A classroom routine is paying dividends in Perth, where Seven West Media has brought its TV, web, weekday print and now Sunday newsrooms together.

"We're in the unusual position of owning both a major TV station and a major newspaper in the same market," says Michael Beach, who has just added digital editor of the Sunday Times to his role as project manager for the recent newsroom integration.

"It's something we discovered when we looked overseas for comparable sites, but we saw video was one of our competitive advantages and wanted to make use of it."

The competitive position of the Perth newsroom has just become a whole lot more complicated, with SWM's acquisition of the rival Sunday paper and its perthnow website from News Corp.

First was the integration of the Times - of which he has since been appointed editor - into the CCI NewsGate workflow used for the 183-year-old West Australian and the 23 regional newspapers in its group. The current Yahoo-linked website of The West is also being relaunched and conversion of the ST's WordPress-based former News website will follow "in the next six months", Beach says.

All of this - adding another 20 to the 180-strong complement - just when the newsroom itself was settling down after last year's major integration of TV, print and web. Over a sponsored breakfast at Digital Media Asia in Singapore last month, Beach told how he was coopted to report on and then execute, the merger of the Seven News newsroom with that of stablemate West Australian Newspapers. A decision had already been made that there would be no "us and them" silos, and a transparent system now makes "a leap of trust" in allowing every journalist, editor and TV producer access to everyone else's stories.

With decisionmakers - including newspaper heads, chiefs of staff, digital editors and TV producers - centred literally in the floor, with 20-25 developers close by, and print and TV reporters sitting side by side, " the idea was that we all needed to learn off each other," Beach says. "Anyone could see and contribute ideas."

The "very different animal" of TV is being exploited, as Seven West works to boost digital video content, with print reporters encouraged to appear on TV, and TV reporters writing for the newspapers. "We know there are specialist skills, but they are adapting well and each month they're adding new ones."

The close integration means scripts can be rewritten, video called up, and stories pushed out on the website after it has been broken on the 6pm news. Some stories will be held for print - "there's still a lot of power in breaking a story in the newspaper," Beach says - and there will be occasions when a reader video is held back for the evening news: "It's becoming more instinctive, and we know it's working when a decision is made on the news floor... quickly and instinctively."

The integration has brought lessons from TV to the print-and-web team: "They think very differently, thinking video, and also what's the promo. They're very visual and very good at selling their work, so we learned a lot and got much better at it."

On the technical side, the TV newsroom's Quantel broadcast equipment is now being integrated with the CCI and Brightcove video technology on the website to make repurposing easier. There's also an exchange of information between Seven West and "the very bright people" in Europe who are using similar CCI equipment: "It makes us feel a little less remote in Perth," Beach says.

Competition between the Sunday and the weekday daily has now moved to a focus on differentiating products, an Beach says it's actually an improvement that Sunday editors no longer have to agonise about what their Saturday rivals may have got. The rule is, "if you've got an exclusive, put your hand up first and everyone will know it's your story, and we'll work out the best way of handling it," he says.

"It's a fantastic place with a lot of energy; we've even got a helicopter now, so if there's a police chase, we can watch the feed and lift that video straight away."

Peter Coleman