Designing Digital Media Into Newsrooms

The never-ending process of rethinking and retooling TV news operations to accommodate digital media is the subject of the opening session of TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum, set for Monday, Dec. 12, at 1 p.m. The conference runs through Tuesday (Dec. 13) afternoon at the New York Hilton Midtown.

On hand for “Imaging the Newsroom of the Future” will be Roger Keating, chief strategy officer for Hearst Television; Sean McLaughlin, VP news, E.W. Scripps; Steve Schwaid, VP of digital services, CJ&N; and Frederic Roux, director of sales, Americas for Dalet.

“Each digital platform, from apps to Facebook to OTT, have posed challenges for the TV newsroom in its turn,” said TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, who will moderate the session. “If recent media history teaches us anything, it’s that the digitally driven evolution will continue and that TV news will have to keep adapting.”

NewsTECHForum is designed to give news and technology executives a break from the action to talk about the challenges their common challenges of gathering, producing and distributing news.

It is co-located with the SVG Summit, a two-day event that attracts leaders in sports broadcasting and production and features a technology showcase with more than 60 companies participating. You can register for NewsTECHForum 2016 here. The complete agenda for the event is here.

Roger Keating is SVP of Hearst Television. He joined the company in 2008 as SVP overseeing the company’s growing Digital Media unit, bringing with him a broad background in various sectors of the media industry. Keating has run large cable TV operations at Comcast and most recently at Time Warner, where he presided over the integration of the Adelphia acquisition in the Los Angeles region. He ran the voice services business at AOL, and also ran the AOL Health and AOL Travel verticals. In terms of digital media, he led the formation of Comcast’s Internet division in the mid 1990s and oversaw the development of its high-speed data business. In 1998 he founded and was CEO of Zatso, a company that worked with media companies to offer streaming video-based “personalized newscasts.” He is a graduate of Notre Dame with an industrial engineering degree and also holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Sean McLaughlin is VP of News for Scripps. His focus is journalistic excellence, audience relevance and digital platforms. Prior to this position, he served as executive news director and creative services director at KMOV St. Louis. He has additional news management experiences in Minneapolis; Tulsa, Okla.; and Springfield, Ill.  McLaughlin has a bachelor’s degree in political science and mass communications from Minnesota State University.

Frederic Roux is director of sales, Americas, for Dalet. His career began as a product manager of online content and games at Thomson Multimedia in 2000. He joined Dalet Digital Media Systems in New York in 2001 and rose through the company, becoming project director, director of operations, strategic accounts, until moving into his current position in 2012.  He is a graduate of the Université Paris Dauphine.

Steve Schwaid is VP of digital services at media research firm CJ&N. He works with station groups, website developers, content suppliers, and others to in three key areas: social media, web and mobile. In addition, he helps clients develop and refine their on-air product. Schwaid has led local news operations across the country, including at TV stations in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Tampa and Hartford, Conn. In addition, he was a corporate executive at NBCUniversal and Meredith Local Media.