Crowding the conventions

I was astonished to read in Forbes that officials for the Democratic and Republican conventions expect 15,000 journalists will be on hand for each one. This number is about the same as for the last two convention seasons, Forbes reports, and some organizations report they are cutting back.

My initial reaction was very similar to that of Mark Potts, who writes:

“At a time when news budgets are being slashed because of declining revenue, how can a news organization possibly justify sending a raft of people to the conventions? (I suspect the numbers for the Olympics are about the same-and just as ridiculous.)

“The Los Angeles Times is sending 15 people to the conventions, Forbes says. And that doesn’t count journalists from other Tribune Co. papers that will be helping out. With what? Apparently, the Zellot cost-cutters missed this line item. Too bad. USA Today plans to send 34 reporters to each convention; Dow Jones is sending 23 to each. The New York Times and Washington Post aren’t disclosing their numbers, but you can believe they’re similarly inflated. The good news is that many organizations say they’re cutting back from previous convention coverage-but it’s still too much.

“Sorry, but in most cases, there’s really no (legitimate) excuse for a single news organization to send a large number of journalists to the convention. What stories are they going to get that the AP can’t supply? Hijinks of the local delegates? Inside info about what the candidates hope to do for the economy back home? Local color on Denver and St. Paul? It’s really hard to understand the need for this kind of bulk coverage.”

I think Potts is onto something in his mention of “bulk coverage.” As newsroom executives struggle to “do more with less,” they must increasingly focus on what they can provide that is unique to their franchise, rather than following the pack. I cannot think of a more “pack” event than a political convention whose speeches are carefully scripted, whose presidential nominee has been long decided, and whose vice presidential nominee likely will have been announced before the delegates convene. Providing coverage that is unique and relevant to a particular audience is key. 

I also am frustrated when I thinking about all the stories that thousands of reporters might be covering closer to home as the conventions unfold. With the troubled economy, mortgage foreclosures, health care, the federal budget deficit and rising energy costs, I don’t think it’s possible for journalists to be developing enough stories about the impact of these issues on their communities and the people who live in them. Not to mention creating and linking to resources for people in trouble and holding officials accountable for their share of the problem (or explaining why they have no share).

Linda Austin, editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, offers a similar reaction: “I wish we could get the person power of 15,000 journalists focused on something that really needs investigating as opposed to two coronations.”

The Herald-Leader will rely on McClatchy’s Washington Bureau for overall coverage and is recruiting citizens to blog from the convention floor. “What we are trying to do is get a citizen blogger from our area who is going to each convention to write about the spectacle of it all from the average Joe’s vantage point. I’m trying to avoid the stars of our delegation and look for the people who are going who are not in the limelight,” Austin said.

Sherry Chisenhall, editor of The Wichita Eagle, will send one reporter to each convention and rely on McClatchy as well. Chisenhall thought the large numbers might reflect in part a desire for local coverage. “My assumption is that all of those journalists are not there to cover simply the nomination process. I would think that a significant percentage might be there for local same purposes we are - to localize coverage of a major national news event. I could be wrong, and perhaps the percentage of local news-focused reporters is small. But it strikes me that, even if it swells the ranks of the media pool covering the convention, there’s value in bringing big national news to the local level for a relatively small travel budget. Bloggers are probably another group that’s bringing the news pool so high, and again, I see value in that type of coverage.”

While Forbes focused on staffing for national news organizations, I checked by e-mail with editors of local and Metro newspapers, which are more apt to send one or two reporters, if any. A sampling:

The Seattle Times will send one reporter, as it did four years ago, to focus on the Washington delegation and local issues. “For regional papers, it’s as important as a networking and sourcing platform as it is a news event,” says Executive Editor David Boardman.

The Dayton Daily News will send two reporters to each convention in addition to staff blogs from home, a slight reduction from four years ago. Like Seattle, Dayton will focus on Ohio and delegates from the region. Says Editor Kevin Riley: “We really questioned whether we needed to go, and I’m still not sure it was the right decision. In the end, I like our local politicos to know we are there, and we are watching them.”

The Miami Herald will send two reporters, including one that does multimedia, says Manny Garcia, senior news editor. The two will focus heavily on South Florida stories—including whether the state’s delegation will be seated at the convention—and hot local issues such as immigration and health care. A third journalist based in the newsroom will focus on honing the convention Web package.

The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., will rely on a reporter from Gannett News Service who will be covering for all New York Gannett papers and focus on that state’s delegation. Traci Bauer, Managing Editor for Multimedia/Innovation, says that’s the same practice as four years ago.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is sending a reporter and a columnist to both conventions to cover the Texas delegation, with a special focus on people from our area.  “We need to send someone because if we don’t then those local stories won’t be told - obviously we can count on the wires to provide the national coverage for us,” says Editor Jim Witt.

As you might expect, smaller news organizations were unlikely to send anyone. John Smalley, editor of the LaCrosse Tribune in Wisconsin, said his organization would not send anyone even to nearby St. Paul. Smalley called the 15,000 count “Totally insane and a massive waste of news resources.”

While traditional news organizations are cutting back, the ranks of bloggers are growing, convention organizers told Forbes. “More than 120 bloggers got passes for Denver, compared with about 30 at the 2004 Democratic convention. The GOP event will host 200 credentialed bloggers, compared with just 12 in 2004.”

Live-blogging seems like a great way to capture the mood and comments from delegates on the convention floor, while leaving the podium coverage to national organizations. I’d like to hear from news organizations that will be blogging from the convention. Is anyone planning to Twitter the convention, or, better yet, ask delegates to Twitter on their news feeds? Please share your plans and ideas in the comments.

(Thanks to Romenesko for the pointer to Forbes.)

Let’s get local

Joe H. Bullard, a former managing editor of The Denver Post, wants to see more local news in the Denver newspapers. Here’s his formula from ”Getting local coverage in gear.”

“I’d fire a third of the editors and convert another third of them to being reporters and give them a laptop. I’d send all my reporters home with a laptop. I would tell each of them his beat is now a circle with a radius of 12 blocks and the center of the circle is his house. I want to know everything that happens within those 12 blocks.

“I don’t want to see you in the newsroom, unless your editor or I summon you. I will count bylines. If you don’t submit at least one story a day, I will be unhappy. If you go a week without a byline, you will be fired. I will expect you to know how to use a digital camera and I expect you to submit at least one picture a day from your circle.

“Because all the reporters and editors are college graduates and have been making a good living for a good number of years, they all live in upscale portions of the metro area, which will limit the news that gets reported. This is a good thing because it would give me the opportunity to hire blue-collar reporters that care about what goes on in their neighborhoods.

“They would be much more concerned about why their Johnny can’t read and why his classroom has 39 kids, one teacher and no aide. Or why their street never gets swept, nor the snow removed. In short, we would start reporting news that is relevant to my readers.

“What do I do with all this news? Put it on my web site as a zone section.”

Is this an organizing principle for the future? Is your newsroom already doing something like this? Please share your experiences in comments.

(Thanks to Ryan Sholin for the pointer.)

Defining “niche”

One topic for last week’s KDMC leadership conference was the increasingly difficult dance of keeping the print newspaper robust and moving aggressively online. One strategy may be to re-define the print newspaper as a “niche” product for a specific audience. Different newsrooms and markets will have different ways of defining this.

Here’s a first run at the definition from Carla Savalli, an editor at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, who participated in the leadership conference:

A niche newspaper is more narrowly focused than the mass market daily.

It may be smaller in size and news hole, and it may even be less frequent than seven days a week. It very likely will be sold for a premium price, almost certainly more than $1 per day.

But it’s most distinctive characteristic will be its content, which will be targeted to the readers who want it and who will be willing to pay for it. Rather than a range of content, a niche paper will focus on so-called franchise topics that can only be produced locally by a skilled staff of journalists. For example: Municipal and state government; schools and education; watchdog reporting; local sports; arts and entertainment.

The niche newspaper will be edited to be explanatory and analytical. Readers will come to the newspaper to learn not ‘what happened,’ but ‘why it happened.’ Its second-day, in-depth nature will be a complement to the 24/7 nature of the newsroom’s online and mobile operations.

On the business side, a niche newspaper will be but one of several platforms that comprise a media portfolio. More important than method of delivery will be the news organization’s brand. In our case, The Spokesman-Review will increasingly become an news and information company whose brand is considered to be smart, timely, relevant and unflinching local journalism. That journalism will be published across multiple platforms, known and to be developed, rather than on any single flagship publication.

Production will be right-sized for the product. The full-scale production apparatus necessary to produce a mass-market daily newspaper is not necessary for a niche product. Resources across the room, then, will be reapportioned according to the needs of the platform.

The overriding goal is to provide news and information to people whenever and however they want it, recognizing that each platform has unique story-telling characteristics which editors and reporters must learn to customize.

Spokane Editor Steven A. Smith reports on his blog that the discussion of the newspaper as niche is a challenging one for his newsroom, as I suspect it will be in many others. Read more of Smith’s post here.

Cost - benefit analysis

Knight Digital Media Center‘s annual Leadership Conference wrapped up Friday but I’m still playing catch up on a few presentations and a lot of notes and ideas.

Ashley Wells of MSNBC.com offered a highly instructive look at the cost to produce different types of multimedia—slide shows, interactives, video and map mashups. Then he projected the size of the audience it would take to make the effort worth the time. Wells was quick to note that such comparisons don’t drive journalistic decision-making. But I think they can help people think twice about how they’re using their time. The short message: Simple may be better. Click through the whole presentation here. It’s instructive.

Wells finished up by noting that online news sites operate under heavy pressure to build both audience and revenue. What does he need to accomplish that?

“Gimme a:
Flexible publishing platform with great editorial tools
Cross-functional team with cross-functional people
License to experiment withthe intent to scale”

What’s your multimedia strategy and who is implementing it in your newsroom? Please share your ideas in the comments.

PEJ: State of the newsroom

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has produced a rich study of the state of the U.S. newspaper newsrooms at a key moment in their migration to the Web.

The findings testify to the growing adaptiveness of newsrooms. At the at the same time, the report raises questions in my mind about whether newsrooms—and newspaper revenue departments such as advertising—are moving quickly and boldly enough to beat the economic clock that is undermining a key competitive advantage—large news gathering staffs.

The report, ”The Changing Newspaper Newsroom,” also speaks to the determination I saw among editors at the Knight Digital Media Center‘s leadership conference last week.

“When it comes to ... the quality of the work, many of these editors express a remarkable - at times eerie - optimism despite the adversities they have faced. In general, the editors we talked to tend to look beyond what their newsrooms have lost in recent years and instead focus on the new vistas that technology has suddenly opened to them and the new energy and purpose of a faster-moving newsroom.”

What these newsrooms have lost is considerable, the report shows.

Here are two lists based on PEJ’s findings—“Less/fewer” covers reductions in staff, resources and coverage. “More” tells what’s growing.

Less/fewer
Staff size (reductions are much sharper at large metros than at smaller newspapers.)
Age and experience of staff
Smaller news hole and newspaper size
Foreign, national news
Arts and features coverage
Institutional memory as older journalists take buyouts
Copy editing
General and specialized editing
Photographers

Meanwhile, editors expect to cut more staff. More than half the the large-paper editors said they expected more cuts; nearly a third at the smaller papers did.

More
Community, state/local news
Education coverage
Investigative, enterprise coverage
Early-in-the-day teams that focus on Web content
Videography
Web-only editing
Database journalism
Mobile journalists
Micro sites
Staff blogs

The changing profile of the journalist
Here is what editors say are the top five “essential skills” in the newsroom:
Writing skills
Overall computer skills
Ability to file quickly
Multimedia skills
Data analysis skills

Key quotes:

On the changing print newspaper:

“In effect, America’s newspapers are narrowing their scope ambitions and becoming niche reads.”
--
“Together, these two developments - shorter news stories and richer enterprise - reflect part of a new, evolving role of the print newspaper in an era of growing online access to news virtually as it happens. In this environment, the role of the print edition of daily newspapers is becoming less a vehicle to convey news developments and more a source for analysis, texture, and context to help readers better understand those developments.”

Staffing and culture:

“The culture of the daily newspaper newsroom is also changing. New job demands are drawing a generation of young, versatile, tech-savvy, high-energy staff as financial pressures drive out higher-salaried veteran reporters and editors. Newsroom executives say the infusion of new blood has brought with it a new competitive energy, but they also cite the departure of veteran journalists, along with the talent, wisdom and institutional memory they hold as their single greatest loss.”

On the quality of the journalism:

“Amid these concerns—and despite the enormous cutbacks and profound worries—editors still sense that their product is improving, not worsening. Fully 56% think their news product is better than it was three years earlier.
“ ‘I believe the journalism itself is discernibly better than it was a year ago,’ said the editor of a large metropolitan daily, whose paper last year lost 70 newsroom employees. ‘There’s an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the coverage of several core beats.’ “
--
“The bottom line culturally is this: In today’s newspapers, stories tend to be gathered faster and under greater pressure by a smaller, less experienced staff of reporters, then are passed more quickly through fewer, less experienced, editing hands on their way to publication. Some editors—but far from a majority of those interviewed—said they could see the costs.
“ ‘I read the stories (in my own paper) today and I see more holes, questions I want answered that are not,’ lamented the editor of a large metropolitan newspaper. ‘I see more stories...that aren’t as well sourced as I’d prefer.’ ”

Editors’ view of the Web

“Although several editors voiced concerns about the web as a distraction that deflects resources from the print edition, overall, the view of the web appears to be increasingly positive.
“Editors’ responses indicated, often with a sense of surprise, that the growth of newspaper websites has also had a positive impact on the content of the newspaper itself. Interviews and survey results strongly indicated that—contrary to early conventional wisdom—the print and website versions of today’s daily newspapers can be complementary and mutually strengthening.”
--
“Increasingly, the web today is seen as a newspaper’s ally, not an adversary. Because of this, it is helping counter sagging morale as newsrooms shrink. At larger papers, where staff cuts have been deepest and the newsroom moods darkest, fully 57% of those surveyed say “web technology offers the potential for greater-than-ever journalism and will be the savior of what we once thought of as newspaper newsrooms.” By contrast, just 4% expressed worry that the web’s pressure on immediacy might undermine the accuracy and values of journalism.”

These news organizations appear to be making significant progress toward the Web and it’s encouraging to see how greatly it has come to be seen as an opportunity rather than a fad to be wished away. Still, the report in many ways underscores the extent to which the print newspaper still drives revenues and staffing—and that may be slowing digital transformation when it needs to be speeding up.

The PEJ report also discusses the changing relationships of newsrooms with the advertising department and with citizens. I’ll post some thoughts about those issues soon.

Meanwhile, how is your organization handling the print-online balance. What are you giving up? What are you adding?

Change. More. Faster.

Steve Smith, editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, has posted on his blog some thoughts about industry change and changes to come in his own newsroom following this conference. Says Smith:

“If we don’t change more dramatically and faster, there will not be an industry to support the sort of value-driven journalism that is at the heart of our craft.

“The encouraging news is that the tools we need to make the needed changes are readily available to us and that our ability to deliver quality news and information can only be enhanced...if we make the bold leaps.

“And there is the rub. Are we willing to make the bold moves.

“In the SR newsroom, we MUST understand and then embrace the notion that print is no longer our primary focus. As advanced as we are in the digital delivery of news (and this conference confirms for me that we are ahead of the industry curve, as innovative and progressive as any newsroom ), we are still too print focused.

“We need to devote FEWER resources to print. Our editors need to spend far less time worrying about print. And all of us need to be focusing on how to improve and expand the scope and quality of our digital news and information (and that includes radio).

“This is a huge cultural leap. The push back will be extreme. Work schedules will have to change. Skills will have to be refined or re-taught or learned for the first time. Many of us will have to fundamentally question what we do, why we do it and how it must be done differently.

“The editors who push this cultural change forward will not earn many friends in the newsroom. I think that understanding has been sobering for all of us.

“My hope is that our journalists will understand that we must change our practices, while holding true to our news values.

“That will be our only chance and only hope.”

Thursday, each of the newsroom teams at the conference explored key change initiatives for their newsroom. I will be posting some of their ideas over the next several days.

Editors: Determination, not desperation

With all the grim news from the news industry—staff reductions, top editor resignations—it’s easy to fall into a state of hopelessness. Certainly journalism’s most widely read news aggregator—Romenesko—often feels like a relentless chronicle of malaise and decline.

So it has been very encouraging—and enlightening—for me to speak with and exchange e-mails with the two dozen editors who are participating this week in Knight Digital Media Center‘s annual Leadership Conference, ”Transforming News Organizations for the Digital Now.” Like their peers across the industry, they face struggles and challenges both within their organizations and without. They are far from naive. But they are very determined to take their organizations across the digital divide. We’re hoping that determination—and the advice of a couple of dozen experts who are joining the conference—will help them draft bold plans for reorganizing and re-energizing their organizations.

A team of two people - the top editor and the top online editor—from 12 traditionally print organizations will participate in the conference, which starts today and runs through Friday. Participating organizations: The Commercial Appeal, the Dayton Daily News, the (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Journal-Gazette (Fort Wayne), the Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga.), the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Orange County Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review (Spokane), and The Wichita Eagle.

I’ll make a brief introductory presentation identifying some of the patterns and issues that cropped up in my pre-conference interviews. (Later in the evening, we’ll hear about the digital audience from Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and then we’ll explore “Seven Deadly Myths of Innovation” with Krisztina “Z” Holly, Vice Provost for Innovation at the University of Southern California, where the Knight Center is based.

For now, here are a few trends from participating news organizations:

- They’ve reorganized in the past year, mostly to do a better job of getting breaking news online by dedicating reporters and editors to the Web. Those moves are showing results in increased Web traffic.Some of the newsrooms have undergone more radical changes—Rochester adopted Gannett’s Information Center model; at the Orange County Register, two-thirds of the newsroom reports to the online desk.
One editor: “Our priority is to create a fast and flexible culture in which we think online first, then print. Ultimately, it is to transform our newsroom into a 24-7 news organization. We must deliver news and information to readers and viewers when they want it and how they want. We integrate our approach. Our editors plan online coverage AND print coverage. We want to be first and we want to be best. We must continually be changing jobs and approaches. We did this a lot last year; we must do more this year. We do not believe in a big “ta da” approach. It should be organic but should also be urgent. Our survival is at stake in this competitive world we live in.”

- The culture in their newsrooms is improving, with more journalists adopting a Web-first mantra.Still, few believe they have achieved critical mass for a more nimble, online-adept culture. There are fewer pockets of resistance. But traditionally print-centric groups—in some cases copy desks or assignment editors—lack online reflexes.
Here’s one editor: “It’s like most places. There are 30 percent who get it, 30 percent who aren’t sure and 30 percent who are resistant. It’s a mixed bag. Some people are unhappy because they feel like it’s more work. Some people are really enthusiastic about it.”

- Culture aside, newsroom production systems and processes remain still highly print focused.  As their staffs contract, newsroom leaders are pressed to re-evaluate the print-online balance. How will they support both a robust print product - since it still pays most of the bills - with more aggressive moves online. Dayton, Rochester and Orange County have begun systematically repurposing (yes, I hate that word too. Alternative?) online content for the next day’s newspaper.
Here’s one editor: “Print is going to be around for a long time. It delivers 90 percent of our revenue. That’s the difficulty, trying to start this new business and keep the old one going. It’s going to be a struggle. We could do one or the other very well but to do both is a real challenge—especially with considerably fewer resources.”

- Newsroom staff cuts in these organizations range from about 10 to 40 percent from peak. Twenty-five percent is the norm.
One editor: “My goal is to continue to leverage my news staff across as many platforms as we can manage ... The only way we can sustain a newsroom of this size is to master all of these platforms.”

- Newsroom leaders also are frustrated by problems with technology and a general lack of technological resources. Competition for programmers is fierce—within news organizations and in the larger marketplace, which pays better than newspapers. One oneline editor: “It is difficult to attract Web developers because of the perception that the print industry is in decline. Web developers would bring the expertise that is currently lacking as we rely on converting print journalists into online specialists.”

- These problems notwithstanding, these editor report a dizzying array of accomplishments on the Web. From photo galleries, to databases, to videos, to interactive graphics, to broadcast programming, to affinity sites, the migration to online in these newsrooms is going full force. But few think they are ahead of the curve. Social networks, search and mobile delivery loom large on many horizons.

From an online editor: “I try to help quickly move our operation toward a better understanding of audience needs, and a workflow that is multimedia centric. I do this with the realization that we’re asking a shrinking staff to do more every day. The key is in identifying those areas where we can pull back and relax standards or output, and those areas where we must press harder to gain traction.”

Do these newsrooms, taken collectively, sound fairly typical? Please reflect on your challenges, experiments and solutions in the comments.

(Note: I will not be quoting specific conference participants by name or by the name of their news organization without their permission. It’s a tradeoff. We want to make as much information from the conference available as possible. At the same time, we do not want participants to feel inhibited in the discussions. All expert presentations and comments will be attributed.)

From Tampa, “audience editors”

Following a new round of layoffs and reorganization at The Tampa Tribune, much discussion has focused on a blog post in which Tribune intern Jessica DaSilva described the layoff announcement and drew harsh criticism from other journalists (see comments in the same post) for a) admiring the way Tampa Executive Editor Janet Coats handled the layoffs and 2) being too young to have a valid opinion.

This response struck me as symptomatic of old newsroom culture: First, shoot the messenger, then deny there’s a problem or find someone (Coats and other newsroom executives) to blame for it. Happily, journalists also stepped forward to support DeSilva for caring and to support Coats for having a plan.

Indeed, Coats has a bold plan, and it just might work. The reorganization she and her staff are developing should get a serious look from any newspaper editor who is trying to cross the burning bridge to more stable times. You can read a long describing the changes here on Romenesko.

I want to focus on one aspect of the plan, the new job of “audience editors.” There apparently will be 5-6 of them in Tampa and they will operate just below the rank of managing editor in a newsroom that will produce print, online and broadcast reports. Here is how the memo describes the role:

“The Audience Editors are the advocates for the audience in daily and longer-term story choices and story development. Their charge is to make sure we are working on the right things to serve audience needs and wants. They also are responsible for ensuring that we are working on enough of the right things to create relevant, robust newspapers, newscasts and online content.
“· Audience advocacy. The AEs lead the newsroom in thinking about how best to serve the audience. The AEs have a deep knowledge of our audience research across all platforms, and they use that knowledge to guide them in setting priorities for story coverage. They educate and inform the rest of the newsroom about what works for the audience, and they track which stories are moving audience within the news cycle.
“· Quantity control. The AEs are responsible for ensuring that we have enough of the right kinds of stories in production to serve each platform during the news cycle. They can shift resources to focus on different stories, depending on news priorities. They can advance production on particular stories, or stockpile content if we are over-producing for a certain news cycle. They’ll work with the finishing groups to ensure there is a range of stories to be considered for each product.
“· Quality control. The AEs have the responsibility for identifying stories with high audience potential, reallocating resources around the newsroom to reflect those priorities and ensuring coordination among the work groups. If the AEs determine that resources are being devoted to stories with low impact, they can redirect work onto other topics with more potential. They can kill a story or elevate it.
“· Promoting interactivity. The AEs understand that the core of the news mission is to create stories readers can interact with. The AEs identify stories with high potential for interaction, be it through user comments, databases, the potential for user-generated content or by appealing to highly motivated niche audiences. The AEs work with the news circles and the finishing group to apply the best interactive strategies to the stories they have identified as having high audience interest.
“· Communication. The AEs will develop the best method of communicating the daily news priorities to the overall newsroom. They will build a communication system that is real time, focused not on meetings but on the evolution of the news priorities throughout the day.
“· Coordination. The AEs will look for gaps and overlaps among the content circles (reporting teams). They will work with the circle editors to set priorities, mediate coverage disputes and shift reporting resources appropriately. The AEs will communicate daily with the finishing group leaders to track development of each product for that news cycle and to reset coverage priorities accordingly.
“· In summary: The AEs enforce the need for production. They are empowered to shift resources among the work groups to make sure we have enough content for all three platforms. The AEs enforce quality. The AEs are the nerve center of the operation, setting daily goals, looking out for more long-term story possibilities and constantly shifting resources to match priorities.”

Two aspects of this plan hold particular promise for improving content and, perhaps, creating a more saavy, adaptive newsroom culture:
1. Audience focus: “The Audience Editors are the advocates for the audience in daily and longer-term story choices and story development.” Traditionally, the audience is not at the table when editors decide what to cover and who to cover it for different platforms. “What readers want” often is a proxy for what editors want. If these editors can effectively bring audience expertise to the discussion, maintain an independent perspective, and communicate in ways that build staff expertise—without being afraid to use their veto power —Tampa may significantly better its content across platforms.
2. Power to shift resources: The AEs are ...  constantly shifting resources to match priorities. In the traditional newsroom, shifting resources can take weeks, even months, and smart moves often die on the vine of turf politics. Tampa’s plan is likely to see many fits and starts as both Audience Editors and the newsroom as a whole learn what works. But this could be a formula for creating a more nimble newsroom.
How has your newsroom used structural changes to create better content and a more adaptive newsroom culture? Please share your experiences in the comments.

A “newspaper” wins an Emmy

I recently learned that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had won a regional Emmy this year from the Lone Star Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, for its High School Huddle football program on www.star-telegram.com. The program is part of www.dfwvarsity.com, Fort Worth’s mega site for high school sports described here. The Emmy-winning show sounded like a great example of a traditional print newsroom learning new skills and applying them to news and information of high interest to the community. Kathy Vetter, Deputy Managing Editor/Multimedia, discusses the show in this guest post:

By Kathy Vetter

Our High School Huddle program originated exactly where it should have - in the Sports department. Our newspaper editor responsible for high school sports floated the idea of a weekly video program, and we then called in our video experts and started talking about who could host the show. We ended up shooting a 12- to 15-minute program every week for 16 weeks. Most of it was shot in segments in our newsroom studio, with the graphics, photos, video clips and music bed added in post-production by our video editor.

We used one main host and rotated in the two expert writers each week, from a pool of about four. These experts cover high schools for the newspaper. The host covered high schools for us for several years, but is now a Cowboys writer. When the playoffs started, we simply went with a host and co-host.

We shot the show using three cameras and a video switcher to output a single video feed. We used an audio board to mix the audio from the three mics. We scripted the show each weekend and gathered the photos and video clips of games on Monday. We occasionally went into the field on Mondays to get fresh video. We shot the show Tuesday morning, imported the file into Final Cut Pro, and had the show edited and ready to post by very early Wednesday morning.

We shot at least one video game of the week each Friday night, usually narrated in person by the same reporter who hosted High School Huddle. Those were edited and posted by early Saturday morning. We then used that video, either from the current week or the archives, to provide the game clips for the Huddle. We set up an online poll that allowed readers to choose the game of the week from the four our staff had selected. That was the game that we shot video of. The poll received around 50,000 votes each week.

Staffing-wise, the director did most of the research and wrote the script (mostly info on cue cards), the high school sports editor helped pick the games we would discuss, the three reporters came in on Tuesday to do the show, and the video editor did the live switching and ran the audio board, then did the editing and graphics work. We got help from the photo desk in finding the necessary photos and running the cameras in the studio, and the high school sports staff helped with research.

The High School Huddle and games of the week are by far our most popular videos. For the five-month period beginning in September 2007 and ending at the end of January 2008, our High School Huddle of Nov. 6 was our highest-rated program, with 214,777 page views. The following week’s Huddle was No. 2, with 191,774. We easily topped a million page views for all HSH and game of the week videos during that time period. And a local car dealership bought a sponsorship for the videos.

The best advice is that this is worth doing. Even if you don’t do a studio show, find a way to take out a camera and shoot a game of the week. Ours were nothing fancy - a little game action, some time with the band and cheerleaders, some standups by our host - but they quickly became viral and they solidified our reputation as the media company that cares about something that’s very important in our community.

Here is a link to High School Huddle.

Star-Telegram sports online

Successful online ventures identify and tap into community passions. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has created a megasite for high school sports and is riding a wave of popularly and building revenue. I asked Ellen Alfano, Deputy Executive Editor/Vice President for Online at the Star-Telegram about the site, www.dfwvarsity.com, and the result is this guest post:

By Ellen Alfano

High school football is more than a tradition in Texas - it is an integral part of our culture. The Star-Telegram devotes a lot of resources and space to Friday night football. So three years ago, the Sports department and IS department began working on a super web site that would connect us to those readers who are fanatical about “Friday Night Lights.”

We created a home page for every high school team that we cover - nearly 100 - and have continued to improve the functionality as well as the number of high school sports that are part of the site. The site includes team photos, results, statistics, schedules, recruiting updates, player information, message boards and score alerts, as well as blogs and interactive pages for uploading user generated photos and videos. We have expanded the concept to include girls and boys basketball, soccer, baseball, softball and volleyball.

The staff that produces the content for dfwVarsity is a small army of sports staffers, correspondents and employees from different areas of the newspaper. This is the same group that covers games for the newspaper, only they file for the Web site after each quarter of a game and immediately after the game is over. The only additional people we have devoted to this project are programmers. There were a few missteps along the way, most of them involving the programming.  We are currently working on the third version of the software and we have a web developer from IS working with a newsroom web developer to finish the newest version.

Anyone who is considering a site like this needs to have a project leader who understands sports and agate as well as web development. Developers who worked on the site but didn’t understand sports left us with a table structure that was not flexible enough to allow us to adapt it to additional sports.

The one area that has never been an issue is the popularity of dfwVarsity.com. The site had more than 3 millon page views last year. It has also been a revenue-producer from the beginning. We began with a sponsor who paid $12,000. This year we will produce almost $200,000 in revenue.

Last year’s dfwvarsity site, including the videos, brought in $5,000 a month in revenue. The video was not specifically targeted. We quickly realized that was too low. This year, the main sponsorship was sold to Chevrolet for $10,000 a month for 10 months

One feature of the site is a weekly video program during the football season that just won an Emmy. More about that program later this week.

Link: The Big Picture

Boston.com has started a terrific photo blog, The Big Picture, to much acclaim. Check out how The Big Picture covers Mars discoveries, the Celtics’ NBA Championship, or Iowa flooding.

Worth reading, too, is this interview with Alan Taylor, the Web programmer who came up with the idea and produces the blog.

That a programmer could be doing journalism at a big outfit like The Boston Globe is an encouraging sign that old-school journalists (and I’m one of them) are opening up to new ideas from outside the traditional club.

Some newsroom leaders have mentioned to me that they have trouble attracting good programmers because of all the bad financial news about the news industry. Taylor offers this counterpoint:

“Yeah, I had a lot of friends who looked at me like i was crazy when I joined the Boston Globe a few years ago. But it’s precisely this sort of opportunity I was hoping for. The access to great storytelling resources, a great platform, and the ability to contribute to that, albeit in a more technical role. I saw the opportunity and ran with it, with everyone’s blessing. It’s a very hard question—how to attract programmers to journalism roles. For me, it’s just far more interesting than, say, working on a massive financial services backend system.”

How does your organization attract programming talent? Can programmers help reshape journalism in the digital age? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

(Thanks to Howard Weaver for the pointer.)

Moving the furniture, moving the needle

The traditional newsroom model—with its compartmentalized teams or departments and assembly-line production for end-of-day deadlines—has proven ill suited to a 24/7 news environment that requires speed, creativity, collaboration and the ability to turn on a dime. The structure, systems and processes of the newsroom drive both culture and results. That’s not to say moving desks around a few times a year will change the newsroom. But smart newsroom leaders are finding reorganization—some sweeping, some in small steps—really helps.
The continuous news desk (which now even has the acronym of CND) has come to symbolize digital transformation in many newsrooms, especially larger ones where cross-disciplinary communication tends to be diffuse. I described that change at the Miami Herald here.
This week, I talked with the editor of another Florida newspaper, about a similar change that yielded striking results.
Janet Coats, Executive Editor of The Tampa Tribune, said the organization in the past year:
- Combined online and print newsrooms under the one editor (Coats). (I confess, I was a little surprised that Tampa, a poster child for media convergence, had separate print and online newsrooms as late as 2007.)
- Reorganized into “deep” and “now” teams in an effort to balance getting the story of the moment with investigative and explanatory journalism.
- Moved a significant number of print staff to a new continuous news desk.

“The results,” Coats said, “were immediate and gratifying - a 60 percent increase in (local) page views year over year.” Breaking news page views were about 11 percent of total before the change, Coats said. “Since continuous news desk, that share has grown to about 30 percent.”

Those results in turn pushed culture change in the newsroom, buoyed the staff, and convinced even Web-resistant staff members. “The launch of continuous news desk was the best thing that happened culturally in the time I’ve been here,” Coats said. “It was one of those wonderful moments when we actually launched the continuous news desk we saw immediate results. That was a glorious thing for people who were demoralized. ... We saw that pop, a dramatic pop, in Web traffic. The only thing that had changed was the journalism. That was powerful.”

I bet other newsrooms have similar stories of change. I’d like to hear yours. Please share them in the comments to this blog.

Newsroom change: Forget the crowd, find the change agent(s)

Ryan Sholin has terrific advice for pushing change in the newsroom: Don’t waste your time trying to change the whole newsroom at once. Cultivate the early adopters.

I’ve seen this approach work in newsroom after newsroom, as Tim Porter and I described in ”News, Improved.” Once the early adopters go to work, the discussion can move from the abstract (and fear-inducing) notions of change to concrete examples of new forms of journalism. Conversely, I have been in many newsrooms where executives thought that merely telling their staffs en masse to change meant they would. That’s a formula for frustration.

As Sholin says: “.. you can’t mandate mindset.  But you can grow culture.”

What approach has worked for your newsroom? Do you have a way to identify and foster early adopters?