developed which is a mandatory prerequisite for effective topic management. The article uses typical sample processes to show how a topic can be implemented in the right channels. It also becomes clear that a Corporate Newsroom has a much more complex structure than a journalistic Newsroom in a media company.

With the Corporate Newsroom model enterprises get an organisational framework for communication. In the future, those companies will be successful that communicate relevant content at the right time to their target and dialogue groups. Mirko Lange shows in his article how a topic architecture can lead to an efficient use of resources. For content to develop its full effect and power, it must be embedded in an overall system of strategic content marketing. Therefore, topic evaluation is an important step.

While the theoretical advantages of topic-oriented control are obvious, top management in particular must be convinced of the usefulness of the Corporate Newsroom model. This brings into focus another interface topic that communicators have tended to distrust in the past: the measurement of efficiency. However, since the introduction of a Corporate Newsroom is intended to increase the efficiency of one’s own department in particular, Lara Behrens, Niklas Stog and Christoph Moss are investigating how communication controlling can contribute to this goal. In doing so, the authors draw on findings for the evaluation of organisational structures.

In five steps, they describe how an integrated controlling approach in corporate communications and marketing should be structured. The prerequisite for this is uniformly defined key figures for the Newsroom. The Corporate Newsroom efficiency model presents an approach that covers communicative and organisational goals in terms of measurement parameters. It shows that the Corporate Newsroom can contribute to the achievement of overriding goals from the perspective of communication control.

In fact, the Newsroom system has become a very important topic in companies. Christoph Moss and Mona Sadrowski present two empirical studies concerning the dissemination of Corporate Newsrooms in practice. The first study by Moss, Westermann and Ghorbani comes to the conclusion that Corporate Newsroom is a question of mindset. The question therefore is no longer whether companies want to introduce a Corporate Newsroom, but when and how. The respondents see it as a chance for rethinking and renewal. The trend towards content marketing is allowing the historically separate disciplines of communication and marketing to grow together. However, a large number of communications departments are facing organisational upheaval. Mona Sadrowski interviewed 74 departments to find out how the Corporate Newsroom concept is currently being applied. One of the results shows that the characteristics of Newsroom integration are very different.

This is particularly evident in Dominik Ruisinger’s contribution, which examines the concept, structure and characteristics of a digital Social Media Newsroom. Here, too, it becomes clear that diverging approaches to this phenomenon exist in practice. The Social Media Newsroom becomes the central access to the collaborative world of blogs, social networks and sharing platforms. It is thus far more than just a surface for publishing press releases. The Social Media Newsroom is the hub and media showcase of an organisation that provides journalists and interested parties with a quick overview of all activities.

The Newsroom thus automatically aggregates the content from the social media channels centrally on a single interface, while the discussions and dialogues continue to take place within the individual platforms. The author assumes that the discussion about the future role of a social media manager and the integrative inclusion of social media will also affect the Social Media Newsroom. It can be assumed that in the future we will speak of a Digital Newsroom that includes publications from one’s own website. This Digital Newsroom would then form the showcase for the entire online or digital activities of an organisation, also as a supplement to the classic Newsroom as an editorial Newsroom.

Case Studies

This volume pursues the concept of combining theoretical findings with practical experience. Therefore, the second part of the book presents various case studies describing the concrete implementation of a Corporate Newsroom. Christian Buggisch, for example, shows in his contribution that the introduction of a Newsroom is a change project. He introduced a Corporate Newsroom at the German software company DATEV. His motivation was obvious. The head of communications wanted to create a structure that solves current problems but also enables the future integration of further topics and media. His insight: employees must be involved in the introduction process right from the start of the Corporate Newsroom.

Another example for this is the Dutch police. Marco Leeuwerink explains that the main motivation was to increase the trust of the people and the employees in the police. Due to the direct communication to the external target groups, the Corporate Newsroom in the Hague provides the police force with instant content, which makes 20% of the daily content. The other 80% of the content planned for a day is generated on the foundation of the long-term strategy of the Corporate Newsroom. The employees were directly involved in the change process from the old-fashioned organisation to a modern Corporate Newsroom.

R+V Insurance appointed a new CEO in 2017. Since then, he has been demanding and promoting a much more active communication—externally and internally. He himself acts as the top communicator of the company, for example by seeking and gladly completing public appearances and press interviews. Grischa Brower-Rabinowitsch shows that this new situation posed a challenge for communication. A defensive communication structure is only conditionally suitable for active communication. A new structure, a new way of thinking had to be created and was found in the Corporate Newsroom model.

While DATEV, the Dutch police and R+V Insurance organised communications in a modern way, Swiss Life Germany additionally integrated marketing. All of the approximately 50 employees of the Marketing and Communication department work together. Maximilian Heiler and Kilian Wichmann explain how the Corporate Newsroom has become a motor of digitisation for the Swiss insurance company.

Part ITheoretical Basics

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

C. Moss (ed.)The Corporate NewsroomManagement for Professionalshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67642-1_2

2. Integrated Communication in the Corporate Newsroom as a Contribution to Enterprise Value

Christoph Moss¹   and Niklas Stog²  

(1)

International School of Management, Dortmund, Germany

(2)

Berlin, Germany

Christoph Moss (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Niklas Stog

Email: [e-mail]

If you want to be successful in marketing and communication, you have to be able to manage topics. In reality, however, many companies are stuck in traditional structures (Moss 2019). Accurately drawn up organisational charts document the classification and hierarchical levels of collective bargaining agreements. The question of whether employees work in a single or two-person office can be more important than content requirements or current topics. In such rigid structures, day-to-day business is often marked by permanent conflicts over responsibilities and budgets. The desire to send out uniform messages and speak with one voice seems hardly feasible under such conditions (Moss 2014).

2.1 The Need to Manage Topics

Abandoning the silos for open, communicative structures, modern Corporate Newsroom concepts can help to break down the barriers between communication and marketing, between internal and external target groups or between product PR and media relations. In fact, even today not every company is really able to manage communication and topics. This can become dangerous in the long run, as listed large corporations in particular increasingly have to justify their actions to critical, media-trained stakeholder groups.

Deutsche Bank experienced this at its own Annual General Meeting. For years, top managers of Germany’s largest bank had to answer in court, regularly accompanied by intensive discussions in the media public. In May 2015, the shareholders punished the Board of Managing Directors for their actions. The two board members Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen were exonerated but received only 61% of the votes—a result that was generally classified as historically poor (Meck 2015). A few weeks later both announced their resignation (Zeit.de 2015). In 2017, Deutsche Bank opened a Corporate Newsroom. This unit is responsible for coordinating topics as well as planning and controlling communication. It ensures that communication between the various business partners is stringent (Newsaktuell 2020).

Customers, investors or environmental activists can send opinions and facts to a large number of recipients at any time (Moss and Stog 2009). Corporate communications and marketing are no longer just senders of messages but also recipients of customer enquiries, comments and evaluations. Companies have recognised that monitoring is necessary in order to check all available channels sensibly for possible external impulses. However, this requirement theoretically requires 24-h operation including weekend work—a horror for co-determined corporations with strict working time rules and a nightmare for many medium-sized companies that are already hard to convince of the need for professional communication.

The role of communication as a value driver and success factor (Piwinger and Zerfaß 2007: 1) is undisputed in business and communication science literature. Numerous studies prove the positive influence of holistic communication on corporate value (Moss and Stog 2009). The legal framework also proves the growing importance of integrated communication for corporate success (Moss and Stog 2009). For example, companies can use international accounting standards to capitalise IFRS intangible assets—a fact that can be of decisive importance in the search for sources of capital. These intangible assets include brand value, customer satisfaction and corporate reputation, the value of which is highly dependent on communication.

Keywords such as content marketing or storytelling clearly show that the ability to set one’s own topics has moved into the focus of daily communication work—or better yet, should move into the spotlight. Some people like consultant Klaus Eck (2015) even assume that there will be no more classical advertising in the future. What counts is content. Well-made advertising is not (editorial) content and never will be (Eck 2015).

Stories and articles must be written in a dramaturgically clean manner. This requires a clear focus of corporate communications on topics. This kind of integrated communication has been discussed for years. In practiceits implementation fails due to several reasons—above all because companies still predominantly neglect the role of communication as a value-adding factor. A survey conducted by Forrester Research among 500 international marketing and communications managers shows that less than half of those surveyed consider it important to make the contribution of their work to company results measurable. This attitude leads to the fact that only a fraction of those responsible for communications occupy strategically relevant positions in companies—the vast majority of company directors are still recruited from the areas of finance research and development or production (ITSMA, VEM & Forrester 2013). The theoretically crucial market-oriented function of marketing and communication remains underrepresented which weakens the importance of integrated communication in companies.

2.2 Digitisation: Blessing or Curse for Integrated Communication?

The paradox between high theoretical demands and insufficient practical relevance is intensified in times of digital media change. Digitisation accelerates the convergence of different channels and thus favours the convergence of communicative sub-disciplines. Whereas a strict separation from the development of advertising content, PR messages and media planning was the rule in the classic media world, the emergence of digital channels such as social media requires much stronger integration. Companies no longer rely exclusively on classic gatekeepers from journalism and media marketing but are in a position to communicate directly with end consumers. The content sent in this way must support the achievement of corporate goals and at the same time fulfil news value criteria from PR in order to generate attention and acceptance among users.

Close coordination between the communications department and those responsible for classic advertising is indispensable. Due to the shortening of communication cycles and the growing potential of live events for the