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| Knowledge Management
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“The smart newsroom…will not lose or forget any of this information - not the ideas for future coverage efforts, not the lessons learned about how to cover this and similar topics, not the background documentation, not the identities of those neighbourhood sources, and certainly not the tidbit about where to find the mayor on Wednesday nights. Nor will the smart newsroom want these editorial resources to benefit only the one reporter and editor, but rather the entire newsgathering operation.” – Kerry Northrup, Smart Newsrooms
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| Control Tower improves the level of information reuse reducing work needed to create new or locate previously used assets.
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| By centralising published and unpublished information related to each stories, events, subjects, on “details” pages, Control Tower helps editors and reporters cut down on search time and ensure that knowledge is retained in the newsroom and made easily accessible to everyone in the team.
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| To aid in news creation, for instance, Control Tower provides a database of source material that includes a searchable repository of earlier notes and stories used in news coverage. Source material can be linked with stories, events, tasks, or even contacts. That way, when a reporter sits down to write a new story they have a virtual library at their fingertips. A reporter researching for information will have previous published and unpublished material created by others in the team at their fingertips.
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| A database of news contacts is also integrated with story details, listing expertise for each contact and keeping track of who said what, for which story. Using Control Tower’s powerful key word search, reporters may rapidly generate research leads by locating editorial contacts with the relevant expertise.
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| Groupings of items and hyper linking between stories, events and subjects enable the newsroom to create a rich information environment. When an editor sits down to cover an annual event, for instance, he can review how the event was covered the year before, notes generated, who covered it, the content produced, and any source contacts. For an editor new to a post, this represents a powerful head start and allows the news organization to build on and improve coverage from year to year.
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| When a team needs privacy, however, it gets it: Viewing and access privileges to all newsroom information and staff profiles are easily adjusted. All items in the Control Tower system can made public or kept private. A user can even restrict access to specific people, departments or newsrooms. For instance, if a journalist is working on a sensitive story, they can restrict access to only themselves and their editor.
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| Key Features:
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- Helps editors and journalists exercise better, faster news judgment on what stories to cover and how
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- Maintains a centralised database of news sources including contact information and a searchable reference to source expertise and past involvement in news coverage
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- Stores unpublished materials used to write earlier stories
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- Enables searching for assets that relate in some way to a new story
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- Integrates contact management into the editorial process, with the ability to share some items and keep others private
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- Enables re-use of editorial knowledge through centralised repository of assignment information, source contacts
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| Back to Features and Benefits
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