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If you had 11 days to reorganize your newsroom, could you do it?

Nick Eaton and crew did at the Spokesman-Review. Here is what he had to work with:

• make the Spokesman newsroom efficient while completing all if its objectives
• we can’t eliminate the print product
• we can’t eliminate the new radio initiative
• we can’t eliminate the community-oriented Voice sections
• we can’t suggest layoffs

The results are in from the team of eight.

Nick’s editor, Steve Smith, said in his blog that this is not a plan. Smith said he thinks young journalists have fewer ties with the past and not as much loyalty to the way things have always been done. Why were older journalists not asked to participate?

The fact is there always have been opportunities for veterans to participate in such discussions. Too often it is the smart young journalists whose ideas are discounted.

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Colin Mulvany was undoubtedly tired after filming 12 hours of footage driving 300 miles to film a piece on a maggot farm for the Spokesman Review. But on the way back home, he spotted a plume of smoke.

I called it in and by the time I got back to the newspaper twenty minutes later the small brush fire had bloomed into a raging wild fire. I had already put in 12 hours on the maggot story, but that little voice told me this wildfire was going to be big news.

He put on his wild land firefighter gear (every reporter who expects to cover a fire someday should have some) and raced back to the scene. But he didn’t have a video camera with him (he’d left it at the office). Instead, he took a bunch of stills, one of which ran six columns across Friday’s front page.

I like how he thinks about all aspects of his job. Ideally if a reporter hears some great sound at their assignment, they could whip out their audio recorder, talk with the photographer (or take more photos if they are the photog) and lay the groundwork for Soundslides production.

I love the story behind the photo, which is not explained to the readers much in most newsrooms. He explains the composition and what makes the photo powerful. This gives the reader a deeper layer of understanding of what the photographer was thinking when shooting the photo or video.

Good job, Colin!