Stories on the run

I bought a car Wednesday.

No, not a brand-new car, but one that’s new to me. Besides, it’s essentially new, anyway.

It’s a 2007 Subaru Impreza 2.5l wagon with a five-speed manual transmission. It has 7,500 miles on it and 27 months left on the factory warranty. It’s supposed to get up to 32 mpg on the highway (compared to 16 with the Beast). And I bought it for $14,750 (plus tax).

Thank you, Craigslist.

But I can’t drive it yet. The seller’s bank has yet to mail the title to my bank. I can’t register and license it without the title. So for now, I’ve got this new car in my driveway but I’m still driving my ‘88 Suburban.

Seriously, this is what the newspaper industry needs to see. Lisa breaks down the content workflow of print journalism beautifully in on her blog. It’s simple, and it’s how newspapers, in this tumultuous time, need to start thinking.

Check it.

Via “What’s Next: Innovations in Newspapers,” I’ve learned about Google Print Ads, a new service from Google that confirms Google is taking over the news industry. But not only does this affirm that newspapers are still valuable, which is nice to see, it shows us that large newspaper advertising departments are becoming more and more obsolete, and are probably on their way out.

If you’re at all interested in this kind of stuff, check out Google’s online presentation. Seriously. It’s only about four minutes long. Looks like a lot of papers have already partnered with Google on this. I wonder if The Spokesman-Review has. UPDATE: The Spokesman-Review has, according to our online director.

This development seems somewhat related to an item on Poynter’s “E-Media Tidbits” on Monday: Can partnerships with Craigslist save newspapers?

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UPDATED 2:30 p.m.

My post providing a link to the Gang of Eight report (PDF) and my overview of its main points has not caught on in the journalism blog network (yet?), but there has been some constructive response. Our team presented the plan Monday to the rest of the Spokesman-Review newsroom (or those who attended) and answered the expected onslaught of questions — though they were less hostile and more considerate than we expected.

On the S-R’s public “Daily Briefing” blog is a post outlining the discussion and peoples questions and concerns, along with our team’s responses. As Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen wrote:

“We don’t pretend that this is the answer,” said producer Andrew Zahler, one of the eight, emphasizing that this is only a starting point for idea-storming.

There’s been both support and criticism from inside and outside the newsroom during the brainstorm process, in which eight younger staffers were asked to conduct a massive efficiency study in 11 days and within a few open guidelines.

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Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

As I mentioned here, I was one of eight young journalists at The Spokesman-Review, in Spokane, asked to conduct a study to find new ways to structure the newsroom to increase efficiency and productivity. We had 11 days to turn in our report, and we met eight times for as long as six hours a day to come up with a plan.

Our editor-in-chief, Steve Smith, has posted our report on his S-R blog, “News is a Conversation.” Check out the link to his post.

I had asked the group to rethink the newsroom to take into account the realities of our downsized world. I thought a group of young journalists with fewer ties to the past and with their careers ahead of them might generate some ideas that could help drive change discussions in our newsroom.

But it’s important to keep in mind this most important point: This report is NOT a plan. It is a series of ideas and possibilities suggested by one group of journalists after 10 days of intensive study. Because they were asked to look at structure and process, there is not much discussion about content. Obviously, we must deal with content as we move our conversations forward.

Another member of our team, Andrew Zahler, wrote a similar post to mine on his blog.

Here is the LINK TO OUR REPORT. It’s a PDF file.

Here are the main changes:

1. Restructure the newsroom workflow for most content, shifting deadlines for non-daily stories to noon. Except for breaking news (including City Council meetings, for example) and sports, the newsroom essentially functions like it would if the S-R were an afternoon newspaper. Breaking news and sports would continue to operate on the current deadline structure. This deadline shift would ensure content can be published to the website throughout the afternoon and would encourage better coordination for multimedia and online production. It would also reduce editing bottlenecks at the end of editors’ shifts, and would require more copy editors during the day and reduce the number at night.
2. Create a universal reporters pool by combining the existing City, Business, Features, Voices (community extras) and 7 (weekly alt tab) desks. This excludes Sports. This allows stories produced by any writer to be used in any section of the newspaper, instead of having reporters assigned to specific sections. It would also increase staff content in the Voices and eliminate duplication of stories across such sections. The desk is led by a local editor and eight assistant local editors. The assistants are in charge of a reporting topic but not of a specific section of the newspaper, and are assigned as follows: breaking news, watchdog, life, culture, money, Washington hyperlocal, Idaho hyperlocal and wire. The sports department remains independent, though sports features can be shared among sections if deemed worthy.
3. Create a hybrid universal copy desk, combining the day (features) and night desks. Because of the deadline shift, more copy editors would be required during the day than the night, and shifts would be staggered. 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. The sports copy desk, due to its specialization, is not included in the universal copy desk.
4. Combining the multimedia and photo departments into a Visuals Department.
5. Flattening the newsroom hierarchy, as depicted in the organizational chart.

There are further (and more radical) ideas in the “additional suggestions” section of the report, and a few more in the “minority suggestions” section.

Please feel free to comment with your questions and I will try to answer them as best I can. Please keep in mind I am one of eight committee members and cannot speak for the entire group.

And as Steve said in his blog:

Those who merely want to insult the study group by challenging their youth, calling into question their professionalism or calling them names are asked to take their comments elsewhere.

I just couldn’t resist posting this picture from Lisa’s blog. In front of my face is a magnifier for elderly newspaper readers. She explains.

While reading the incredibly thick “The Powers That Be,” by David Halberstam, I stumbled upon a block quote from Scribner’s Magazine in 1938.

[Edward R. Murrow] has more influence upon America’s reaction to foreign news than a shipful of newspapermen. This influence has not been generally recognized partly for the reason that the newspaper correspondents have tradition on their side, and partly because the networks have played up their commentators rather than their correspondents (like Murrow). But the influence is there, great and growing — and obvious to anyone who knows both radio and the press. Murrow has three advantages over correspondents for the greatest American newspapers: 1. He beats the newspapers by hours; 2. He reaches millions who otherwise have to depend on provincial newspapers for their foreign news; 3. He writes his own headlines. That is to say he emphasizes what he wishes — whereas the newspaper correspondent writes in cablese — then has his copy edited, maybe rewritten and then published under a bank of headlines in which he has no say.

I know it’s been said before, that the advent of the internet is similar to when radio came about and disrupted the old newspaper model, or when TV took hold and changed the media landscape. But really, this idea is worth discussing further.

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Today the S-R reported (even though the ruling [PDF] was two weeks ago) that an appeals court ruled police patrols in the halls of Washington State University dorms are illegal. This also affects a change WSU made to the law (Washington Administrative Code) that effectively circumvented the Washington state and U.S. constitutions.

In the article, the defense attorney told it how it is:

“You would think that an institution of higher learning would be dedicated to the rule of law,” [Tim] Esser said. “For WSU to think it can rewrite some regulations to get around the Fourth Amendment is bizarre.

I reported on this issue in depth when I was at WSU’s school newspaper, The Daily Evergreen.

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What if you had free reign to completely reorganize the newsroom of a print newspaper that wants to start focusing on online operations? Imagine, for a moment, that there was no print product.

How would you organize a newsroom that publishes only to the web? Would you abolish deadlines? Add more of them? Completely change the editing structure? Leave it the same?

Assume, for the purpose of this exercise, that the print paper will put itself out.

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Also, Mindy McAdams has a nice list of “10 simple facts” we should all now assume about newspapers. You can read the rest of her post here.

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We still don’t have a name. We’ve been called the “Gang of Eight” by S-R EIC Steve Smith in his blog. Perhaps we’re the “Great Eight,” as S-R videojournalist Colin Mulvany wrote. We’ve referred to ourselves as “Team Fix Newspapers for Ever and Ever” (the name is just a little tongue-in-cheek), the “Young Turks” or “NeRD” (Newsroom Reinvention Division).

Our task, assigned to us by Steve, is to take a tabula rasa and reinvent how the Spokesman-Review newsroom is structured, because the current system “no longer works,” as he said. I’ve tried to explain it here. Another team member, Andrew Zahler, has written about it in his blog. Mindy McAdams has referenced our project on her blog, “Teaching Online Journalism.”

Andrew summed it all up nicely:

This is exciting and scary as hell.

OK. But what the heck are we doing?

Simply put, we’ve been talking. A lot. We met for a few hours Monday and Tuesday. When we really started getting into things, we spent five hours Wednesday and six hours Thursday in the S-R’s editorial conference room. We’ve mapped out how each department currently functions and identified problem spots. We’ve thrown out small ideas and gotten giant overhauls off our chests.

Who are we, based on job title?

1. Online producer (former copy editor)
2. Business/city desk reporter
3. Photographer
4. GA multimedia producer/online developer (former photographer)
5. Editorial assistant
6. Night-side news copy editor
7. Sports copy editor/alternative weekly designer
8. Sports multimedia producer/sports reporter (former city desk reporter)

It’s a well-rounded group, but it’s not possible to get every viewpoint in the newsroom (which is precisely why we’ve opened up the floor to everybody). And, because we’re not looking to operate in a Cone of Silence, I wouldn’t mind hearing any more ideas.