Corporate Newsroom rooted in past lessons

Corporate newsrooms are vital for effective change communications because they enable consistent, transparent, and timely messaging across all stakeholder groups. By organizing communication around topics rather than channels, they ensure that change-related information is aligned with strategic objectives and reaches the right audiences through coordinated efforts. In this article, we take a brief look at the history of the corporate newsroom. This context supports the case for change by illustrating how the model solves persistent challenges in modern communication environments. Understanding their genesis helps convey why the imanent cultural shifts – collaboration over hierarchy, topics over channels – are necessary, rooted in past lessons.

1. The newsroom idea originated in the US

Like so much else in communications, the idea of the newsroom originated in the US. In 1994, executives at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper established one of the world’s first newsrooms. US photographer Will Steacy documented it between 2009 and 2012.

After the turn of the millennium, this concept spread to Europe and has since shaped the structures of modern media companies here as well. The core elements: thinking in terms of topics and dividing editors into editors and reporters or content-oriented department experts (politics, business, sports, etc.) and channel-oriented media professionals (print, audio, video, online/social media). Since then, they have been planning, producing, and distributing content 24/7.

Over the past decades, we at viadoo have visited numerous newsrooms of this kind. Among others, we are familiar with ZDF’s News Highway and Bayerischer Rundfunk’s AkZent, which we have already presented in our blog (see picture gallery at the bottom). We also spent a day documenting the work of the BILD editorial team and then gave an interview about it to Deutschlandfunk.

2. The social media newsroom came first

The newsroom concept developed in media companies soon reached the corporate world. Initially, however, it only took the form of so-called social media newsrooms. These were a further development of the classic press section on organizations’ websites. In addition to press releases and downloads, feeds from the relevant social media channels of these organizations were added.

Once again, companies from the US, such as Ford and General Motors, were pioneers in this field. In Germany, Volvic was one of the first movers in 2008 (with significant support from the Achtung! agency in Hamburg). As a service provider, we have been developing WordPress-based social media newsrooms since 2010 for ourselves and our customers.

3. The corporate newsroom has many fathers

In 2011, Siemens AG was one of the first large corporations to establish a corporate newsroom. Stefan Wagner and Christoph Hardt, among others, played a key role in this. Our founder, Dr. Dominik Faust, also designed a multimedia newsroom in 2012 and presented the newsroom concept at the Future Media Summit in Hamburg. Dr. Christoph Moss is also considered the guiding spirit behind many corporate newsrooms.

The corporate newsroom was modeled on its media industry counterpart in terms of structure and functionality. There was a good reason for this. Companies want to attract the attention of their stakeholders with appealing content (owned, earned, paid content). Through interaction, they then want to convey specific messages to their customers and thus increase sales of their own products and services. Companies also want to use content to make themselves more attractive to applicants.

4. Pictures of selected newsrooms