TEMPLE: Versatility key to news gathering

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 21, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Glen Barber © The Rocky

Military choppers train over Denver

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Come with me, behind the white walls of our downtown headquarters and into our newsroom. Let me show you some examples of how what we're doing is changing.

Take how we responded to the military helicopters buzzing the city in a special forces exercise Monday evening. In the "old days," say a year ago, we might have taken still photographs of the action for Tuesday's paper and written a short story.

Well, we're somewhere in between the old and new days. So that night we had a story by Tillie Fong and a photo by Brian Lehmann on our Web site. In Tuesday's paper, we ran a short story at the top of Page 4, but no photograph. We heard the old excuse: There wasn't any room.

But when we ran a dramatic picture on our home page on the Web on Tuesday morning, it was immediately obvious that the story was hot. Reader comments started pouring in.

So when the helicopters returned the next night, we were ready. Not only did we get the action up on our Web site right away with a still photo by Glen Barber and a short video by Liz Nayadley, both photo technicians, but visitors to our site Wednesday morning found a second, more sophisticated video shot and edited by our new assistant multimedia editor, Joe Mahoney. Web readers also could scan a slide show.

Our newspaper's front page Wednesday featured a striking picture of one of the choppers flying past the clock tower on the Denver City and County Building with the headline, "Look, up in the sky!" The moment was captured by Jaime Aguilar, another photo technician who's embracing opportunities to expand his impact. We ran a second photo inside the paper, this one by a staff photographer, Darin McGregor, who chased the helicopters around downtown. Another photographer, Ken Papaleo, also worked the story and had photos on our Web site.

This is a small example. Clearly, the helicopters weren't an Earth-shattering event. But what we did those two nights is telling because it illustrates how much more complicated our coverage plans and execution have become. We have to think in many dimensions now and - perhaps most difficult for newspaper journalists - we have to think of immediacy. If you see something happening of interest in your neighborhood, you want to be able to find out about it right away. That's a tall order we're committed to meeting.

To do so, we've changed how we produce the paper. It used to be that newsrooms were essentially linear assembly lines oriented toward a single deadline. A story went through a number of steps of editing until it hit the slot, the person with the final say. We can't have such a lengthy process anymore, in part because of the challenging economic times, in part because it doesn't take into account the Web and what technology empowers an individual to do.

Now we have two tracks working in tandem - Web and print. The Web is supervised by a news editor during the day, John Boogert, and a deputy Web news editor, Jay Lee, at night. They're in charge of making judgments of what stories should be featured on our Web site every single minute. At the same time, we have a print news editor, Curt Anderson, who is in charge of the news judgment for the paper.

And editors who not long ago had very defined assignments along the assembly line are being asked to juggle a variety of roles, to work on our Web and print products essentially simultaneously. No one person plays the slot role anymore.

This takes some getting used to, at least for some of our veterans who worry, understandably, that any change could mean we lose quality.

Even our sports editor, Barry Forbis, an expert in producing complex content under tight deadlines, admitted to his staff that he was skeptical of our plans.

"I'm sure you've heard about the elimination of the slot position on the news desk with final-read duties being turned over to everyone on the desk. My first thought - probably like yours - was 'bad idea,' " he wrote. "I now see the merits of that decision."

He's not alone.

One versatile editor, Tom Auclair, sent me a note after we began our new approach. "I love the new 'slotless' system in news," he said. "Reminds me of when I used to work at a 5,000-circulation weekly, where I wrote headlines, copy-edited, laid out, took pictures, everything. It's a good feeling! Certainly makes me feel much more involved than in the previous system, where I felt like a cog at times."

That's the whole point. The more involved we all are, the better we should serve you. Which, in the end, is what counts.

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

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