Read here the memo announcing dramatic changes for The Tampa Tribune newsroom.
A new “interactive newsroom” organized around these basic teams:
News Leadership – the three managers at the top of the organizational chart who share responsibility for the newsroom’s operation, while maintaining strict responsibility for each platform. Members are the managing editor/print, the managing editor/online and the news director/television.
Audience Editors – the advocates for the audience and the group responsible for setting daily coverage priorities, ensuring that both quality and quantity standards are met. This group reports as a unit to the news leadership group.
News Circles – the units where news is produced. Each group is composed of reporters, editors, television and online producers and visual journalists who are working to create the stories we’ll use across all platforms. Reporters receive their story assignments from within these groups, and the front-line editing occurs here. Photographers work within these groups, and the first cut at photo and video selection occurs here. The managers in this unit get performance feedback from the audience editors and the news leadership, as well as their direct reports.
Finishing Circles – the units where content is made ready for publication, broadcast and posting. These groups are responsible for melding the knowledge of audience with an understanding of what the audience expects from print, television and the Website. The finishing circles act as advocates for the individual platforms. The managers in this group get performance feedback from the audience editors and the news leadership.
This is an interesting concept.
But cooperation is not integration.
Online is not a platform anymore, it’s the core of a multimedia newsroom.
To keep it as a single platform is a mistake.
Like the old slogan, “Life. Printed daily.”
Print is part of your product.
Life is multimedia.
Not monomedia.
