If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail | Reuters News Agency

If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail

Three tips for effective planning.

By Alba Melchor | Mar 19, 2018

From bringing design thinking to the newsroom to experimenting with new technologies, publishers and broadcasters are spoiled for choice when it comes to testing new methods and tools to improve their workflow.

Planning broadcast and editorial coverage is no easy job and a sentiment echoed by clients time and time again is that forward-planning is essential to maintaining a competitive edge. Which is why we have designed an effective planning tool on Reuters Connect, the go-to news platform, to help you do just that.

We understand the challenge of managing multiple events every day and the need to know when the assets will be available to budget sensibly. Accordingly, we’ve dedicated special attention to enhancing and simplifying the planning tool so that you know exactly what is happening and when.

Let’s break down the requirements for effective planning and how the Reuters Connect planner can help:

1. Use data to validate coverage choices

Make use of the insights you have on the media types that really work with your target audiences and the specific places they like to consume their content.

For example, Pandas are popular around the world, but in Japan they can cause media feeding frenzies. So when Xiang Xiang became the first panda cub to go on show at Japan’s oldest zoo in nearly 30 years, Yahoo! Japan made sure they got the video to their audience on Facebook.

Reuters Connect planner was designed by journalists to help newsrooms easily identify, plan and enrich their reporting. Filter by date, region, category and coverage type and opt to be notified about any events you’re monitoring globally so you’ll have the most recent updates to enrich your reporting.

Alongside the schedule of events, you’ll soon have a comprehensive description featuring all the specifics. This will empower you to schedule your coverage to the minute, focusing on the parts of events you’re most interested in.

Reuters Connect planner was designed by journalists to help newsrooms easily identify, plan and enrich their reporting.

2. Smash those silos

The success of any newsroom is a team effort, based not only on the content they transmit, but on internal communication and collaboration.

Collaborating is made simple with the collections feature. It helps you curate pictures, videos, graphics and text to share with your team.

Have a question about coverage or can’t find what you need? The built in chat tool means you can reach our editorial and technical teams 24/7.

3. Plan for the unexpected

As soon as news breaks, you will receive on-platform notifications and when you subscribe to an event you plan to cover, you will be notified directly in your inbox. In addition, our story-centric view pulls together all assets and the latest updates on a breaking story, so you can enrich and update your coverage.

As we continue to build platform features to complement the way you work, we’d like to hear what experience you want and expect from us. Get in touch if you’re interested in giving feedback or have ideas about features you’d like us to explore.

Reuters Connect and its planning tool were designed by journalists for journalists to help newsrooms do more with less. Get in touch if you’re interested in discovering more, we’d like to hear from you.