'Wash. Post,' 'USA Today' Editors Discuss the Web/Print Merger

By: E&P Staff In the end, the most revealing thing about Thursday's illuminating panel on Web/print "convergence" at the E&P/Mediaweek Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas was that it focused on how widely newspeople are trying to work together: Just two years ago, the theme at the same conference was conflict and distrust.

The panelists are leaders in the transition to "the continuous news desk," or what moderator E&P Editor Greg Mitchell referred to as the favorite clich? of the moment, "platform-agnostic news coverage."

Speaking were Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today; Jim Brady, executive editor at washingtonpost.com, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, assistant managing editor at the Post in charge of its continuous news desk.

All indicated that tremendous progress has been made in bringing print reporters on board for Web work; in fact, the Post editors suggested the Web site, if anything, was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the offers to update, chat, blog, shoot video, and the like.

"Reporters want to be on the homepage as much as they want to be in the print edition," Chandrasekaran noted. "Not a day goes by when I don't get calls from reporters wanting better play online. ... What has developed is a very collaborative relationship between the newspaper and the Web."

Brady noted that he had left the Post a few years ago partly out of frustration over the paper not fully taking advantage of the "reservoir" of Web/print opportunities. (He came to the Web originally from the Post's sports department.) Now he finds cooperation high and his Web operation is very involved in long-range planning on stories, such as coverage of the 2006 elections.

The two large papers differ in their approach to merging, although both employ about 75 people in their Web-side operations. For one thing, USA Today has placed its news staffs in close proximity, while at the Post they work out of separate plants and operate independently in many ways.

"If the Web site was a division within the newsroom, there would be much less innovation," Chandrasekaran added. "Because we're separate, in some ways we're incredibly nimble, rolling out new innovations almost on a weekly basis."

Mitchell opened the discussion by listing a number of issues raised by those who fear that the collaboration may be going too far. Among the issues raised was the continuing tendency to hold back scoops until they run in print.

"We publish to the Web first with something we think is competitive," said USA Today's Wilson. "But for enterprise stories, we generally publish them simultaneously in print and online around midnight. Unless we think we're going to get beat, then we'll get it up more quickly. In a trend story, we don't see much need to put something online first."

Mitchell also raised questions about an over-emphasis on blogging. "Reporters are merging blogging with their coverage," said Chandrasekaran. "Our business reporter is writing a fairly popular consumer blog. And we're getting used to people producing two streams of content in a complementary way. We're moving toward reporters mentioning things in blogs that are eventually addressed more and more in the paper. As we move forward, we wanted to get people to embrace new forms of journalism and delivery."

As for another issue -- the increased workload, for which staffers receive no extra pay -- the editors agreed that staffers were freely volunteering left and right to go the extra mile, although some have termed this "coerced volunteerism." The Post editors said reporters who are particularly active on the Web may get extra compensation through their annual or semi-annual reviews.

One j-school professor in the audience asked what the panelists were looking for in young journalists -- should they already be focusing on multi-tasking, shooting video and the like?"

"I want journalists who think first and foremost about how people are consuming media," Wilson responded. "It's not about necessarily learning software or reporting on different platforms. It's more about how much time people spend with media and how long they are going to spend on various types of consumption."