Y PARTIDOS POLITICOS DIRECCIÓN EJECUTIVA DE PRERROGATIVAS

ADMINISTRATIVE BLOC

CONTENT BLOC _ACCOUNTI

NG here) BUSINESS BLOC R&D BUSINESS MANAGER CHIEF ACCOUNTA NT DEPUTY EDITOR IN CHIEF (MAGAZIN ES) DEPUTY EDITOR IN CHIEF (DAILY) READER S' DEPT ADMIN NEWSROOM NEWSROOM HEAD TIEN PHONG ONLINE (TPO) CONTENT DEPARTMENT S LAYOUT, TECHNICAL, COPY EDITORS INDEPENDENT CORRESPONDENTS

DAILY CONTENT AND REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS (REP) ADMIN (REP) HEAD OF REPRESENTA- TIVE OFFICES (REP) MAGAZINE CONTENT (REP) ACCOUNTIN G (REP) DISTRIBUTI ON (REP) ADS (REP) YOUNG KNOWLEDG E VIETNAMES E BEAUTY MAGNET WARM FIRE ADS, MARKETIN G, EVENT DISTRIBUT ION/SALES

The editorial board

The editorial board consists of 4 people who have the highest decision making power in the organisation. The board’s members’ power is discussed in more details below.

Newsroom (newsroom secretariat)

At the end of 2008 the newsroom (secretariat) had 10 people: the newsroom chief editor, one deputy, six member editors who were in charge of different content/pages, one chief’s assistant, and one administrator. From September 2009 two deputies, two member content editors and two photo editors are added. Also, under the suggestion of the newsroom chief editor and approval of the editor in chief, the 21-staff technical support department (including copy editors/readers, layout (technical) people, photo technicians), 4-staff “artists” (design and graphics) department, and one “alerter”88

all are now merged to the newsroom and under supervision of the newsroom leaders/managers, making a total of 42 staffs for the newsroom. This is a totally new structure in an effort to make the news production flow smoother. It will be discussed more later in this chapter.

Departments

There are eight content departments, each with a head and/or one or more deputies, reporters and copy editors. They are: News/Current Affairs, Economic, Culture and Entertainment, Youth issues, Science-Education, International Affairs, Security and Legal issues, and Features/Reportage.

Beside the eight departments, the representative offices, like in Tuoi Tre case, are considered equivalent to content departments in terms of administration. The representative offices and regional correspondents work directly with the newsroom and editorial board, not with the content departments even though at times the content departments may contact specific correspondents to discuss cooperation when they want to have “local factors” for their articles. This means possible overlapping and/or news missing and/or conflicts as newsroom

88

This is a retired experienced journalist who now works as a paid editor to check the final content for mistakes, especially politically sensitive ones, that all the other people including the editorial board member might have missed. This person only works at late night before the pages are sent to the printing house. Actually he has discovered quite a few bad mistakes/errors which are usually only found by readers with “fresher” mind who have not worked much with the copies

secretaries and the content departments do not necessarily work hand in hand. This will be discussed more in section 2.

Tien Phong Online (TPO) has ten people including the head editor and four other editors called “online newsroom secretaries” and five reporters. Administratively, TPO is considered another content department. According to the newspaper’s (or in fact, as perceived by its bosses’) news production flow, though, TPO is under supervision of the daily newsroom’s chief editor and, of course, the daily content deputy editor in chief. However, in reality, it works more or less totally independently as a separate newsroom89. The implication of this will be discussed further in the next section.

The layout and arts (technical) department consists of mostly young and male people while the arts’ people are middle-aged. In this regard, the situation is similar to the relationship between the newsroom, which consists of mostly younger editors, and the departments’ heads that are generally older and more experienced. This in itself already implies possible conflicts in mind-sets, skills and capacity90.

The technical department had been independent from the newsroom secretariat until a year before my fieldwork when the new newsroom chief editor proposed to and got approved by the editorial board that this department should be under the supervision of the newsroom, i.e. the newsroom people especially the leaders can give directions to the department’s staffs, to make the news production process smoother and quicker.

So what is the problem with this structure?

Conflicts of power: Leadership and management practices -Who are the bosses?

Let us look at the organisational structure regarding the daily print and online newspapers, i.e. the blue part within chart 1 above. From the blue sub-chart, it is not clear what kind of relationship between the newsroom and the online newspaper (TPO) and the content departments is.

89

This will be discussed more in section 3.

90

According to the direction of the arrows, it seems, for instance, TPO is directed by/accountable to Deputy editor in chief (daily) AND Deputy editor in chief (magazines) AND newsroom secretariat head at the same time. This does not reflect the reality. Or, the content departments should be accountable to the newsroom secretariat, which does not reflect the official administrative structure. Or, it is not clear if the newsroom and TPO are equal in level. All these show the confusion and inconsistence even among the news organisation’s bosses and staff. We will discuss these below. Now let us start with the highest level in the power structure:

The top leadership

The editorial board, which has the highest decision making power, comprises of the editor-in-chief and his three deputies – the permanent, the daily content, and the supplements’.

The editor-in-chief started his job in Tien Phong only a year before this research after his successful career in some other less political newspapers. He also brought to Tien Phong from his previous papers one deputy editor in chief and the head of R&D department.

The deputy editor in chief that the chief brought from his previous workplace is in charge of all the other publications than the daily and the online papers. She and her much smaller newsrooms work only under the general directions given by the editor in chief and totally independently/separately from the rest of the organisations. There is hardly any interaction and the daily and online journalists hardly know anything about the publications production and situation. For the purpose of this research, I did not study this part of the organisation but only focused on the daily and online newspapers as they have much more interaction with each other (the blue sections in the organisational structure chart above). Beside the above-mentioned deputy, Tien Phong has a permanent deputy editor in chief who officially is delegated to do the editor-in-chief jobs when the latter is out of office91. Thus, this man is in charge of both organisational logistic and

91 _{In many if not almost all Vietnamese organisations, especially state-owned, even though the}

administrative issues and news production where he reads and approves the content before it goes to the press.

There is also a daily content deputy editor in chief who was promoted soon after the editor-in-chief came to his office from being the head of the news and current affair department.

Unlike Tuoi Tre, whose editor-in-chief and deputies have little news media background and, thus, do not directly involve with detailed journalistic production92, both Tien Phong’s editor in chief and the two deputies are journalists themselves and, thus, directly involve with journalistic work. They take turn working as the leader/final approver of each day newspaper issue, meaning staying in the newsroom/office until midnight when the content is sent to the printing house. This rotation of on-the-day editorial duties is, according to Schlesinger (1987), a common management method in newsrooms where long shifts are common even for senior managers.

The editor-in-chief usually works like an editor and a big maestro that directs the whole show in big political or economic news events/issues, even not on his duty day.

Some interviewees told me off-record that there is some scepticism among the journalists about his capacity as the leader of a tough political-economic newspaper like Tien Phong (Interviewees 15,17, 29) . “The boss is new. Therefore many people still are sceptical. The boss has probably not decided who he should trust and who he should not. Most people are still waiting. There are only a few that are devoted to work. The internal conflicts are still alive and kicking.” (interviewee 29)

However, my general observation and feeling is that he is quite respected and listened to by the staff. The only question is whether he asserts his authority enough to make everyone work hard for the organisation’s overall goals. When he first came to office, he carried out huge “brave” changes to the newspaper’s personnel, creating both anger, fears, scepticism and hopes among the staffs. However, later on he seems to change his approach to a much softer one. This will be discussed more later.

92

The permanent deputy editor is also in charge of logistics and administrative part of the whole organisation and, thus, is too busy to focus enough on content, according to some interviewees. And he is considered “not tough enough to deal with hard political and economic news” by many staffs. He is liked as a nice individual but not really respected as a journalistic leader by the tough journalists. The daily content deputy, on the other hand, is respected for his journalistic skills and experience. He had been working as the head of the current affair department before he was promoted to his current position by the editor-in-chief just a few months before this research was done. His being newly promoted and his lack of experience in one of the highest positions in the organisation have made him somewhat nervous and reserved in front of his colleagues. Therefore, this deputy does not have very high authority to the other journalists, especially the heads of departments and older people in the newsroom93.

Still, as mentioned earlier, as all the three members of the editorial board are journalists themselves, they are active in the production process and, even if the journalists do not consider them “Gods” meaning always obeying them, their opinions/decisions are final.

With such direct involvement of the editorial board, the newsroom chief editor and his deputies have much less decision making power compared to those in Tuoi Tre (see chapter VII).

Despite the “whole blood change” which was considered by staffs as “violent” (interviewee 29), Revolutional” (interviewees 15, 17, 23, 30), the editor in chief is taking a soft approach on everyday management. He says he believes in uniting people. Therefore, when there is a conflict, or someone makes mistakes, or someone breaks rules, etc. he usually only mentions it saying something like: “We should not do this”, “we should not do that”. No further sanctions are in effect, which sometimes make other people than the ones that made the mistakes frustrated and discourage them from doing their best. For instance, once during my fieldwork, there was a big news event about a kidnap case, which is quite rare in Vietnam, which happened in a town in the middle of Vietnam. The headquarter’s editors including even the editor in chief himself tried hopelessly to

93 _{In Vietnam, age is an important factor in people’s relationships and interactions, which makes it}

reach the correspondents in the area but one turned off his phone and the other did not answer. It was late, so the headquarter could not send someone from Hanoi. Therefore, Tien Phong missed the news while almost every other newspaper covered it in interesting ways and the news was so popular almost everyone on the streets talked about the kidnap. In the next morning meeting, everyone showed their anger and demanded to punish the correspondents but the editor in chief only said: “we really have to be disciplined. This is unacceptable. We have to punish this kind of behaviours”. It was not clear who “we” were. The case was dropped later. No one was punished.

Now let us look at the next levels of the hierarchy - the main participants of the production: the newsroom (secretariat) and the journalists with their departments.

Conflicting structures: Administrative flow versus decision-making flow. Poor management practices

Administratively (according to the rules governing state-owned organisations that also apply to media houses), the newsroom and content departments are of the same level, meaning the newsroom is not superior to the content departments. The administrative structure is as follows: