17 days left at Printing House Street

One of the biggest changes to the way the Birmingham Mail and its sister newspapers will soon be produced is the 'one newsroom' approach.

And the new editorial space on the 6th floors of Fort Dunlop has been designed specifically with this is mind.

Up to now, the news desks, sports desks, features desks and business desks of the Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Sunday Mercury have been situated all over the editorial floor at the Printing House Street premises. Even when this building was in its original state, with a certain concentration of decision-making desks at the centre, there was no sense of collaboration between titles.

For all the right reasons back then and until now, content creation and decisions on where that content would go was made in separate silos for each paper, and often even the different departments for an individual paper would not be within any proximity.

Those were the days, of course, of print supremacy. In the 1960s, when the current offices were built, there were few radio stations, let alone satellite TV. The internet was not even science fiction.

Today, while print publications are still strong, our audiences demand instant news and information... and if we do not give it to them they will search and take it from the BBC, Google or countless other sources instead.

So the new thinking is to pool our resources and decision-making expertise into a single, multi-media newsroom.

No chance of that in the old building. But in Fort Dunlop we were able to plan the lay-out from scratch with this in mind. And we have.

My desk will be alongside that of the Birmingham Post editor. In front of us will be an oval of desks seating 12 content heads - representing each department serving all newspapers and websites.

All stories will be discussed at this hub and instant decisions made as to where they go first - the web, Mail, Post or Mercury - and in what form. Brand integrity will be a crucial factor - each title must be catered for. But the 'one newsroom' will mean less replication of decision-making, and less duplication of content... unless entirely separate angles are needed.

Above these central desks will be a 'media wall' of three huge screens, allowing the content chiefs to monitor any website or news channel.

We're still finalising the seating plan but, in the next few days, I'll show interested readers what it looks like.