Amidst News Corp’s ongoing restructure, The Daily Telegraph has launched DTTV, a new video platform editor Ben English says “is the most significant transformation of our newsroom in years.”
DTTV will cover breaking news, analysis, information, and entertainment.
“This is the future of news,” English said.
“It’s news when you want it, how you want it. Our audience has told us they want more video – so we’re delivering. We’re taking our audience inside our newsroom and behind the stories to give them the insights and knowledge they crave.”
The Daily Telegraph will form part of the new state and community mastheads division at News Corp – which is currently restructuring to organise its editorial departments into three divisions. The other two include prestige, and free news.
Mark Reinke will head the state and community mastheads division, which will capture The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Courier Mail, and Advertiser, plus regional and community publications. English will step up into a bigger role leading the national team of reporters.
Lisa Muxworthy, the editor-in-chief of news.com.au – the most popular news website in the country – and John McGourty, the Editorial Innovation Centre’s group director, are among the first to exit. Michael Desiere‘s role as head of sales – NSW independent agencies, has also been made redundant, separate to the editorial restructure.
Executive chair Michael Miller told staff: “As we are now living at a time when the way news and information is created and consumed is changing faster than it has ever changed, we too must continue to evolve.”
DTTV will feature in-depth interviews with newsmakers as well as on-the-scene news coverage and expert analysis from specialist reporters.
DTTV journalist James Willis will host the daily 5@5 Bulletin, consisting of five stories in five minutes at 5pm. Willis is an award-winning journalist who spent more than a decade at 2GB, most recently as Ben Fordham’s executive producer.
“DTTV is a vertical video experience that brings The Daily Telegraph’s stories and journalists to life through video,” English added.
“It will enhance our content, adding a dynamic dimension to stories that would otherwise remain as text and static images.
“Our style is straightforward, informative and conversational. It’s our journalists telling it like it is, like only they can. That’s our point of difference.”
Rival Seven is also intensifying its focus on video. Recently-promoted editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie told Mediaweek his dream is to make the most of having “the best video in Australia” by integrating digital newspaper The Nightly in 6pm bulletins and ensuring video is synced and unified across Seven properties.
The latest Ipsos iris rankings showed The Daily Telegraph has an audience of 4.585 million people, up 31% from the previous month.
For the 16th month in a row, another of News Corp’s titles, news.com.au, topped the list of digital news brands in April, recording an audience of 12.397 million, with an average time spent on the site of 27 minutes per person.
News.com.au editor Kerry Warren pointed to the Westfield Bondi Junction tragedy on Saturday 13 April, as one of the biggest reasons readers came to the site.
“We saw a spike in readers coming directly to our homepage, as our reporters and editors worked around the clock to ensure every angle was covered and Australians were informed,” Warren said.