Five weeks ago, The Sydney Morning Herald started its two-day training program for all staff, required to follow a ‘Convergent Journalism Course.’ The course is “probably a better form of training” than the Daily Telegraph’s own elaborate program, says McLean, after visiting the paper. To the extent that the Telegraph started from ground zero, whereas Fairfax’s program is adapted to an already integrated infrastructure, he adds.

Consequently, neither van Niekerk nor McLean went into great detail about Fairfax’s well-guarded training sessions but here are some of their main characteristics:

- The training is done in-house, with the help of a few outside facilitators. Each two-day session groups about 15 to 20 reporters. The overall program will span across 5 months.

- The first part of the session introduces the reasons and the background for change, with an overview of main benchmarks and market trends. The end goal is to convince journalists that “the business you’re now in is a fully integrated digital media operation,” says McLean.

- The second part of the training is more practical. Journalists study new storytelling processes though audio and video slideshows. They discover new ways to build stories and think in multimedia terms.