US: WaPo online staffers wedge way into print

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on October 5, 2007 at 10:29 AM

The Washington Post’s print and online staffers remain physically separated – the print staff works in downtown DC while the online staff is located in Virginia. But more and more online journalists are working their stories into the print paper.

“Readers are seeing more stories in the newspaper under the bylines of writers from the staff at Washingtonpost.com,” reported the Washingtonian.

Chris Cillizza started as an online staffer writing the Fix blog, and now sits in the print newsroom. The articles of Paul Kane, who covers politics for washingtonpost.com, appear on the front page of the paper. Same goes for Mary Ann Akers, who originally came washingtonpost.com to write the Sleuth blog.

“When I write for the paper,” says Akers, “I wind up getting calls and e-mails from readers who don’t necessarily read many blogs. The Web is the future, but there’s a core group of loyal newspaper readers. Some of them have started reading my blog because they’ve seen my byline in the paper.”

“It’s not a de facto merger,” says Washingtonpost.com editor Jim Brady. “We’re just working together in a more public way.”

This is echoed in a recent interview with Le Figaro: non-integrated newsrooms don’t prevent print-online cooperation. Take a look here at part 1 of our series on non-integrated newsrooms.

Source: Washingtonian through Media Bistro