E.W. Scripps Launches Central Desk in Texas

By: Jennifer Saba Last November, four E.W. Scripps dailies in Texas decided it was time to push even harder an experiment that was working quite nicely. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Abilene Reporter-News, the San Angelo Standard-Times, and the Wichita Falls Times Record News were already running the same world and national pages. Why not, thought the leaders of these papers, share even more?

By the end of June, the Texas Scripps papers had launched a central desk to handle all design and copyediting functions for the four dailies.

The central desk is located in Corpus Christi and acts independently but is ultimately responsible to the Caller-Times, the Reporter-News, the Standard-Times and the Times Record News. It's staffed with 30 employees -- designers, editors and copy editors -- and given the diversity and different needs the markets, the papers each have local representatives.

"I think the first thing we had to do was be very clear about the risk and concerns," said Javier Aldape, vice president of niche products for the newspaper division at Scripps. "We believed the best opportunities for efficiency was to maximize pagination and consistent design. That was where the real savings was."

Collectively, the papers cut costs by 30%.

Aldape explained the new structure frees up the papers to concentrate on what they do best: local content. "The content that is less unique and non-local is driven by the central desk."

Each daily underwent a redesign, a process where executives at the papers shared what worked with common goals in mind. While each daily still maintains unique elements, the layout is similar enough so the copy desk can easily fit wire stories with little hassle across all four papers. (Front pages can be found here on E&P's Fitz & Jen blog.)

"Local content is king," said Shane Fitzgerald, vice president and editor of the Caller-Times, adding that each paper calls the shots with local stories. The copy desk, he further explained, backfills the paper with appropriate wire copy, making "99.5%" of the decisions on that end. "Each editor has the final call on anything if they really want something," he added.

The papers lost at least one person with the new strategy, said Fitzgerald. The affected employees could interview for positions at the central desk. "I'm really grateful we were able to get representatives from all four papers," he added.

Jen Meehan, the central desk's editorial director, explained that every day the desk scans the wires for appropriate stories then hold 15-minute Page One meetings with the editors of each paper.

Each paper has flexibility depending on specific needs. When Michael Jackson died, for example, the same story was out front on three of the four papers. However the Caller-Times played up the death of Farrah Fawcett, since she was a local to Corpus Christi. The Abilene Reporter-News played up Fawcett's death as well.

Constant communication by e-mail or phone is the key to making it work. "We are agreeable to talking to anybody," Meehan said, adding that each staffer on the desk rotates to work with each paper.

The central desk and the papers use the same front-end software from Saxotech who gave Scripps "tremendous support" for smoothing out the process, said Aldape. Scripps treats the central desk as a separate cost center with a portion allocated to each market depending on size and newshole.

After getting people used to the new process, the papers are realizing the benefit. Said Meehan, who was formerly the Sunday editor at the Caller-Times, "The pace has been something that surprised people. In asking people to rethink jobs they were already good at, we came up with remarkable efficiencies. They not only doubled their output, some quadrupled their output."