In a March 14 memo to staff, the Washington Post's Executive Editor, Leonard Downie, outlined several significant changes in the editorial process that will initially affect the main news section, before being applied across the newsroom.

Read more about the specific changes here.

As explained by Slate's Jack Shafer, The Post's A-section pilot program is marking the switch from the 20th century assembly-line editing model to resemble a network (President of Le monde interactif Bruno Patino also evoked this notion).

"Information, which once marched in orderly lines from sources to reporters to editors to mammoth printing presses to fleets of delivery trucks to readers, now caroms every which way in a network," wrote Shafer.

As online editions gain importance and 24-hour news cycles become the norm for newspapers, the press-centric organization of newsrooms, whose end goal is the print press, becomes less adequate.

"We will create truer alignment of editing for the web and for the paper, recognizing that deadlines for many pieces are defined as the earliest moment they can be edited and published online," wrote Downie in the memo.

With the changes, the Post will move editing resources to earlier in the day, merge the night National and Foreign copy desks, and will move the editing of feature stories and other non-breaking news stories to earlier in the day, to avoid the congestion of the evening print deadline.

However, the Post's changes will also lead to "fewer 'touches' on some stories," according to the memo (remember newspaper analyst Alan Mutter causing an uproar after he suggested that editors may simply be getting too expensive for news organizations). Many A-section stories are currently changed and edited by about a half-dozen different editors. In the new structure (in accordance with Mutter's survey about the number of editors necessary to proof a story), the Post will follow a "two touch rule," meaning they will be read by two editors, whether these are assignment editors, assistant editors or night editors. The more complex enterprise and major breaking news stories will continue to have more reads.

According to Washington Post Managing Editor Phil Bennett, this shouldn't lead to decreased editorial quality if done smartly. In fact, too many editing hands can have the same effect. "The more people who touch a story, the less authority and responsibility each take," said Bennett.

Consider the fact that the Post's newsroom employs about 300 reporters, and just nearly as many editors.

Under the new flexible copy system, the aim is to put more "original journalism in play in the Web and the paper."

Source: Slate