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?

Apparently the LA Times merits two mentions.

The tool makes scheduling ads a piece of cake.

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.

Thuy’s post sums up the meeting well, though it does not address a major part of our plan. While she reports that one recommendation is to change the story deadline to noon to reduce editing bottlenecks and enable more web publishing throughout the afternoon, it’s important to point out — and this is key — that reporters working on breaking news and daily stories (such as City Council meetings and the like) would operate on the current print and rolling deadlines. We don’t want to arbitrarily delay important and breaking stories a day just because we have a noon deadline in place. Our system is flexible.

The report was, of course, welcomed with skepticism — but, honestly, less than I expected. The biggest hang-up, not surprisingly, was the deadline change. That’s a hard habit to change. Other people wondered how these recommendations would actually increase creativity in the newsroom. Our answer was that our system encourages more teamwork and discussion in the newsroom and that, hopefully, creativity would follow.

On another note: “Wenalway,” a journalist who previously commented on my blog with such hate for “wholly untalented young journos” that I ended up spamming his comments, posted his response to the Gang of Eight report on his forum, Wenalway. The, shall we way, highly skeptical troll — like any good journalist — yielded some of his “old journo” bias when he commented on my friend Brian Everstine’s blog.

I was surprised that there were some productive ideas in the report.

However, there are several that make no sense and need to be scrapped. There also are some that have promise but are too flawed to get off the ground without serious revision.

So, he decided to read through the report and highlight things he thought were good ideas and things he thought were spawned of our “young journo” naivety. I will respond to a few of his questions here to clear up our team’s actual intent.

Report: The new Local Department will encompass the former City, Business, Features, 7 and Voices desks. The head of this desk will be a “strong” city editor –- addressing another staff concern that the city editor has less power than in past years –- who will oversee selection and assignment of stories for all of the sections, read as many stories as possible and report to the managing editor.

Wenalway: Um, no. This is an awful idea. This person will die of exhaustion or a stroke within six months.

The local editor is essentially an assistant managing editor, with a different name, who is more involved with line editing than in the current structure allows at the S-R. This editor has help from seven assistant local editors.

Report: This structure noticeably removes assistant managing editors across the board, placing greater authority in the hands of the local editor. The editor in chief and managing editor will
continue their present

Wenalway: “[N]oticeably removes” — Nice writing. I guess that’s opposed to non-noticeably removes. Anyway, this is an awful idea.

It depends on how you look at it: Our team has either removed AMEs from the mix or has added a few more in the flattened hierarchy. We just got rid of the title. Either way, we were responding to a general feeling from the newsroom when we opened up the floor for suggestions. Carla Savalli, the S-R’s AME for local news, half joked, “If it’s any consolation, they got rid of all the assistant managing editors without talking to any of us,” when in fact we specifically talked to all of the S-R’s AMEs. I’d also like to ask Wenalway to take a step back and ask himself why “this is an awful idea.”

Report: Stories will be copy edited before being posted on the Web, resulting in fewer copy editors working until deadline for print. …

Wenalway: … [T]he last sentence is an open door for problems. A Web copy edit and a print copy edit should be two different things. The headline styles alone are different. What are the space limitations, if any, for the Web? Do these match up with print?

No, these are not two different things. Content published online is still published for public consumption, and should be held to the same standard as newspapers hold it to for the print product. The line of thinking that web is completely different from print needs to be abandoned. This philosophy, I believe, is one reason newspapers are struggling to make it online.

Two copy desk chiefs (current news editor and deputy news editor; these two chiefs would have equal authority and both report to the presentation editor).

… Having two copy desk chiefs with equal authority = very bad.

This equal-empowerment is solely because one copy chief cannot work seven days a week. Shifts would be staggered through the week so that one copy chief is on duty every day. A 4-day, 10-hour schedule would result in one day during which both copy chiefs are at work, on which day the senior editor would assume the role.

Wenalway continued:

Also, in this sea of information about online producers, etc., I see little to nothing about the provision of tech support. This is a critical area for any newsroom, and the omission of this concept is glaring.

Our team was charged with looking only at the newsroom. Tech support is a separate department at The Spokesman-Review. Additionally, online producers would have knowledge of the website’s workings and they would answer to the online editor, who as we speak is building the new S-R website himself with the help of a few online developers, who are included in the report.

UPDATE: A thank you to fellow Murrow College and Daily Evergreen alum Kaci Boyd for her thoughts on the report. One thing intrigued me:

Report: Condense nation/world news to quick hits and direct people to best sources for these stories.

Kaci: If a newspaper starts to tell me a story, they sure as hell better finish it. I didn’t pick up the paper to have it tell me to go online or read another paper or check out a TV station.

Great point, Kaci, and one I actually agree with — to a degree. There’s a reason that recommendation was in the “minority suggestions” section. This is an idea that needs a lot of discussion, and probably a lot of reader survey. A lot — A LOT — of newspaper readers still don’t get their national news from the internet and depend on their local paper. By eliminating traditional wire coverage, we alienate a big chunk of our customer base. </update>

Anyway, I felt the need to respond to some of these concerns that are popping up around the internet. I would love to get more feedback. Though my responses here may seem a little defensive, I’m only trying to explain our rationale when formulating this report and I agree with fellow Gang of Eight member Andrew when he said, as I quoted above, “We don’t pretend that this is the answer.”

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.

Everything the writer, Robert Landry, said about Murrow’s advantages (as a radio correspondent) holds true today about bloggers. Bloggers often beat newspapers by hours, often breaking news themselves and feeding newspaper reporters. A blogger can reach far more people than a print newspaper can. And, of course, bloggers write their own headlines.

But, who’s to say none of this holds true today about newspaper websites? Newspapers certainly can and do post stories online long before they show up on your doorstep. Websites have far more audience potential than print. And while reporters don’t write their own headlines online (though sometimes they do at a small paper or even, at times, at a paper such as The Spokesman-Review), reporters with their own blogs can do just the same.

Unlike during the 1930s, when they were solely dead trees, newspapers have the tools and the means to directly counter the threat of the internet. A problem now, admittedly, is that newspapers are far behind where they should be and are playing catch-up. But a newspaper can take as much (if not more) advantage of the internet’s allure as bloggers and other users can.

These days, there’s no excuse. Newspapers shouldn’t have to ultimately cave in. They have all the tools to survive. And, as in the ’30s, they have tradition on their side. Newspapers just need to reach out for the tools and use them.

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.

Of course, like usual, most of the court proceedings (two students sued the university over the patrols) happened during the summer, when most students — including me — weren’t around. The Whitman County Superior Court sided with the students, citing the WAC but also mentioning possible breaches of the Constitution.

But, as soon as students got back, the WSU Board of Regents, citing student safety concerns, passed an amendment to the WAC to redefine “guests” of dorms. This “emergency rule,” effective for 120 days until a review, excluded public safety officials from the definition of guests, allowing police to patrol dorms on their whim. Patrols immediately restarted.

Many students, of course, didn’t like that. And, as you might expect, we at the Evergreen were voracious to serve as a watchdog of the WSU administration, since it seemed to be expressly breaking the law.

As the administration beat reporter, it was my story to follow. Because so many students were concerned, and constitutional freedoms seemed at stake, I conducted an analysis of the lawsuits, laws and constitutional issues. A factor was talking to the judge who ruled on the lawsuits.

“I’m not basing my decision on that [law],” [Judge David] Frazier said in a May 19 hearing. “I’m basing my decision on the Constitution of the United States of America and the Washington State Constitution, which prohibits unlawful searches and seizures.

Attorneys for WSU didn’t agree and independently determined his ruling was based on the WAC and the Revised Code of Washington. One attorney did tell me, however, that WSU meant to “undo the judge’s interpretation.”

To make permanent the regents’ emergency WAC amendment, the university held public forums as required by law. Few students showed up. However, the university’s Residence Hall Association (a student group) conducted an online survey of more than 500 students, which showed 65 percent of students questioned opposed the police patrols. The survey was not considered as evidence in the public hearings.

Of course, the Board of Regents approved its own amendment to the law and made the change (the definition of “guest”) permanent. Dorm patrols continued, and Washington State University appealed the county Superior Court’s decisions in the lawsuits.

Maybe the university shouldn’t have. Now, the appellate court has sided with the students and has declared dorm patrols illegal at WSU.

The appeals court agreed with Frazier’s “thoughtful” ruling, arguing that “the residents of the sixth-floor share a study area and a bathroom, and they are viewed as a living group independent of residents of other floors. … Because of the intimate nature of activities in the hallway — most remarkably, towel-clad residents navigating the hallways to and from the shared shower facilities — it is reasonable to hold that this area is protected.”

The ruling could have an effect on police patrols through the dorms of the other public institutions in Washington state: the University of Washington, Eastern Washington University, Central Washington University and Western Washington University.

There is (limited) discussion at the S-R’s Huckleberries blog. Of course, there’s the expected former RA who thinks dorm patrols are good because all students get drunk and rape people — no exaggeration there at all </sarcasm>. Then there are citizens who realize constitutional rights are infallible. For example, Sweet & Sour Herb wrote:

I’m surprised that it took that much effort to arrive at a logical solution. If police can’t search a car or home without a warrant, who decided a student didn’t have the same rights as any other tenant in a rented apartment[?]

It’s too bad I couldn’t see this story all the way through as a reporter. Now I’m gone from the Evergreen and not even reporting on civics (I’m in sports). Nevertheless, it’s nice to see the Constitution respected and not have so many people’s lives affected by a legal loophole.

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.

—–

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.

Newspapers did NOT make a huge mistake by giving the content away for free. Duh, look at the Internet. Everything except the porn and the dating services is free.

Journalism CAN be done, and done well, without newspapers. It’s okay if you love newspapers, but they’re really expensive to produce and the audience is abandoning them, as are the advertisers, so it doesn’t help us much to go on talking about newspapers.

Journalism costs a lot of money to do (and especially if it’s done well), because it requires dedicated people. So we can’t pretend that the work will get done for free. It will not.

Citizens and amateurs and well-meaning whistle-blowers, etc., etc., will sometimes commit wonderful acts of journalism. But they will NOT do so reliably, day in and day out, and there aren’t enough of them with the interest, free time, and goodwill to do everything journalists have been doing for about 400 years.

Newspapers were a nice business. Publishers could make the product insanely cheap (remember the penny press), and the advertising would cover the expenses, plus generate fantastic profits. However, this is clearly over. It’s done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.

No one today goes to one spot online as the trusted information source. People don’t even go to five or six. Everyone goes to dozens, hundreds — more. A subscription scheme is therefore not workable. (Update: Many people worldwide are not online. I know that. Many people are illiterate and cannot read newspapers. Let’s move on.)

Future generations will not read newspapers. Ever.

Journalism is vital to a democratic system of government, because without independent busybodies (yes, journalists) sticking their nose into everything, governments and large corporations can cheat, oppress, and starve people. (Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen famously said there has never been a famine in a democratic country because the news about food shortages or distribution failures cannot be hidden and suppressed.)

The business model to sustain journalism in the 21st century has not been seen yet.

Newspaper companies, in particular, seem unlikely to blaze the trail toward a viable business model for journalism.

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.