Temple: Newsroom evolves in digital age

Published May 5, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Opinion Columns & Blogs

This was a week of big changes at the Rocky Mountain News.

I think, no, I hope, that you will notice the results in the coming months.

We've known for a while that we would be restructuring our newsroom this year. The plan has been for us to roll out a new Internet publishing system this fall. That was to be the third of three major steps for the Rocky in 2006-07. The first was the move to our new newsroom, which we designed to support our efforts to work more collaboratively. The second was the redesign of the paper in January.

We decided to speed up the final step after tough economic conditions forced us to reduce the size of our newsroom through a voluntary separation program.

My belief from the moment we introduced the program was that we should use the streamlining of our staff as an opportunity to rethink how we do things, to make sure we're maximizing our efforts to serve you.

It's been a satisfying, if exhausting, project. Deb Goeken, the managing editor, and I met privately with every member of the management team and heard their recommendations. We talked in small groups and large.

The consensus was that it was time to take the leap, the leap to a newsroom where Web and print journalism is coordinated and developed in tandem throughout the day. We had thought the new Web publishing system would be the vehicle to enable us to take this step, but we decided we couldn't wait.

This isn't to say that we haven't been working strenuously to adjust to the new digital world. But we knew that we still had far to go.

Our coverage of the trial of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, in some ways, laid the groundwork for where we're going. It was a grand experiment, with live blogs throughout the day, columns by legal experts, the opportunity for readers to comment and a number of other features.

The trial taught us - I hope once and for all - that reporting a story online while it breaks doesn't weaken coverage in the newspaper. If anything, it actually strengthens it. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, by writing about events as they happen and as new details emerge, we learn how to shape more thoughtful packages for print. The Web is a great medium for breaking news. That's where you should turn to us to find out the latest. The paper by definition can't be real-time. It's at best a few hours old. But the paper is a great medium for analysis, perspective, depth and memorable storytelling, both visual and in words.

In our restructuring, we've taken a number of steps to replicate the Nacchio experiment on a much broader scale. I believe the result will be a smarter newspaper and a richer Web site.

A senior editor, Carol Hanner, will oversee the newsroom during the day, developing content for the Web and the newspaper. We won't be waiting until the end of the day to publish our stories online as much as we still do today.

Instead, our reporters will know that they have deadlines every hour, and of course even sooner if a story is breaking. Another senior editor, Jim Trotter, will work to coordinate the enterprise stories and projects that set the Rocky apart. A third, Janet Reeves, will be the daily advocate for visual and multimedia storytelling. And a fourth, Tonia Twichell, will take over in the late afternoon and drive the news operation into the night.

We've taken John Boogert, who has overseen Page 1 and the production of our paper at night ever since I've been editor, and assigned him to direct our Web news reporting starting at 6 a.m. We're starting earlier because we've learned that's when the most people turn to us online.

There's much more, but suffice it to say that our newsroom won't look the same in a few weeks, and I think you'll see that you're the better for it.

YourHub.com adds new sections, Web sites

YourHub.com turns two this month. I remember when we started this "citizen journalism" project how some journalists scoffed at the idea that there was value in what readers had to provide. Well, today even The New York Times touts video on its Web site from non-journalists:

• Next week we're expanding YourHub.com. We started in May 2005 with three sections and built up to 15 late that summer. They're delivered to metro-area subscribers of the Rocky and The Denver Post every Thursday. We'll be distributing 18 print sections. Denver will now have four - Central Denver, Southeast Denver, Southwest Denver and North Denver. (It used to be two.) Boulder and Longmont will be split. The Longmont section will also cover Weld County. The Boulder section will now carry the east Boulder County communities that were once lumped in with Broomfield. Broomfield and Westminster will be in one section.

• And for the first time you'll find sections in stores, coffee shops and other outlets in your community.

• The content for these sections all starts on the Web. We started with 42 Web sites. We're now up to 47. New this month are Denver Southeast, Denver Southwest, Denver North and Weld County. I hope you'll join us in this venture by going to YourHub.com and sharing what matters to you.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News