Newsroom convergence models of China’s Beijing Youth Daily and Denmark’s Nordjyske

In the digital era, most media organizations are exploring their own models to introduce news convergence and to make it work and profitable. This paper makes a comparative analysis between two local/regional newspapers, China's Beijing Youth Daily (BYD) and Denmark's Nordjyske, on their newsroom convergence models. The author finds that BYD focuses on the newspaper-based model with a strategy of integrating the content of BYD and its subsidiary newspapers, and it promotes interactivity between newspapers and the web (internet and mobile phone). It maintains the traditional separate and cascade newsrooms with newspapers mainly supplying content to websites. By contrast, Nordjyske has applied a multimedia-based model implementing resource sharing, content sharing and cross-promotion via multiple platforms including TV, radio, print, and website. It uses matrix-organization in its newsrooms with reporters organized around news beats. At present, BYD is blocked by policy barriers that prohibit newspapers from running broadcasting services in China. When the market is further deregulated, there is possibility that BYD will follow Nordjyske's practice.