San Diego is set to be home to the new Watchdog Institute, which will provide "data-driven investigative journalism" to media outlets.  The venture is being led by Lorie Hearn, a senior editor of the town's only printed daily, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Institute and the paper will collaborate closely.  The details of the project were illustrated by in an email sent by U-T editor Karin Winner to newspaper staff last Friday.  The Institute team is comprised of the director, Hearn, two reporters and a data specialist, who will work closely with the newspaper staff on 'long and short projects'.  

The city of San Diego is a microcosm of the current battle raging between the new and the old for the headlines of local news. As American cities struggle to maintain their regional papers, online initiatives are springing up to fill the gap left in community reporting.  Now California's second largest city is covered by three reporting projects, functioning on very different business models.   

The classic first: the San Diego Union Tribune is the city's only newspaper, which has an apparently bleak future.  Revenue from advertising has dropped by 40 per cent from 2006.  In March, a buyout shop, Platinum Equity, eager for its first publishing venture, announced that it would buy the paper.  Last month the buyers revealed that 200 of Union-Tribune staff would be made redundant.  However, it seems that the cutbacks at the Union-Tribune have not damaged its online edition, which averages 1.3 million unique visitors a month and racked in an estimated $10 million on $18 million in sales last year.

The San-Diego Union-Tribune has made all of its employees sign a confidentiality agreement banning them from recruiting current or former employees to a competitor. The agreement lasts for two years, and means any staffers with the intention to create or join a rival company will be unable to recruit former colleagues.

It comes at a particularly inconvenient moment for any of the 192 laid-off employees who had any ideas of beginning their own venture, especially given that their last day of work was Friday. Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild, says that the Union-Tribune is "asking a lot, especially in this climate".

On December 25 2008, Carbondale-based newspaper the Valley Journal announced that the Christmas edition would be its last. The small Colorado town paper was unable to keep financially afloat and the decision was made to cease printing.

Deprived of the town's final stand-alone newspaper, locals began to miss out on vital community information such as birth and marriage announcements as well as updates on local infrastructure developments. However, it was the belated news of a friend's death that spurred Rebecca Young, Valley Journal's original founder, to take action: "I didn't hear of his death for a couple of weeks," she said. "I was so sad I wasn't at his service."

In response to Hearst Corporation's threats to sell the San Francisco Chronicle, House Speaker and San Francisco representative Nancy Pelosi urged the U.S. Justice Department to consider changing media ownership and anti-trust rules to save the newspaper. She has also arranged a hearing for the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on the survival of newspapers.

Since Hearst announced its intention in February to sell the Chronicle unless it could make cost reductions, the company has been negotiating cutbacks with unions. The California Media Workers Guild, the Chronicle's largest union, has already made concessions, including laying off 150 employees, and Hearst continues negotiations with labor union the Teamsters. Hearst has not yet reached a decision to sell, but under present antitrust definitions, it will be difficult for Hearst to sell the paper to its prospective buyer MediaNews, which owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

Since Hearst Corporation announced its intention to sell its papers or make job cuts, journalists have launched online wikis for both the San Francisco Post-Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in an effort to generate plans to create replacement organizations. A wiki is a web page designed to enable anyone who accesses it to participate by contributing or modifying content. In this case the creators hope the wikis will promote discussion and collaboration to find solutions to the demise of the papers.

Dwell editor Sarah Rich and Wired.com reporter Alexis Madrigal launched the San Francisco Post-Chronicle wiki on February 25 as a "space where people can hash out what daily news might look like if we could start over, start fresh, and build for a digital world." The wiki has over 80 members who can use the forum to make suggestions about distribution models, coverage plans, distribution models, and design.

The San Francisco Chronicle and the paper's largest union announced on Monday 9 March that they had finally come to a formal understanding on contract concessions, which according to directors, are essential for its survival. Just two weeks earlier, Chronicle owner the Hearst Corporation, had threatened to either sell or shut down the newspaper if it was unable to reach an agreement with unions and, in turn, make significant staff cutbacks.

Members from the California Media workers Guild are expected to vote on Thursday on the key changes to the agreement - it is expected that the majority will vote in favour - which have been given the all-clear by the negotiating committee. Included in the new terms is the ability for management to dismiss employees regardless of ranking, the guarantee that all members of staff to lose their jobs, or those who accept voluntary redundancies, will be offered two weeks' severance pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, as well as continued health-care cover, even in the event that the paper falls into administration.

In the small Californian town of Point Reyes Station, a newspaper war that first started in 2007 may finally be coming to an end, if locals get their way.

The Los Angeles Times is to integrate coverage of its arts, entertainment and Hollywood business news. From March 3, reporters working on the paper's Calendar section - overseeing entertainment and leisure news - will be expected to work side by side with the arts and business teams.

Sallie Hofmeister, who was made business editor last May, will assume the new role of assistant managing editor/arts & entertainment to oversee operations. It is understood that, as yet, no new business editor has been appointed.

The Hearst Corporation threatened Tuesday to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle unless it could make cost reductions, including job cuts of union and nonunion employees. Hearst is demanding concessions from its unions, and an anonymous Hearst executive called the statement a "warning" to the unions, asserting that the company does not wish to close the paper.

A statement by Frank A. Bennack Jr., Hearst's vice chairman and chief executive, and Steven R. Swartz, president of its newspaper division said, "Without the specific changes we are seeking across the entire Chronicle organization, we will have no choice but to quickly seek a buyer for The Chronicle or, should a buyer not be found, to shut the newspaper down."

As reported on 30 January, the Los Angeles Times is to reorganise the sections of its paper. More details have now emerged on changes to the paper and to the newsroom, including 70 editorial job cuts.

From 2 March the paper will have four sections rather than five. Local, national and international coverage and opinion will be grouped together into a "main news" section, and will include the California report, followed by The Nation, The World and then Opinion. According to publisher Eddy Hartenstein, this will "combine the stories and reporting of our two most widely-read print sections into one cohesive section." The business section will follow, then the sports section which will also include classified advertising, and the fourth section will be 'Calendar', covering entertainment news. The feature section lineup will remain unchanged. 

The Los Angeles Times is to get rid of its California section, according to LAObserved.com. The paper will no longer have a separate local news front, but local news will be folded inside the front section, which will be reconfigured to downplay national and foreign news.

LAObserved reported that the development was publisher Eddy Hartenstein's decision, and that "unanimous and vocal objections" came from senior editors at the news.

The move appears to be financially motivated: by getting rid of California, the paper can eliminate the expense of a second press run. However, it "will apparently be spun as an enhancement in local coverage." It remains to be seen how the content of the paper will change: if indeed it does involve more local news that could only be a good thing, but it seems unlikely that this will be the case.  

Source: LAObserved via MediaBistro

In a world where customisation is key (our clothes, our cars, our TV channels...), why can't we customise our newspapers?  In fact we can, Mary Lou Fulton explains.  Fulton is Vice President of Audience Development at The Bakersfield Californian, and has discovered a Swiss-German innovation called Personal News, collaboration between SwissPost and Syntops GmbH.

Personal News is currently in its pilot stage, and available in a limited area in Switzerland.  However the idea is this; after registering online you select up to seven newspaper sections that interest you (at the moment, available publications include The Washington Post and Austria's The Standard).  After that, the relevant newspapers send their PDFs to Syntops, who assimilate the PDF into personalised publications and pass them on to Swiss Post, who has them on your doorstep by 11am.  You can even change your newspaper selection up to 7pm the previous night.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The sixth in the series takes a look at outsourcing editorial work to India.

Editorial outsourcing has frequently been presented throughout the Western world in a very negative light. The idea of trained American or European journalists and copy editors losing their jobs to workers across the world in India or Australia who will work for far less has appalled many, and others worry about a drop in quality. But is it really as bad as it sounds, or are people rejecting a good business model in favour of a misplaced emotional attachment to traditional values and a fear of change?

The Editors Weblog spoke to Tony Joseph, CEO and co-founder of Mindworks Global Media, which takes on copy editing, layout, and website optimization for clients around the world, and James MacPherson, Editor of Pasadena.now, who has taken the controversial step of hiring a staff of writers in India for his site which reports on local events in Pasadena, California.    

Mindworks: an extension of client's newsdesk

Tony Joseph explained that what his teams essentially do is become an extension of the client's news desk. Each member of staff only works for one publication as part of a dedicated team, and the team keeps the same hours as the newsroom with which they are working so that they can stay in constant communication via instant messaging, phone and email.  He stressed that his editors only come in after the content has been generated, and after a senior editor has decided where the article will go.

Each member of staff works as one only one publication and stays in constant communication with the client's newsdesk via instant messaging

One of the fears of editors when contemplating outsourcing is that workers will be out of their sight and hence out of their control, and mistakes will be made.  Joseph explained the steps that Mindworks takes to reduce this. Two crucial principles which he described as "absolutely essential" are "zero loss of visibility and zero loss of control". The work of Mindworks' staff is visible to everyone in the newsroom chain, as they access the client's content management system, and Joseph insists that his editors work within the client's existing hierarchies. A six to eight week alignment and training period is used to ensure that the work of the Mindworks team is fully integrated into that of the client. Various indicators are used to track the alignment process, such as headline editing; Joseph explained that in the first week of alignment 25-30% of headlines written by his staff are changed at the client's end, so they analyse and assess why these are being changed and make it part of the training.

Pasadena: doing away with reporters

MacPherson has adopted an unusual strategy for news reporting, one which he compares to the work of an intelligence agency, or newspapers in the 1920s.  He has entirely separated the process of content gathering and writing. In fact, none of the people he employs could be described as 'reporters' in the traditional sense, rather he has 'observers,' who are "boots on the ground" in Pasadena, and 'writers' in India.  The observers attend events and gather data, generally in the form of audio and video clips. Macpherson or his wife then put together an assignment package, containing interview transcripts, video clips, links to web resources or anything else relevant and this is then sent to the writers in India.  The writers save their articles within the site's CMS, where it is checked by management before it is published.  "It would be absurd," commented MacPherson, "to put anything out to the public that had not been proofread here in Pasadena."

Observers are "minimum wage workers," MacPherson explained, and the India-based writers are paid between $7.50 and $10 for each article, which usually takes them under an hour to produce. So compared to paying American journalists, this is undoubtedly a cheaper option.  MacPherson was vehement that he had not hired Indian writers to replace Americans; rather he hired the Indians first, then hired five additional Americans in response to intense criticism, and was forced to let the Americans go when advertising revenue was showing no increases.  Outsourcing writing "has saved our publication," he emphasised, "we wouldn't be a viable business without it."

"It would be absurd to put anything out to the public that had not been proofread here in Pasadena."

Trained journalists

Both Joseph and MacPherson only employ trained journalists for their outsourcing.  Joseph clarified that his recruits are either from India's top journalism schools, or have ample experience in the field: an average of five years amongst junior staff. Many of his staff have worked in the US. MacPherson explained that he found high quality writers via Craigslist and other websites and he has six people employed on a part time freelance basis. One of his Dehli-based workers is actually originally from Orange County, California, not far from Pasadena itself.

Is outsourcing the future?

Tony Joseph is confident that his company will continue to grow: "our engagements are increasing rapidly both in terms of number and size of operations." Currently, Mindworks handles 13 or 14 titles. He believes that the outsourcing concept is "gaining momentum" as newspapers look to make cost-cuts and increase efficiency in this time of crisis.  

MacPherson is considering hiring more writers in response to a "huge influx of advertising," as a result, he believes, of the fact that "small community websites are beginning to supplant print newspapers." He explained that he is developing "a proof of concept website that the industry can look to," and expressed his hope that the methods he develops can be used by small and medium size community newspapers and websites to keep "doing what they are doing and survive." As a general business model, he proposed the idea of having a few veteran journalists and editors, the kind of people who are "the heart and soul of the local newspaper," supported by 'observers' on the ground and writers, researchers and designers in India.  

The Telegraph Media Group was recently the latest major news organisation to announce that it was outsourcing sub editing of some of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph weekend supplements. It is using Pagemasters, an Australian company owned by the Australian Associated Press, which counts Fairfax media among its clients. Telegraph digital editor Edward Roussel explained that his belief that "Newspaper-web companies should focus internal resources on what they do best: creating premium editorial content." Another option is to adopt a form of in-house outsourcing, such as that which Reuters has been operating for several years.  It employs a team of about 100 financial journalists in Bangalore who cover Wall Street news.  Editor in chief David Schlesinger justified the move by explaining that the New York journalists could now be sent out and about to cover more interesting stories. A crucial difference is that these journalists are Reuters staff and their office is a Reuters bureau, but the fact remains that they are reporting on things happening on the other side of the world, and doing so successfully.

If newspaper revenue continues to fall, people will have to look for more ways to cut costs and editorial outsourcing may well become more and more appealing, even if there is initial reluctance at the staff cuts and modified work practices that have to be imposed. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to get the work done wherever it can be done cheapest, as long as the quality is maintained, and doing things as cheaply as possible is increasingly becoming a must. As MacPherson put it, "people keep saying they don't like what I'm proposing, but what's the alternative?"  

Adrian Pratt of the Centre Daily Times is fighting back for newspapers.  Current doomsday predictions are questioning whether the printed press can survive when the Internet apparently has all the answers.  Yes, answers Pratt, who doesn't see why the issue is an either/or question.

It is not just the morbid predictions that Pratt has a problem with; neither does he agree with the implication that nobody needs newspapers anymore.  If newspapers were to die, Pratt believes that we would lose all objectivity - on the Internet, he says 'it seems that reality can be created and spun'.  'Hysterical' predictions about print's imminent demise to him signal the exact reason that we need it to stay, to present facts as facts and for the 'check and balance that news organisations strive to provide'.

While the press around the world is scrambling to integrate their newsrooms to adapt to the digital age, entrepreneur Joshua Karp is aiming to do just the opposite. In an adventurous new media venture, he has started The Printed Blog, a twice-daily free printed newspaper which will publish content from blogs online. 

San Francisco's AsianWeek newspaper announced that it will no longer continue its print edition as of January 2, 2009.  According to New America Media, in a city that one-third of the population is Asian, it leaves a gaping hole in English-language Asian-American coverage.

Janice Lee, deputy executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, believes that "as newspapers become thinner, readers may not notice how the staff cuts are affecting coverage, but community organizations that monitor Asian-American issues will be the first to feel the impact."

Following on from Part 1 of our interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor, John Yemma - where we looked at why the CSM is pursing a digital future and how it prepared its readership base - we now look at what is happening inside the CSM itself. Yemma and his team are restructuring the newsroom, its mindset and the technology powering it. This is the cutting edge of news distribution, and Yemma talks us through how it is preparing itself for uncharted territory.

Restructuring the newsroom - rebuilding the engine

The next big step for this revolutionary new "newspaper" model was in the newsroom itself. How does a traditional daily newspaper restructure its newsroom team to prepare itself for the uncharted digital waters ahead? Yemma is overwhelming positive about undertaking the task of remodelling the newsroom, saying, "We essentially get to sit here and take our car engine apart and put it back together. It was an automobile engine that was built for the print world and now we get to take it apart and rebuild it for the web-first world. That is a tremendously exciting prospect because that means instead of having to serve the print master, which has its own production schedule and arbitrary deadline, we free ourselves, and we are therefore able to be much more immediate and relevant online."

Currently the CSM has one staff orientated to producing the print CSM and a small online staff who repurpose the print content for the online edition. Yemma tells the Weblog that the team is organising itself into a "three pronged operation" with a common editorial model - under the editor, managing editor and includes the national, international and photo editors, and foreign and domestic correspondents, made up of about 70 to 80 people - feeding two smaller divisions. These two smaller divisions are the weekly print desk and the website desk, in each case they will have a small production staff. This differentiation between the magazine and the web is vital, "as print has its own needs to produce a good and valuable product" so it needs a minimal but dedicated staff. In the same way, the web has to have a focused staff to keep the site running and up to date. Yemma reports they will have about 10 people each devoted to the web and weekly. For the weekly this involves a team that will build a coherent weekly magazine - working on articles that will need to have a longer shelf life - and the overall look and feel. Similarly the website staffers will have a dedicated team of technical producers who will work on the entry page to optimise it for web traffic.

Yemma says that it has not been necessary to radically change the shape and layout of the newsroom to push through this change as the common editorial pool will be driving content and this remain largely intact. There will likely be some moving of desks to put the weekly staff together and so forth, but nothing radically different.

New technology to aid the change - democratising the web

The CSM is introducing new content management systems to facilitate this move, a print CMS and a new web CMS. This new system will allow the common editorial pool to directly feed both operations and allow the editorial staff to have much more influence over the website. CSM are using K4 CMS for the print edition and is currently closing the deal for a new CMS for the web edition. The new web system according to Yemma will, "democratises the whole operation of the web so non-technical assignment editors with the common editorial pool can update the website directly." Therefore, the majority of the content will feed from the editorial pool but the focused web team will work on the homepage itself.

Retraining for the digital future

This new business model will not only result in a rebuilding of the newsroom, but a rebuilding of staffers. The CSM has already trained its team for multi-media publications and now it is undertaking a programme for its new future. The team are being trained for the new CMS platforms; however, the new system does not require extensive training, as it is a very user-friendly system. CSM is continually training staffers for the web, as "the future is the web. Everybody knows that."  On the weekly, the assignment editors will have to rethink content to make it move "evergreen" and thus hold up for much longer on the shop shelf, and the content will have to be prepared multiple weeks in advance. The CSM is an analytical newspaper so it is already somewhat prepared for this new style of content, but Yemma says, "it is more rethinking than retraining, a magazine mindset is different to a daily mindset."

Managing staffers through uncertain times

It is exciting times at the CSM, but how do you manage staff through these uncertain times. Yemma says, "Be as open as possible about what you are doing. While things are still being developed and you don't want staff to prematurely publicise, you must be careful about you say, as anything you say in a newsroom can get outside of the newsroom. In fact, I would be disappointed if it didn't; being good gossips is part of their job. I would sometimes say things like "If theoretically we were going to have a weekly and no more daily....", the team would laugh, but I can't really say it as I do not want it to show up on a blog or something. I also tried to give them all the information. I tell you, it is much easier to remember your story when you are honest than when you make things up!"

Yemma reports that he worked with the University of Southern California and the Knight Media Digital Centre, and they performed an anonymous survey of staff. As a result, the staff were able to freely express their opinions about the changes without fear of it damaging their career. The team at USC and Knight compiled all the results and gave this to management, so they could see exactly how their staff were feeling. Yemma reports that the feedback was, "appropriately sceptical, but not overly. Again, I would be disappointed in journalists if they weren't sceptical. I would not expect everyone to be completely on board, but they appear to be largely on board."

Yemma says that that the combination of the town hall meetings, sitting down and talking with the different departments, and the anonymous survey are all necessary when managing a team through change.

Staff sackings

Yemma admits that, like many US newspapers, the CSM will be forced to let staff go. Yemma expects to reduce staffing levels by between 10% and 15%, which translates to 10 to 15 people.

Yemma told the Weblog that the staff cuts will take place in summer of next year and the time between now and then Yemma is publicising these staff cuts to the team so that hopefully levels may be reduced organically with people naturally looking for other jobs on hearing this news. Yemma admits that this will only get them part of the way there with the economy being what it is currently. Yemma is also working closely with the Human Resources department and they plan to offer a redundancy package, outplacement assistance and counselling.

The future

Looking at the radical change that the CSM is pursuing, one cannot help but feel that this type of radical restructuring is exactly the type of thinking what will pull the news industry out of its current slump. The media needs newspapers like the CSM to pursue these new strategies, as the industry has evolved very little in the past 100 years and it needs to start taking some radical risks to ready itself for a radically different future. Whether this model will prove successful, time and the market will only tell; but it is undoubtedly a brave and exciting undertaking.
 

In the changing climate of print publication, publishers have been reducing the number of print editions, cutting back on staff and shrinking newspapers all in an effort to save money.

According to Myles Fuchs, president of Pressmart, "several publishers are evaluating replacing print edition with digital edition on alternate days of the week."

Netherlands-based iRex Technologies is set to unveil the new iRex Reader 1000 today.

The second generation of e-readers aims to bring E-ink display technology to the world of business.  The E-ink display uses real pigment rather than liquid crystal displays.  It also uses a fraction of the energy, extending the battery life to between 60 and 80 hours.

The new iRex Reader offers a 10.2-inch (diagonal) E-inkscreen that is designed to work with any file format.  Consumers will also have the option, for an additional cost, to add a writable screen, wi-fi, Bluetooth, and a 3G cell connection for downloading documents.

California-based Plastic Logic has also introduced an e-reader prototype that is 8.5 by 11 inches, with an E-ink touch-screen, no thicker than a legal pad and a battery life of up to two weeks.

Plastic Logic's chief marketing officer, Joe Eschbach wants to focus on the business market, "The opportunity on the business side is much larger than on the leisure reading side.  The average person only reads two or three books a year.  But the same person probably reads several thousand pages of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files at work."

Sources:  Ifra, Forbes

The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, was published on Wednesday without any Associated Press copy.  At this stage, it is still unclear as to why the paper chose to run without AP.  Sources close to the newspaper have pointed towards either a protest over AP's controversial new rates that began in January, or that it is a test to see if the paper can run without AP copy, the world's largest newsgathering source, as a means to cut-costs.  


Other dailies, such as The Bakersfield Californian, The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, The Post Register of Idaho Falls, the Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World of Washington have notified AP of their plans to discontinue the news service.

Paul Colford, AP spokesman, released a statement to Editor and Publisher, "We understand that The Star-Ledger and the media industry as a whole are facing difficult financial challenges and that in this environment many newspapers are experimenting with news priorities and with their presentation of news. The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including The Star-Ledger, to determine their needs and to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to them and their readers. Member Choice, the content and pricing initiative rolled out this summer, was in fact developed as a response to member requests for simpler content and pricing options."


Sources:  Editor and Publisher, Poynter, Buzz Machine

See Also:
US regionals turn away from AP to focus on local reporting
US: In-depth news service to enter the market in 2009
AP offers members free access to Outsell Inc.
US: Cancellation notices and disagreements weight on AP

Californian paper the Orange County Register announced that all of its daily news articles are now available through Amazon's Kindle reader.

"We can't say the summers are slow anymore," Executive Editor/Interactive Meredith Artley wrote in a memo.

Latimes.com, the website for the Los Angeles Times, surpassed its previous record for page views (120 million), with an astonishing 127 million page views for July, and a record-breaking 19 million unique users.

The traffic surge can be attributed both to the conscious effort to focus resources online, including new features like the launch of a science-fiction blog and stories like "Big Burn" - a five part series covering growing California wildfires; and to current events in July, including a 5.4-magnitue earthquake that hit Southern California on July 29, that likely drove traffic to the site.

"We were on track to break that May record by a few million page views, and then the earthquake happened, pushing us even further ahead," said Artley.

Artley also added the paper is becoming more adept in using technology and the web to its advantage. "Latimes.com keeps getting better at SEO (search engine optimization), which means our stories are ranking higher in Google and other search engines. We are also performing better on sites like Digg.com. All that adds up to more exposure and more readership than ever before."

Source: Editor & Publisher

The Sacramento Bee plans on revealing its revamped look in over a week. The redesign includes a more compact paper with new typefaces and a new nameplate, reported Sacbee.com.



Local investigative reporting, California events and health care will all get more emphasis in the new Bee.

Overall, the size of the story content will not change, aside from the obituary section that will be in larger type and shift to a six-column grid.

The makeover will also feature the addition of daily color comics, doubled stock listings and increased local coverage.

Top stories will be summarized on the front page, which will make the paper easier to navigate, Sacbee.com wrote.

"Our Region", a regional section with a business page (see image above), will be added, including both national and international coverage.

A lifestyle section featuring topics like Books & Media, Food & Wine and Style will be added as well.

The Sunday edition will have a new section on travel and arts, as well as remodeled opinion pages.

Source: Sacbee.com

Buzzmachine blogger Jeff Jarvis has come up with a self-admittedly "utter bullshit" plan for newsroom economics, or how to invest in newsroom staff, in an attempt to find the ideal distribution of roles amidst shrinking newsrooms.

Based on a newsroom with 100 staffers cut to 70, here are some of his main proposals:

- cut back on international reporting
- increase investigative reporting by 50% (1.5 reporters instead of one)
- increase beat reporting. "To me, though, the real heart of value in a newsroom is beat reporting. That's where the watchdogging comes in; that's where stories worth investigating often emerge."
- the number of photojournalists remains stable, but keeping in mind that most journalists will become multimedia-skilled.
- entertainment and lifestyle "can be handled by community and links."
- Subeditors don't entirely vanish (-80% though), but their role is to transfer skills to other staffers and the community.
- Increase local sports, as for any local features (for local papers).

Perhaps the most interesting new ideas concern new editorial positions revolving around community management. Jarvis proposes to that the budget equivalent to 10 fulltime staffers be devoted to a blog network of professional and amateur journalists. According to him, the end cost would be nil because ad revenues would be shared with bloggers.

The key element in this emphasis on a community network is the addition of seven "collaboration editors" to manage and guide this network of pro-am staffers. This notion is key in trying to develop Web 2.0 journalism (see the recent examples of The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times and The Bakersfield Californian).

Newspaper editors might be less enthused by the idea of cutting back almost entirely on national reporting, sports columnists, lifestyle reporting and opinion writers.

View Jarvis' full newsroom distribution proposal by clicking below. He has also made available a collaborative spreadsheet where editors can submit their own thoughts on the 'ideal' distribution of roles.

Source: Buzzmachine through IFRA Executive News Service