Electric Fishwrap has moved

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.

Nick includes a list of the main changes on his blog (read the blog or the PDF page for in-depth explanations):

1. Shift deadlines of non-daily stories to noon.
2. Create a universal reporters pool by combining the existing City, Business, Features, Voices (community extras) and 7 (weekly alt tab) desks. This allows stories produced by any writer to be used in any section of the newspaper, instead of having reporters assigned to specific sections. … The assistant (edtiors) … are assigned as follows: breaking news, watchdog, life, culture, money, Washington hyperlocal, Idaho hyperlocal and wire.
3. Create a hybrid universal copy desk, combining the day (features) and night desks. … Copy editors would read stories before they are published online, upholding the integrity of website. The idea is that the S-R is no longer just a newspaper, but a news organization that produces content to be published on multiple platforms: online, print and radio.
4. Combining the multimedia and photo departments into a Visuals Department.
5. Flattening the newsroom hierarchy, as depicted in the organizational chart.

Read the 12-page PDF file. Here you get an idea of the resources the S-R is working with. I also see that reporters are encouraged to gather and edit video for the Web site, but the Visuals Department is the final arbiter of what makes it to the Web or not. They even have a blog coordinator:

This person, chosen from among our experienced bloggers, will help train new recruits and act as a resource for running a successful blog. The coordinator also will help the online director conduct a review of existing Spokesman-Review and 7 blogs.

Check out some other changes that were not part of the focus of the study, but money-saving measures that the group of eight felt worth mentioning (starting on page 8 of the PDF file):

• Replace the traditional Monday paper with the Voices section (My impression is it’s a zoned edition? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong). Sunday reporter shift is eliminated and night copy desk reduced to save costs. “There will be a protocol in place to create a wrap for the section if something major happens on a Sunday night.”
• Less coverage of car crashes and mundane crimes, more compelling stories. Get away from the push to get a story first and toward telling a particular story well.
• Remove the online subscription wall.

Be sure to check out the organization chart on page 10. Definitely some very different ideas. It does seem very streamlined compared to newsrooms I have been in.

Some of this seems similar to the recently-announced Tampa Tribune reorganization, though to be fair, the Trib had a serious amount of layoffs and I think they had to change or be ineffective. Matt King posted in May about things newspapers should stop doing. I bet “ambulance chaser” would be on his list.

For the record, I read the S-R every day before I go to work. You guys do a great job, and I look forward to see what makes it off of this list and into the newsroom.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 10:20 pm and is filed under reorganization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.