• Information centers have already been tested in Des Moines, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Brevard County, Florida and Gannett hopes to re-do other newsrooms in May 2007.
• Reporters on the 24-hour cycle will continue to break stories adding media footage or narrated slideshows to present them on the web site.
• Papers using the information center model also hope to include local readers in the news gathering process so to deliver local news of interest.  
• The project does not involve Gannett’s biggest paper USA Today that is already operating under an integrated newsroom atmosphere.  

By breaking local news on a 24-hour scale, Gannett hopes to give readers the news they want when they want it. It is also adhering to what is arguably the most prevalent content trend in the news industry; refocusing on local.

Gannett will have to be careful in the way it manages the transition is has just imposed on all of its newsrooms. With diminishing newsroom staffs and the ease of Internet linking, local is no doubt the way to go. But if Gannett wants its papers to reconnect with their communities, it should probably give up some of the control it still maintains over the editorial line of these papers for two reasons:

1. If you look at Gannett newspaper websites across the country, most look pretty similar. A company-wide template may have worked in the nascent days of Internet news when companies weren't sure how much to invest in their digital wings, but today they need to be more customized to local needs. Gannett should let individual papers experiment with their own websites so that they figure out the best way in which they can serve their community.

2. In the same way that Gannett papers' digital designers should be free, it also has to realize that each individual community is free to say what it will. Many publishers have come out trumpeting the benefits of inviting readers to participate in the "online conversation" but aren't very sure of how they will handle it, fearing that they will either open themselves up too much, which could lead to abuse, or too little, which could lead to reader disappointment. Therefore, imposing one strict set of citizen contribution guidelines across the company will not work; again individual papers should decide how they will introduce their own communities to their newsrooms.

Sources: Poynter, The Washington Post