Gannett Redux: The 24-Hour News Cycle, Circa 1971

By: Steve Yahn It took a few minutes, but after first reading that Gannett Co., Inc. plans to ?transform? its newspapers into 24-hour Information Centers, I realized why I was experiencing d?j? vu all over again. What it reminded me of was how Gannett ran a nearly 24-hour operation in Rockford, Illinois, well before the Web -- 35 years ago.

Well, to be more precise, how Gannett ran such an operation for awhile after buying out a family-owned newspaper company. Setting aside the cost of running such a fully-staffed, around-the-clock operation, it was a tremendous all-day (and part of the night) newsgathering machine. There was a morning newspaper and an evening newspaper, and although there was plenty of independence in play?truly separate staffs from top to bottom?there was also plenty of interplay.

For example, the all-important ?City Hall reporter? for the morning newspaper would turn over most of her or his intelligence gathered during the day to the afternoon newspaper?s reporter who had to cover a City Hall meeting that evening.

And so it went: beat reporters from the separate papers marching in pairs onto the editorial ark of the enterprise for Monday through Friday editions, with Sunday being a combined paper. But also with its own editors.

Graphics? Photographers were stars of the operation. They fanned out over the city, constantly in motion with their beloved company cars, documenting everything that caught their eye, in addition to standard assignments such as high school sporting events.

Yes, there was plenty of friendly rivalry between the morning and evening staffs (sometimes you just forgot, whoops, to pass along a scoop that came your way as you were going off duty and that you guessed would probably hold up until your turn came around again). But in the main, although the two newspapers were indeed separate, there was a tremendous amount of shared camaraderie and pride in ?serving the community.?

This, of course, was long before the notion of ?civic journalism? was invented.

In all, this shared pride?this spirit of working toward the same goal of greater and keener journalism?was fun. The competition was infectious and I have no doubt that it led to what was most important: Readers who had strong allegiances to one or both of the newspapers, with a special place reserved for the Sunday paper, and were better off for their reading efforts.

So in the aftermath of reading that Gannett?s Information Center project is designed to let its 89 local newspapers disseminate local news and information ?when, were and how our customers seek it,? I thought how lucky, on this front anyway, Gannett reporters are that they will have the opportunity and the means to break stories on a 24-hour basis. Of course, nowadays, that means print plus Web, not two newspapers.

It is heady stuff: even if it means for today's rookies, as in days of yore, it means making coffee for two shifts.