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The American newspaper publisher Gannett plans to get rid of somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 positions, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The job cuts will hit the company's 80 local dailies, rather than USA Today.

Former Gannett editor and reporter Jim Hopkins had previously predicted up to 4,500 slashed jobs on his Gannett Blog. He now says there will likely be 600 actual layoffs as a result of the restructuring, naming July 8 as the axe date.

The Apple iPhone 3GS, premiered yesterday at Apple Inc's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, boasts an array of important new features for the newspaper industry and journalism at large. Perhaps most pertinent is the development that content can now be purchased from within iPhone applications. This new functionality presents newspapers with the opportunity to employ subscription and micro-payment structures to monetize the delivery of their content to their mobile phone readership.

Given the recent developments in the newspaper industry, such as the 'secret' meeting held in Chicago organised by the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how to monetise online content, it seems the question is no longer whether papers will begin charging online, but when, and how. And with regards to the iPhone 3GS, will they allow readers to continue to access their content for free, maybe making it harder to shift them to a pay structure in the future, or will newspapers seize this opportunity and begin charging readers as soon as the new OS is released?

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.

Newspaper industry executives met yesterday in Chicago to discuss monetising online news and how they can protect their online content. The meeting was organised by the Newspaper Association of America and according to an agenda obtained by the Associated Press, was called "Models to Lawfully Monetize Content."

A statement from NAA president John F. Sturm appearing on Nieman Lab said that the group "discussed business topics such as protection of intellectual property rights and approaches to the Congress and Administration to address these and other issues." Apparently those present "listened to executives from companies representing various new models for obtaining value from newspaper content online" and "shared success stories in driving new revenue to their newspapers products."

UK-based PageSuite, a software development company which creates digital publications, has come up with a new software tool that will enable readers of newspapers on the web to search for key words and phrases. The search results appear instantly highlighted.

Currently, such a function is possible with the website versions of a newspaper, but few electronic titles offer the option. Outside the UK, El País' English-language version, produced in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune, is a good example of a newspaper e-edition where this service is already available.

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".

A special report by Editor & Publisher has examined the situation which a growing number of American newspaper publishers are finding themselves in: bankruptcy. Amongst those that have filed for Chapter 11 in the US are the Tribune Co., the Sun-Times Media Group and the Journal Register Co.

During this difficult economic period, bankruptcies are increasingly common - in the US, they are up 38% when compared year on year. However, the troubles of the American newspaper industry in general add to the uncertainty surrounding newspaper applications for Chapter 11.

This June the Chicago Tribune will launch a new website, Chicago Now, which will combine social media, e-commerce, blogs, news content, and advertorials to "connect Chicagoans through a network of niche sites." According to its promotion video, the project will be "Huffington Post meets Facebook for Chicago" and aims to attract new local audiences who will engage with each other as well as advertisers.

Chicago Now does not intend to replace ChicagoTribune.com, which will continue, though it will replace the Tribune's web site for RedEye, its free daily targeted to a young urban audience. The new site's goal is to build an authentic and engaged local community quickly and to secure 35% of local web traffic.

The Baltimore Sun reports today that it has cut nearly a third of its newsroom staff as the company reorganizes. Newspapers all over the US have been making cutbacks, and while staff cuts are old news, what is different about the Sun is that it claims its cuts will not only help it survive the economic crisis but succeed in it.

Job cuts occurred in nearly every area of the Sun's newsroom, according to the Newspaper Guild, including top editors, news photographers, critics, columnists, sports reporters, copy editors, page designers, and graphic artists. A spokeswoman says 61 staffers were laid off. The Sun says the layoffs are part of an effort to restructure its newsroom.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations has released its figures for US newspapers, for the six months ending March 31st - and they've created quite a stir. Data for 395 American newspapers was recorded, displaying an overall decline in circulation of 7.4% compared with the same period in 2007-08. Of the 25 top newspapers in the US, all bar one have seen drops in circulation.

It is the Wall Street Journal which has bucked the trend and managed an overall increase, albeit of just 0.6%. The WSJ has recently been displaying signs of a change in its editorial direction, leaning towards a slightly more mainstream news role and increased competition with newswires via Dow Jones. In a recent interview, managing editor Robert Thomson explained the WSJ's success was in part due to the demise of some US newspapers, which "creates a tremendous opportunity for us to gain readers".

The Chicago Tribune laid off 53 employees on Wednesday as a part of a paper-wide cost cutting effort and in response to changes in the media business model. Editor Gerould Kern announced the cuts, which leave the newsroom staff at about 430, in a memo sent to staff. The paper's parent company Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in December, as did that of its competitor the Chicago Sun-Times at the end of March.

"Today we begin a reorganization of the Chicago Tribune newsroom that will focus us more clearly on our core mission and prepare us for the economic recovery when it comes," Kern's memo said. "We are making the leap to a newsroom structure that we believe is sustainable barring further significant declines in advertising revenue," he continued. "While some are leaving now, others will join the newsroom over time as we invest in new skills necessary to grow in the future."

In terms of content changes, Kern expressed an intention to expand local news, and to establish a watchdog unit to build on consumer and investigative coverage. It also appears that the paper is going to concentrate largely on its web and mobile products: expanding digital operations, to support the goal of digital growth as the Chicago market's top news and information source. Production is being streamlined with a new will combine copy editing, page design and photo editing.

Source: Chicago Tribune, Associated Press

On Tuesday the Obama administration rejected the newspaper industry's request to change antitrust and media ownership laws to allow newspapers to compete with the threat posed by the Internet, reports the Associated Press. "We do not believe any new exemptions for newspapers are necessary," said US Justice Department's Carl Shapiro, an assistant attorney general for economics.

The hearing took place before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy and was prompted partly by an appeal to the Justice Department from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reexamine antitrust laws. Newspaper industry representatives complain that existing laws do not consider newspapers' new advertising competition with bloggers and online news.

Last week, Monty Cook - who took over as editor of the Baltimore Sun in January - led a press and public policy seminar at John Hopkins University. During the seminar, entitled "News and Content First: Protecting what matters most," Cook took the opportunity to tell the audience that his newspaper is "not in decline," before adding "it's in transition."

According to the Baltimore Brew, Cook began the seminar by going over the demise of the newspaper industry, mentioning some of the dead or soon-to-be-dead titles, but did not include his own paper among the list.

Owner of Tribune Co., Sam Zell, said to Bloomberg television that privatizing the company was a mistake. He acquired it in 2007 in an $8.2 billion deal, which resulted in an enormous debt as the company's revenue plummeted. "I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position," said the reputed top real estate executive.

Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008 and The Sun-Times Media Group Inc filed at the end of March. Earlier this year the Star Tribune Holdings Corp., Journal Register Co. and Philadelphia Newspapers LLC also filed for bankruptcy protection, covering several regions of the United States.

The Sun-Times Media Group Inc filed for bankruptcy protection last week and is searching for ways to bring the profitability back up, including potentially ending some of their daily suburban newspapers.

The papers that may be cut are the Gary Post-Tribune, Southtown Star, Naperville Sun, Beacon News, Elgin Courier News, Herald News and Lake County News-Sun, reports Chicago Business. The Chicago Sun-Times will continue printing every day.

As more and more readers get their news online, the problem that news providers are all contemplating, according to Eduardo Hauser of the DailyMe, is, "How do we address the overwhelming amount of content on the web and how do we deliver it to the right audience?" People today have too little time to sift through the vast amount of content they have access to online, and as a result, many different services are springing up which provide some kind of filtering. Hauser and his team decided that personalisation was the route to follow, and the DailyMe was founded: a site that offers users the chance to easily locate the sort of news that they want to read, and to read it within the site, as content is licensed.

How does it work?

Registered users are invited to choose what sort of stories they are interested in, and once they have started to use the site it will track their preferences with the aim of providing them with appropriate recommendations and advertising, through what Hauser described as "dynamic personalisation." DailyMe offers three different strands of articles: Top News, which is the same selection of breaking stories for all users, DailyMe, which allows users to select their news preferences by topic and Daily We, which is community-driven, and allows users to rate stories. Within the DailyMe section, users can choose from subjects such as world news, science, travel, or industry-specific. The DailyWe area both charts the most read stories and gathers reader feedback. Registered users can assign one of six different descriptions to rate a story: infuriating, amazing, important, sad, uplifting or odd/funny: "six emotions consistent with people's reactions when they read the news," according to Hauser. So as well as looking through the most viewed news, users can browse the most important, or the most infuriating stories.

News is sorted largely by topic rather than by source: so readers easily compare many different stories in the fields that interest them. DailyMe licenses and "processes" about 10,000 stories a day, which come from 500 different newspapers and wires, such as the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, the Seattle Times and the Detroit Free Press. "We have chosen newspapers because we go after an audience that is loyal to brands," Hauser stressed, adding that he believes the target audience appreciates the "value of professional structured content." He also stressed that DailyMe's sources are not chosen with any political angle in mind.

Limited editorial agenda

Due to the overwhelming amount of news and ways to find it online, Hauser believes that "the editorial role has come under enormous pressure and may be structurally unable to handle that demand." Relying on people alone is not enough any more, and stories in the personalised section of the site are chosen algorithmically DailyMe's proprietory algorithms. However, an editor's hand undoubtedly remains important, and the DailyMe's editorial team do pick what appears in the top news section, and which articles appear higher up.

Problems with personalisation?

One recent criticism of the personalisation trend, as voiced by New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof, stems from the very idea that it allows people to focus primarily on just the news that they want to read. Is it responsible to support people going online just to look at entertainment news, for example, and skip politics and current affairs altogether? Hauser agreed that on principle, it is "probably better for people to be exposed to diverse perspectives on a variety of topics." However, he pointed out, "people have always been selective about their media," it is not just the Internet or personalisation services that have led to this; people have always skipped articles, or changed television channels. There are still opportunities for news discovery within DailyMe, and the Top News section includes articles on all topics. Hauser explained that as there are recommended links alongside each story, the site encourages readers to branch out. "We don't necessarily see personalisation as an end point. We see it as the starting point," he clarified. He believes that it makes sense to start with news within your fields of interest from many different sources, rather than "news chosen by someone else based on a common denominator of an undetermined audience."

Licensing not linking

Hauser identified several main motivations behind the decision to license newspaper content and host it on the site, rather than just offering links that send users away. Firstly, because the DailyMe is targeting an audience of 'integrators' as identified by a Pew Research Center report last year on the US audience for domestic news. This section of news readers are more accustomed to staying within one domain rather than jumping around between sites, so DailyMe intends to offer "a deeper experience, one that drives greater engagement," and allows readers to get all their news within the site. Also, for the purpose of providing an effective personalisation service which learns from readers' habits to make "the best possible content recommendations" it is necessary to keep people within the site. This is also crucial for making money from targeted advertising, as the more you know about your users, the more precise the targeting can be.  

Another aspect of licensing was the desire to enter the news market as a friend to publishers, rather than a foe. Hauser pointed out, correctly, that "we need to find a way for journalists to be properly compensated for their work," and paying the content providers evidently helps to do that. This is in contrast to many aggregation services, which newspapers often blame for loss of revenue due to the fact that people use these sites just to read headlines and do not bother to click through to the paper's actual site.

Adding to advertising

Hauser's original business model was based purely on advertising. As it is hoped that people spend a considerable amount of time on the site, an advertising model seemed appropriate. However, due to the decline in online advertising rates, Hauser and his team have realised that unless rates recover swiftly, the site will not become profitable in the next two years. So at the end of February the DailyMe started talking to newspaper publishers about licensing its technology in order to give them the ability to "deploy content personalisation and recommendation products on their own sites." As yet, Hauser could not give details of which publishers were in talks.

The future

DailyMe is in the process of developing a third version of the product, which will be "more comprehensive" in the way it applies the learning process by which it makes recommendations to users. Within the DailyWe section of the site, users will be offered the tools and environment to aggregate the best content they can find on particular topics. Having founded the company in 2006, Hauser is "happy with the product from a technological perspective" and added that funding is currently sufficient. The challenge, however, is developing a strong audience. At present, the site has 20,000 registered users, and although many more visit it, the base must grow considerably before advertising revenue will truly take off.

DailyMe has considerable potential: delivering news by topic from many sources will certainly appeal to many readers, and paying for the content that is offered keeps publishers and journalists happy. Obstacles to widespread adoption of the service however, may well arise from many people's innate reluctance to provide information about themselves or to allow their activity to be tracked.

The International Herald Tribune's website is no more, but is being rebranded as 'The Global Edition' of the New York Times (global.nytimes.com) in a move that is part of a wider attempt to further integrate the publications. The new joint site "combines the international voice of the IHT, the breadth and depth of The New York Times's international journalism and the digital expertise and reach of NYTimes.com," according to the a note from IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, to provide 24-hour coverage "from a truly global perspective." The global home page retains the IHT logo.

IHT.com users will be automatically redirected to the new Global Edition, and buttons on the home pages of both the US and global editions will allow readers to navigate easily between the two. There is also a mobile site: mobile.nytimes.com/global, and readers will be able to sign up for a 'Today's Headlines Global Edition' email service which is delivered twice a day, to coincide with both Asian and European mornings. Plans to combine the websites were announced last summer, along with a redesign of the IHT print edition.

The LA Times and Chicago Tribune have revealed that they will begin to combine their foreign operations. Both publications are owned by the Tribune Co. and according to an LA Times press release, the move is in order "to provide Tribune papers and websites with the enterprising overseas coverage that has brought such distinction to both news organizations".

For the most part the joint operation will be run from Los Angeles where the majority of editorial staff are currently based, but in consultation with editors from the Chicago Tribune and other sister newspapers. The operation's staff will consist of Times and Tribune correspondents "strategically based around the world, who will emphasize original reporting delivered in a unique voice for print and online audiences".

In an article published on US news magazine site Time.com, Douglas A. McIntyre partner of 24/7 Wall St industry analysts, lists the next ten major American newspapers likely to collapse, or at the very least, end its print operations.

In a sombre analysis of the nation's struggling papers, McIntyre names 24/7 Wall St's predictions for the next ten papers likely to shut down, each one affecting a major city. Included in this list is the San Francisco Chronicle, whose threats by parent Hearst Corporation to close the paper have been carefully monitored by the Editors Weblog. The Philadelphia Daily News and Minneapolis Star Tribune were also among those featured.

E-reader start-up Plastic Logic has announced that it has struck deals with the Financial Times, USA Today, and LibreDigital, which offers electronic versions of the The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications on the Internet.

Plastic Logic is planning to produce an electronic reader that will be about the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper: larger than that of an Amazon Kindle or a Sony Reader, and therefore potentially more suited to reading newspaper content. The e-reader should go on the market in 2010, and the company is planning to create an online store for customers to purchase their newspapers and books, as other device makers have done. It is being marketed as an e-reader "for business," rather than pleasure.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog and the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog, 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. This week, we looked at the Tampa Tribune, which has radically revamped its newsroom, and some examples of Editorial Outsourcing, a trend which many news publications have adopted. Below, editors from around the world share their own thoughts about EDITORIAL OUTSOURCING.

AFRICA
Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch Nigeria
Editorial outsourcing is not an immediate problem for Punch, but we're already looking down the road to that moment. We think that before we reach that bridge, regular and forward-looking review of content (especially print content), and the continuous evaluation of job schedule of journalists across platforms might help us keep cost down and decide how best to apply our resources.

LATIN AMERICA
Marcelo Rech, General Product Director, RBS Group, Brasil
Due to labor laws in Brazil, it's difficult to outsource staffers, but I think the ideal newsroom would be the one with a "hard nucleus", made up of editors, assistant editors, page designers, some videophotographers and some reporters, and a broader staff of reporters, columnists and image producers working under specific tasks. In this way, we could have more diversification, flexibility and cost managing.

In my view, the newsroom looks like a tree: the trunk is the team of editors, the branches are the assistant editors and page designers - those are the structure of the newsroom, and must be very close to the general concepts for the product.

The leaves and fruits are the reporters and columnists. A tree without a healthy and strong trunk would die, but in the end are the fruits what people pay for. 

EASTERN EUROPE
Roman Gallo, Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group
First, newspapers must target their product as specifically as possible. They shouldn't be developing products or writing articles which others could do better. To complement this strategy, newspapers should have a completely integrated newsrooms with skilled and competent staff that can produce material across all platforms. With a staff like this, editorial functions will not have to outsourced.

Newspapers can also tap into the community of Readers for content to supplement that of their newsroom. If the newsroom is looking for extra help, this can be a better means of gathering content than outsourcing because the readers are immediately familiar with the community.

WESTERN EUROPE
Espen Egil Hansen, Editor-in Chief, Verdens Gang Multimedia, Norway
 I don't think the key question should be "How to do more with less", but rather does the new technology and new market situations give us some new opportunities?

In VG Multimedia we spend some time and energy studying two companies outside the traditional media business that might inspire some change: Apple and Ryanair.

Can we learn from Steve Jobs and his Iphone?
Not only is the Iphone in itself a great product, in what appears as a stroke of genius Apple opened up, enabling everyone to create applications for the phone. Teenagers, programmers, and creative people around the globe develop great products for the Iphone - without pay. With no cost for Apple there has been added more than 15 000 applications to the company's Appstore   and they have already been downloaded more than 500 million times! For every new application and for every new download the value of the Iphone rises for the end users. And best of all, from Apple's perspective, since the company controls the distribution of these applications it gets a cut of every sale.

In Norway the 15 year old Knut Ørland has outperformed media companies developing the most popular TV-guide for Iphones. From his boy's room in a little city on the west coast of Norway he launches Iphone applications and earns a profit most teenagers can only dream about. For every sale through the Appstore he gets to keep 70%. The boy is of course happy, Apple is happy because it gets to keep the 30% and the end user is happy because the product is great. By the way - there is no need to buy a newspaper or go online to check what's on TV right now. Not all Iphone applications turn into a success, but if it does, Apple is guaranteed its share. Smart!

Media's approach to product developing has by contrast always been this: We want to do everything ourselves. If we are to make a new product - let's say a new travel section in the Sunday paper - our approach is always more journalists and more purchased freelance material. Smart?

Electronic media is by nature communication and cooperation. If we don't start to understand this we will be forced to ask the same question over and over in the years to come: How can we do more with less?

Can we learn from Ryanair?
While most airlines focus on how to charge as much as possible for each ticket, the low cost airline Ryanair has great success with going the opposite way: How can we charge less? The company compensates lower fares by turning what used to be costs, into new revenue streams. While the tickets are cheap you have to pay extra for food, baggage or boarding the plane early to pick your favorite seat. Together with a long range of cost cuts and commission based products like care rental and hotels, Ryanair has used this approach to become one the most profitable airlines in Europe.

The question newspapers should be asking themselves is: Are there costs in our company we can turn into revenue?


NORTH AMERICA
Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail, Canada
We have not experimented, at least not yet, with very much in the way of editorial outsourcing of layouts I a major way.  We remain very interested in the experiences of others but a bit wary.
Of course, to some extent, we have always outsourced.  We tap the talents of a large number of freelance contributors, some of them highly-specialized.  We also have a few standardized pages, such as our comics and puzzles page and our stock listings, produced outside the newsroom. But we haven't ventured into outsourcing the kind of dynamically designed, valued added and pages that speak to our brand message on a given day.
In the opinion field, we tend to go outside in order to compliment our own columnists with more specialized contributors. In other areas, such as multi-media, we tend to use agencies for more commoditized news, thus freeing up staff journalists to focus on the value added material that distinguishes and differentiates us. Thus we have a small Globe Docs unit, which works with our staff to produce high quality video companion pieces to major print features, and sometimes vice versa. Our award-winning Talking to the Taliban is one such example.

Terry Eberle, Executive Editor and Vice President, Fort Myers News Press, Florida
We are using more freelancers and are partnering with other newspapers for certain sports coverage we once produced ourselves. We also are talking about partnerships with television stations to see what makes sense there. As we look for ways to cover more with fewer resources we must keep in mind that the quality of our information can not decline. We must guard against taking shortcuts that hurt readers and our image.

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 fifth in the series takes a look recently revamped Tampa outlets the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA 8. 

Media General's Tampa news outlets have been leaders on the path towards integrated newsrooms for years. Now, as the financial situation at American newspapers weakens, the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and television station WFLA 8 have used essential cuts in staff numbers and resources as an opportunity to go a step further in creating a completely converged newsroom. On November 10 last year, the 'Interactive Newsroom' went into operation, in which all three platforms, print, online and TV, were further combined.  

It is unclear exactly how many staff have been let go, but senior editor Dennis Joyce told the Editors Weblog that so many empty desks were being removed that there was "plenty of room to play football in our newsroom." He described the staff cuts as a "sad development", but as audience editor Susan Newman commented, there is not much time to dwell on missing colleagues as staff still have to get their product out each day.  And Joyce stressed that the developments were "far more" than just a cost-cutting measure: they would have been "a good idea anyway."

Change happened fast. Joyce said that he had "never seen the likes of it", and estimated that the newsroom had been transformed in about 30-45 days. The physical layout has changed, and many staff have been assigned different responsibilities.  Two floors of the news centre are being used for newsgathering, with print editors and television reporters sitting next to each other.

Separation and elimination

The crucial principle underlying the changes is the separation of content generation and distribution within the newsroom structure, while eliminating duplication in both reporting and delivery of news.

Reporters and editors have been divided into 5 work groups known as "circles" that include people from across disciplines and platforms. The 5 circles are:

1. Deadline (the largest)
2. Grassroots
3. Personal Journalism
4. Watchdog
5. Data (the smallest)

Part of the Deadline circle is the "Live Desk", which is the 'air traffic control centre' for the whole newsroom; it knows where all reporters and crews are at all times and what they are working on, so that it can reallocate resources accordingly. The smaller the team, the better, Joyce explained: whenever possible one or two staffers produce content for all platforms. For instance, photo and video operations have been completely converged and all staff now carry "both weapons".  Sometimes print-based reporters are also sent off with a camera too. 

Content then moves to the six "audience editors", new positions created during the last round of reorganisation. The audience editors are comprised of two print experts, two online experts and two television experts. Susan Newman, one of the six who has 22 years of television experience, defined their role as "managing the content and process in the systems to make sure that all of the platforms are publishing content that is relevant for the audience." The group studies audience metrics and "anything else that measures how content is moving online," to establish how people want different types of information at that moment. Assigning resources to stories and deciding on follow-ups is all part of audience editor responsibility, and they make sure that content is not duplicated unnecessarily from platform to platform.

The new audience editors "make sure that all of the platforms are publishing content that is relevant to the audience"

 
Finally, the three platform specific groups of 'finishers' are in charge of taking the content produced by the five circles and allocated by the audience editors, and preparing it for distribution on to the various platforms. As Newman put it, they are "those who have to get the product to the place it needs to be" (copy desk, designers, online producers, TV producers and anchors). Finishing groups must also collaborate to ensure that relevant content is available to other groups in an accessible format. For example, the television group would take a broadcast piece and extract quotes and stills to send to the print group. 

The organisation of the newsroom's day has also been modified, with a new, cross-platform content meeting taking place at 7am each day, at the time when a "huge contingent" of reporters arrive. During this meeting, editors produce outlines of content that will be in the print edition the following day and on television that evening, and make sure they are taking advantage of their online audience during the key 7am-4pm period. Previously, this outline evolved gradually during the morning. The last editorial meeting of the day is at 3.30pm, when the focus truly switches to the following day's work.
 
Newman emphasised the greater efficiency within the newsroom as levels of senior management have been eliminated. "When you do want to make a change you can make it happen so much more quickly than before because there are fewer people who need to sign off on decision making." The audience editors report directly to the news leadership group, who are the three managing editors for print, online and television.

Increasingly local focus

In conjunction with reforming management of content, the focus of content has also come under scrutiny. Local news coverage is on the up. Joyce explained, "Local is pretty much where we believe our future is. The unique content that will make us valuable to our audience increasingly appears to be local news, as the audience will not get that anywhere else. That is definitely our focus." Newman added that if they do cover national news, they find the "local spin on it." She mentioned the special community pages on TBO.com for which they do "micro-reporting" in different Tampa communities and encourage user-generated content. The website allows comments on every story, and reporters sometimes use information conveyed in comments to spark further story development.

"Local is pretty much where we believe our future is, as the audience will not get that anywhere else."

Enthusisastic staff response

Reactions from staff have been generally positive, Joyce explained. "Had it been an undertaking done outside these economic times we probably would have had more angst. But when you consider the amount of staff reductions and layoffs that we have had recently, a news centre reorganization is seen in an entirely different light, people are now happy to have jobs." When it comes to integration, the group is already "way ahead" when it comes to accepting that breaking news online is essential, and people have been trained for years to learn the skills needed for working on other platforms. Newman added that people are adapting well: "There isn't a journalist who works for this company who doesn't understand that it's not about being platform specific anymore."

Success?

The obvious question that springs to mind is: is this new system going to work? Can a newsroom compensate for staff cuts and diminishing resources by reorganising? Other local newspapers are undoubtedly watching closely to see whether they should follow suit. According to Newman, "we are doing better content now, and we are not missing things," stressing that the newsroom is "giving the audience the content in the way that it will be able to consume it." However, the Tampa outlets are in a relatively "unique" situation, Joyce emphasised, as they consist of the number one local newspaper in the area, and the number one local television station. So compared with a print publication which is frantically trying to train staff to produce video for its website, they already have access to top videographers from the television side.  In light of current financial problems across the industry, maximising on available resources and avoiding overlap definitely makes sense.

One potential problem could be that the generalised nature of content gathering risks eliminating any possibility of the three publications having a unique voice. But if the finishers are good enough this should not be a problem. It is too early to offer any kind of verdict on the Tampa outlets' forward-thinking approach, but their willingness to innovate and make the necessary changes to make the best use of what they have shows that they have sufficient ambition and determination to survive.  As Executive Editor Janet Coats put it, "we are here to stay."

According to several reports, Minneapolis' Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 due to falling advertising sales.  The Star Tribune joins the Tribune Co. (owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times) that filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 8.

The Star Tribune listed its assets between $100 million and $500 million and debt of between $500 million and $1 billion, Bloomberg reports.  Ad sales have fallen by $75 million in two years and circulation has fallen by 6.7 percent in a six-month period at the end of 2008.

The Tribune Co. is considering buying its foreign and international coverage from the Washington Post, reported the Wall Street Journal, in a deal that could mean the closure of dozens of Tribune bureaus.  

According to the WSJ, talks between Tribune and the Post Co. have been under way for more than a month but no agreement has been reached.  The move could save the Tribune Co. millions of dollars a year.  As the company is currently operating under bankruptcy protection, this sounds particularly appealing.  

Other papers are also looking at cost-saving measures for the coverage of news outside their territories.  The New York Daily News has decided to use new international news website GlobalPost for its foreign news coverage, and according to the Gannett Blog, the company is testing a service to replace some Associated Press news stories on websites of its 84 US community newspapers.  The idea is that the AP stories would be replaced by stories from Gannett-owned USA Today, saving up to a million dollars a year.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Gannett Blog

According to a report published by the Pew Research Center, the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year in the United States.

The report found that Internet usage surged from 24% to 40% in a year, overtaking the 35% who rely on newspapers, the Guardian reports.

The New York Times reports that the change "does not represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers," but rather a "near-doubling" of the number of people that name the Internet as their primary news source.  Newspapers actually gained a percentage point in popularity over the last year.