Plans have been set in motion to integrate the newsrooms of Reuters Group PLC (RTRSY) and Thomson Corp. (TOC), in anticipation of Thomson's £8.7 billon ($17.5bn) takeover of Reuters.

A memo from Reuters managers to employees indicates that Thomson may require some staff to reapply for their positions. A more recent message from John Reid-Dodick, global head of human relations for Future Reuters, warns that not all positions will be advertised to staff.

"With literally hundreds of appointments to be made over the coming months, (it is) not practical," for all positions to be advertised, Reid-Dodick explained in his memo.

Four key editorial positions in the news and information division have already been appointed.

The staff changes have provoked anger amongst U.K.'s National Union of Journalists, who called last month for a strike over Reuter's unwillingness "to hold meaningful negotiations over changes to journalists' job roles."

Source: Morningstar through IFRA Executive News Service

Is it possible - and viable - for newspapers to deliver customized print editions nowadays?

The idea of customized papers has long been on the minds of editors and publishers, since these would increase the value of the paper both editorially, by making content more relevant, and more profitable thanks to targeted advertising.

Until now, the main hurdle to fully personalized papers has been their costs of production. Not anymore though.

According to Digital Deliverance founder and technology guru Vin Crosbie, "unknown to almost all newspaper people who work with new media (and unknown even to the most newspaper people who work with print), it is now not only possible but economically practical for many newspapers, and soon most, to print a unique edition for each reader."

This would require an investment in new printing presses equipped with Short Run Digital Printing (SRDP).

The VASP group in Portugal already uses SRDP presses to print and distribute its selection of international titles (these aren't personalized titles).

However, the cost of SRDP ink is still very expensive. But according to Crosbie, SRDP presses are already more economical for dailies that have a circulation of less than 10,000 copies. This number is expected to double within two years, in which case the SRDP presses would be economical for about 400 of the US' 1,450 dailies.

Another piece of bad news for an editorial profession that is currently getting squeezed, as UK regional publisher Archant Suffolk is to cut more than 20 sub-editors and replace them with advertising designers - non-journalists.

Archant is currently in a one-month consultation process with staff, proposing that sub-editors at the East Anglian Daily Times and the Ipswich Evening Star can take redundancy or reapply for their jobs.

The move seems to be solely aimed at cutting costs: the ad designers would earn about £18,500 a year, compared to the sub-editors who currently earn about £26,000 a year.

"We are proposing that these [papers] will be laid out by highly skilled page designers, who do not have an editorial background. Under this proposal, of course, we would install all the necessary checking and proofing systems within the overall process," said an Archant internal document.

But "the use of non-journalists to lay out newspaper pages is a recipe for disaster. Without legal and journalistic training, they will have no idea of the potential pitfalls and the consequences could be catastrophic for the two papers," said Martin Chambers, the National Union of Journalists' father of the chapel Archant Suffolk.

The East Anglian Daily Times was just voted regional newspaper of the year at recent press awards.

The Palm Beach Post in the US will be reorganizing its newsroom and in an effort to build web traffic. The main change involves the creation of an Internet-oriented “Breaking News Department,” which comes to replace the Metro desk.

The Post's newsroom change are very similar to that of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

In a memo to staff, editor Bill Rose explains why it's time to change from a print-centric structure “that was designed to serve a print newspaper. We've sort of grafted the Internet onto that and it's worked, but not nearly well enough.”

The Metro department will be reshaped into a Breaking News Department. Reporters and editors in the former metro section no longer have to file to print in priority, but instead think of how to improve Web coverage.

“Henceforth, their first priority will be to file all breaking news to the Web as soon as possible,” said Rose in the memo.

The editor of the breaking news department will also assign a print editor to supervise production of the Local section and print stories.

“Under this system, most Metro editors and reporters will be working much earlier shifts, while several other editors and reporters will work even later shifts to handle print stories.”

In a recent New York Times memo sent to the Poynter Institute Times executive editor Bill Keller announced plans to integrate the Times and partner publication, International Herald Tribune in their print and online operations.

Keller hopes to initiate a “closer alignment of interests and a greater sharing of journalistic resources” between the two papers while maintaining each papers' unique interests and voices.

A committee of editors from both New York and IHT's Paris offices will navigate efforts to create what Keller calls an “organic, global, 24-hour news operation.” Marty Gottlieb, previous Times weekend editor, will head the collaboration—working with editors from both offices to ensure the seamless integration of the two papers' reporting and editing strategies.

One of integration's first efforts is, “to create a Continuous News outpost in Paris, to collaborate with the correspondents of both papers in serving up first-class journalism for the Times and Trib websites and for the print editions IHT,” Keller said.

Source: poynter.org through I Want Media