Whatever the question, integration is the answer...

The new year has opened with a rash of comment on the future of multimedia news.

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian reviewed three of the broadsheet newsroom operations.

At the Telegraph, journalists are "adjusting to new rotas and continual deadlines" - which sounds like the process the BBC went through in the 90s with the move to continuous news.

At the FT, they have achieved a "single decision making structure" between print and web - something the BBC is attempting to achieve under its new integrated newsroom.

At The Times, they talk of a rennaissance of culture as reporters discover the merits of blogging.

Over on the blogs, Alf Hermida, formerly of BBC News Interactive and now a journalism professor in Vancouver, says 2008 is the year for radical thinking in journalism. He quotes other bloggers like Mindy McAdam: Tear up your news hole. Destroy it. Tear up your CMS templates. Install something else and link to the new thing. Do it fast and furiously, as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Or Steve Outing: As you enter 2008, I urge you to focus on cultural change within your newsroom. Get everyone involved in the task of reinventing the newspaper. Give them time in their schedules to participate. Assign tasks — to everyone. Build a new culture of innovation that involves everyone. Bring in creativity and innovation gurus if necessary, and expose those experts to everyone in the company

Alf concludes, rightly, we should stop obsessing about technology and process and concentrate on content: how best to tell stories and reach audiences, using the most suitable tools across a multiplicity of platforms.

Over at Publishing 2.0, Scott Karp is on a similar theme suggesting 2008 is the "change or die" year for journalism This is the year that the journalists who will embrace the challenge of transforming journalism for the digital age will be separated from those who are waiting to take the buyout. This year will break the back of the old newsroom culture that was supported by monopoly distribution economics, which have been destroyed.:

And he rounds up yet further blog comments on the future of journalism and digital technology.

And on the BBC Editors Blog Peter Horrocks, Head of the new multimedia newsroom, gives his thoughts on citizen journalism.

Only one week in, but 2008 is shaping up to be a seminal year...