Navigating a 21st-century newsroom

If any type of broadcast could be classified as the most important, news might just be it. Without it, the world would be disconnected, untrustworthy and, quite frankly, a pretty confusing place.

Equally, I doubt I’m alone in thinking that this is still somewhat the case, regardless of the existence of news broadcast on a macro scale. But that’s another conversation for another day.

We’re here to instead discuss the technological make-up of newsrooms: from their humble beginnings to the digital mosaic that they present to the 2025 consumer.

We’re also exploring some of the biggest issues faced by the sector, from disinformation to environmental concerns, and it seems a timely moment to do so too: 2025 marks the heavily debated centenary of broadcast, with John Logie Baird’s first successful transmission of a recognisable human image appearing on TV in October 1925.

When it comes to televised news, origins can also be traced back to the early 20th century, but it wasn’t really until the conclusion of World War II that it began to seriously take off. During the forties and fifties, the television set started to become more accessible and gradually began to overtake its radio predecessor as the main household information and entertainment source.

In 1941, CBS delivered the first live TV news broadcast in the US. A modest black & white programme, it only offered a handful of local stories.  

As the medium continued to advance, so did the depth and professionalism of its reporting. Major networks like NBC, ABC and CBS soon joined the content race, launching regular evening news segments – while anchors quickly became trusted sources of information. Among these pioneers of reporting was Edward R Murrow, whose gripping WWII reports and – later – bold stand against McCarthyism demonstrated how TV was starting to shape public opinion.

This emphasises that the tale of televised news isn’t just a story of a technology, but also of profound societal change. From the shock of President Kennedy’s assassination to the Vietnam War and 9/11, news broadcast has had a colossal impact on the way in which we engage with the world’s unfolding narratives.

And it’s those narratives – the stories – which remain at the heart of a reliable newsroom in 2025. 

“A modern newsroom is about story-centric storytelling,” introduces Ionut Pogacean, senior product manager at Vizrt.

“Nowadays, many modern newsrooms have to produce more content with fewer people, while delivering for more media than before. This includes social media and their websites, in addition to traditional liner, rundown-based storytelling for TV.”

Having the right tools to enable the ‘story-centric’ approach that so many networks strive for is where the media-tech industry steps in.

“There’s a pressure to get the same story out simultaneously across all platforms – which means journalists need to learn more tools.”

Today’s newsroom is no longer confined to a physical building stacked with coaxial cables, linear feeds and teams tied to one geographic location.

Instead, it’s a hybrid and digitised ecosystem of cloud-based platforms, high-speed data transfer protocols, IP workflows and collaborative software that is enabling teams to cohesively distribute stories across broadcast and beyond. 

The new tech in town aside, it’s important to recognise that newscast has evolved to possess chameleon-like qualities; now spanning an array of digital channels due to the exponential rise of social media and streaming platforms.

It’s in the strategy

“The biggest challenge in news production has always been how to get faster, while remaining reliable,” said Hans Martin Paar, head of news at Servus TV, in a recent Ross Video customer case study. That tension between speed, accuracy and creativity has only intensified as newsrooms face shrinking resources and fragmented audiences – fuelled by the relentless pace of digital platforms. Technology is the linchpin that allows newsrooms to balance these competing pressures.

In a recent article breaking down newsroom strategies, Ross Video describes broadcast news production now as ‘not unlike riding a motorbike across a tightrope’, demanding precision and ‘more creativity than ever’. The broadcast tech powerhouse partners with some of the world’s major producers, such as NBC and Fox, and argues that one of the top strategies is empowering journalists to take on new roles without overwhelming them.

Many reporters now shoot their own interviews, package video and even add graphics from the field. The challenge, the article notes, is ensuring that ‘reporters can spend their time reporting, not learning how to use new tools and wrangling with graphics software’. By streamlining workflows and making high-quality visuals accessible, technology is enabling even small local stations to compete with polished storytelling.

Consistency is another key pillar of newsroom credibility.

“Are the titles of over-the-shoulder graphics always in the same font? Are lower-third graphics consistent with the brand’s visual identity?”

Automated templates ensure that live graphics align with brand standards, while giving journalists flexibility for last minute updates. Graham Media Group, for example, employs ‘super-templates’ to distribute on-brand graphics across multiple stations from a central hub. This allows local outlets to quickly customise visuals while maintaining cohesion: maintaining a vital balance between speed and polish.

Virtual studios add another layer of creative capability. Borrowing from sports and weather broadcasting, where chroma keying and real-time data overlays are common, these studios merge live presenters with immersive graphics. Election coverage, sports stories or breaking crises can all be augmented with interactive visuals that would be impossible on a physical set. Such innovation helps newsrooms ‘produce engaging, immersive and highly efficient news productions’ that captivate audiences accustomed to digital-first experiences.

If one thing is certain, there’s no playbook for succeeding in news, because success isn’t static and the bar for quality is always rising. To rise above the competition, your station must be able to easily adapt and embrace change.

Rebuilding the infrastructure

The foundation of this transformation is a newsroom’s ‘plumbing’, as Qvest senior vice president Tim Day describes. He highlights that legacy broadcast facilities were built around on-premises hardware and SDI cabling, limiting flexibility and tying workflows to physical places.

“Because things are IP-based, you can route to multiple locations,” Day says. “If I have 50 different broadcast locations, I can centralise all my content into a singular platform and then distribute it wherever it needs to go – whether linear, digital or social.”

Day offers the example of a hypothetical story breaking in New York, where that footage would now no longer need to be edited locally. Instead, the raw files could be uploaded to a central system and assigned to an editor in California or Missouri. He notes how this breaks down geographic barriers: “You start to optimise your resource pool, rather than being constrained by location.”

The benefits are tangible. Faster turnaround and tighter collaboration paired with greater content reuse mean newsrooms can respond more dynamically to breaking events. But, as Day stresses, this is not just about technology. “Only about 30 to 40% of the battle is the technology. About 60 to 70% is change management.”

For many broadcasters, the challenge lies in retraining staff and redesigning workflows. Plus, in some cases, this means navigating union rules that dictate how roles can evolve as automation takes over repetitive tasks.

Software as the new backbone

Beyond the hardware layer, newsroom software has become the true new engine of modern news broadcasting. Tools that once operated in silos (editing suites, graphics systems, content management, scheduling) are being increasingly integrated into single platforms to eliminate the individualistic approach to media workflows of times past. “Producing a story isn’t just video and graphics; it includes planning, recordings and logistics too. It’s complex,” explains Pogacean. “Where Vizrt really fits in is with tools like Viz Pilot Edge and Viz Story, which speed up workflows and allow content to be published in multiple formats and aspect ratios.”

Automation is far from being a rigidity trap, instead enabling greater flexibility in production. Viz Mosart, for example, lets producers cut into automated rundowns for breaking news and then seamlessly return to schedule. “Speed gets you noticed, but accuracy gets you trusted,” Pogacean says.

“In this sense, software doesn’t just accelerate the processes, but also underpins journalistic integrity by making sure what goes on air is consistent, reliable and properly branded across all channels.”

Importantly, many of these tools are now web-based. Journalists working remotely can access the same graphics templates, rundowns and editing tools as their colleagues in the control room. 

Moving media mountains

Of course, all of the above would be rendered impossible if the content couldn’t reach the newsroom in the first place. As Fraser Jardine, director of global business development at Dot Group, points out, the increased diversity of field location, though a technically progressive step, does mean contending with varying network quality.

“It’s also safe to say that media files aren’t just your bog-standard We Transfer job. They usually comprise vast petabytes of data, making strong connectivity to support their safe transportation absolutely paramount. Journalists and field operatives often struggle to connect reliably to their broadcast hubs,” Jardine says. “The need for real-time ingest, processing and distribution of high-resolution video from multiple sources demands robust infrastructure.”

Dot Group’s use of IBM Aspera addresses this challenge through employing the patented FASP protocol, which maximises available bandwidth regardless of latency or packet loss. “For news companies transferring massive video files, live feeds or archives across global facilities or cloud environments, FASP’s adaptive rate controller ensures reliability, speed and efficiency,” Jardine explains. 

In practice, this has allowed European broadcasters covering global sporting events to ingest and distribute UHD content across multiple countries with 90% faster transfer times, significantly reducing live-to-air latency. “It’s not just about moving content from A to B,” Jardine adds, “once at its destination, it can be automated, transcoded and put
on the air as quickly as possible.”

By combining file transfer speed with workflow orchestration, Aspera and similar systems eliminate the bottlenecks that traditionally delayed news packages from reaching the air. In high-pressure news environments, these seconds matter – not just for competitiveness, but also credibility. 

The automation age

The aforementioned use of automation, and with that AI tools, is also a critical component in keeping a modern newsroom functional. Both Qvest and Dot Group are helping broadcasters to explore AI-driven transcription, metadata tagging, fact-checking and even the automatic generation of highlight reels. 

“We’ve helped major media organisations set up AI councils,” Day explains, “so that every use case is approved before adoption. There is strong support for AI optimising back-end processes like searchability and translation, but creative content is still approached cautiously.”

Jardine sees similar opportunities in orchestration and compliance.

“Watson Speech-to-Text offers real-time or batch transcription of news footage,” he describes. “Watson Natural Language Understanding allows tagging, categorisation and summary of news content, while Watsonx.ai enables the building of newsroom-specific AI models for recommendation engines, content moderation and more.”

These tools can dramatically reduce the manual workload for journalists, freeing them up to focus on storytelling rather than repetitive tasks. But both Day and Pogacean stress that technology alone won’t define the newsroom of the future. 

“AI can’t be ignored,” warns Pogacean. “It’s certainly a buzzword in technology and production at the moment, and it can serve real benefits – but AI should be thought of as an assistant – an accelerator of workflows – not a replacement.

“In a newsroom, AI will likely become more and more beneficial for streamlining repetitive tasks, so we’ll use it where it makes sense. For a journalist, that might mean suggestions for graphics or the right image for a person, as well as support for adapting visuals across different aspect ratios with accuracy.”

The success of these systems also depends on how well they’re integrated into workflows and how thoughtfully leadership manages the cultural change.

“If you go into it from an upgrading technology perspective only, it will fail,” Day cautions. “You need to still have empathy for the people you’re working with.”

The disinformation dilemma

Few issues weigh heavier on a 21st-century newsroom than disinformation. It isn’t just the occasional doctored photo or misleading claim, but an entire information ecosystem where falsehoods can spread faster than truth and AI makes fakery indistinguishable from fact. 

The scale of the problem is sobering. Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report, which is one of the most comprehensive surveys of global media audiences, found that concern about ‘false and misleading information online’ had risen to 72% in the US and 81% in South Africa. It found that worry spikes during elections, when the stakes are highest and trust is thinnest.

At the same time, audiences are drifting further from traditional outlets. TikTok, for example, has recently emerged as an unlikely but dominant news platform for younger generations. In one survey within the report, 57% of TikTok users said that they follow individual influencers for news coverage, while only 34% said that they follow journalists or established news brands.

The hollowing-out of local journalism has deepened the problem. A study by Northwestern University found that the US has lost a quarter of its local newspapers since 2005.

In that vacuum, social media platforms are stepping in, with their algorithms powerfully optimised for engagement rather than accuracy. As the UNC Centre for Information, Technology and Public Life warns, these algorithms amplify ‘echo chambers’, privileging content that sparks outrage (colloquially known as ‘rage-baiting’) over content that is grounded in facts.

Artificial intelligence, as usual, serves to further complicate matters. Deepfakes and synthetic audio are advancing so rapidly that traditional verification methods simply can’t keep up. The Brookings Institution cautions that AI-driven disinformation doesn’t just fool individuals; it corrodes the very trust that journalism depends on. If audiences begin to doubt the authenticity of every single video or quote, the authority of newsrooms themselves also collapses. 

Unesco and groups like Internews stress the urgent need for media literacy, strengthened verification technology and a revitalisation of local reporting to rebuild trust at the community level. But it’s certainly clear from the data that disinformation isn’t a problem that can be fact-checked away, and journalists are being asked to fight this shifting terrain with limited resources to help.

The sustainability mandate

While disinformation is (knowingly or not!) dominating headlines, another quieter crisis is unfolding behind newsroom walls: sustainability.

Behind every breaking news alert is a gargantuan digital beast; chomping its way through platters of energy-pumping data at a staggering scale. High-speed file transfers, cloud-based editing and AI-driven workflows are just some examples of the tech innovations that enable newsrooms to feed content-hungry audiences – but with a hefty carbon price tag.

Jardine explains how technology can actively alleviate this.

“We balance performance and speed with sustainability by integrating GreenOps and FinOps practices. Our approach includes detailed assessments of resource utilisation and energy consumption, which enables informed decisions that optimise both cost and environmental impact.”

That balancing act has become a defining challenge for not just news, but the wider broadcast tech community too. Jardine’s team uses advanced analytics and automation to not only make workflows faster, but also cut waste.

The team employs advanced analytics and automation to help them reduce energy use, eliminate waste and minimise unnecessary data duplication. “Additionally, we implement sustainable data management strategies such as archiving, intelligent storage tiering and deduplication to maintain data accessibility while still being able to reduce storage needs and energy consumption.”

Dot Group distinguishes itself by integrating real-time carbon monitoring, “with high-speed, scalable data transfers tailored for broadcasters. Our Green Dot platform provides live insights into energy usage across IT infrastructure, while Data Sprint – powered by IBM Aspera – enables rapid and secure file transfers across platforms.

As audiences demand more immediate and multi-platform content, Jardine insists that sustainability cannot come at
the expense of responsiveness.

“As audience expectations evolve towards more immediate, multi-platform content delivery, our solutions ensure newsrooms can scale efficiently without compromising on speed or their environmental responsibility.”

Returning to the topic of story-centricity, having a suite of news technology on one platform spreads out your reporting outreach, enabling more distributed teams and lowering the carbon cost of travel.

“Breaking down those barriers around geography,” emphasises Day, “allows newsrooms to lessen their capital and operating expenditure, which enables quicker turnarounds,” thereby reducing carbon output.

A 2025 newsroom in practice

So what does a modern newsroom actually look like?

It’s a space that might no longer have a fixed address. A producer in London can assign an editor in Los Angeles to cut footage from a camera crew in Nairobi, all while graphics are built in Oslo – and the story can then be published to YouTube, TikTok and linear television simultaneously, for wider reach.

It’s an environment where automation ensures rundowns are consistent but flexible, where file transfer protocols overcome patchy field conditions, and where web-based software allows teams to collaborate in real time. Hardware still plays a role, of course, but is increasingly invisible – abstracted into scalable cloud services and centralised hubs.

When it comes to challenges like sustainability and disinformation, what’s encouraging is the emerging solutions that refuse to see these crises as separate.

AI, for instance, can be treated as both a threat and a tool: it can generate deepfakes, but also power verification engines and automate energy-efficient workflows.

Data transfer platforms can accelerate content sharing, but with carbon monitoring layered in, they can also foster accountability.

And the increased emergence of story-centric technology being layered into newsroom architecture helps lessen the need for travel by increasing access to distributed production teams. 

In essence, the modern newsroom is defined not by the walls of a single building, but by the interconnected web of technologies, workflows and diverse, distributed teams of people working together across continents. 

As Pogacean puts it, the end goal remains unchanged: “Helping journalists to tell their stories.” 

What has changed is the scale, speed and sophistication with which newsroom teams can now do so.

Pocket-sized power: miniaturising newscasts

Griffin Media is proving that, in the newsroom, smaller really can be mightier. At its Tulsa facility, the broadcaster has transformed a former prompter station into a compact but powerful streaming hub, equipped with a Marshall CV568 Miniature Global Camera, barely bigger than a fist. Despite its size, the camera delivers broadcast-quality images, fuelling Griffin’s first structured move into streaming and on-demand video.

From breaking news to weekly sports and finance segments, the new digital desk pushes content seamlessly across apps, websites, YouTube, Facebook, connected TV and even podcasts. Talent and producers have been trained to deliver sharp, consistent updates that meet audiences wherever they’re scrolling or streaming.

For Griffin, it’s not just about adopting new tools, but reimagining what a newsroom looks like when technology shrinks. The set-up is small and the footprint is light, but the storytelling possibilities? Absolutely enormous.

Find out more about the frontend of the newsroom with Sony technology.

This feature was first published in the Autumn 2025 issue of FEED.