Editor, revised

I didn’t go to Chicago last week for UNITY. If you’re unfamiliar with this event, Wendi C. Thomas of the Memphis Commercial Appeal sums it up as “the every-four-years convening of the ethnic minority journalist groups.”

But I did get a taste from the Internet.

OK, so most of what I saw came from 10,000 Words, who was there blogging. And we’re not talking about mere summaries of panel discussions. If you’re new to multimedia on the Web, you need to check out Mark Luckie’s tip sheets for video and audio. Also, check out the impressive project he knocked out in 48 hours.

From Mark’s blog and the Commerical Appeal article, I sense that UNITY was the conference to attend for journalists hoping to stay invigorated during these troubling times. A quote from a recent journalism grad in Thomas’ story tells me everything I need to keep in mind:

“I’d rather have a roller-coaster marriage with journalism, filled with love and passion, than an empty relationship in law, PR or business, where there is money, but no sparks,” wrote (Angel) Jennings, a recent graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, in an edition of UNITY NEWS.

Oh, and did I mention that Barack Obama made an appearance fresh off his overseas tour?

Since I entered grad school, I’ve been staring down the barrel of a shotgun loaded with questions:

• How can newspapers reverse falling readership and ad revenues?
• How can they compete effectively with other news providers on the Internet?
• How should newspaper journalists change their routines to serve multiple platforms?
• How can newspapers possibly maintain quality and innovate while cutting staff.

Now I’m in the middle of an 11-day assignment from Spokesman-Review Editor Steve Smith aimed at exploring some of those questions and drafting recommendations for restructuring the newsroom. The goals: to be more efficient and produce a more compelling, consistently multiplatform product.

There are eight of us, all relatively young in a newsroom notably filled with talented veterans. Most of us have come out of journalism school within the past four years. The group dynamic is solid.

This is exciting and scary as hell.

One of the other members of the task force, Nick Eaton, has written about this at his blog. Colin Mulvany, the S-R’s multimedia leader, has also posted. As Colin notes,

It’s strange how the people running newspapers have been talking about changing for most of my 20-year career. Yet, all they’ve really done in that time is tinker under the hood a bit.

We are tasked with doing far more than tinkering under the hood. We were picked, according to Steve, because we have a huge stake in what happens to this industry but little stake in the processes and organization that have driven this newspaper in the past.

We have constraints, as Nick notes:

[W]e can’t eliminate the print product, we can’t eliminate the new radio initiative, we can’t eliminate the community-oriented Voice sections, we can’t suggest layoffs.

It’s comforting and intriguing to watch other newspapers wrestle these questions and swing for the fences. Most recently, it’s been the Tampa Tribune. It’s shakeup is outlined on Mindy McAdams’ blog, and reporting intern Jessica DaSilva has a great account of the day Editor Janet Coats outlined the changes to the staff.

There has been grumbling within the newsroom and skepticism from without. But many staffers have quietly wished us well, and comments at Nick’s and Colin’s blogs have also been encouraging.

We’re under a tight deadline. At some meetings, we’ve got so many ideas its hard to chart a path through them.

But the biggest challenge is to be systematic, practical and yet visionary. We are supposed to blow up the newsroom, but, as I think we all feel, the model we propose must be functional. And above all, it must keep the newspaper coming off the press, the Web site (overhaul pending) updated throughout the day and our radio broadcasts filled with local content – and make all of this journalism as compelling as possible.

This may be my best, last chance to throw bold ideas into the mix and have them heard. Given the recent explosion of newspaper layoffs and Steve’s not-good-but-could-be-worse briefing Tuesday on the state of our company’s finances, I’m not optimistic that the business I went to grad school to enter will sustain me until I retire.

But now I’ve got a chance to suggest changes to help an enterprise, to quote Janet Coats, “worth fighting for.” I’ll see what I can do.

This via cyberjournalist: An interactive map of newspaper layoffs and buyouts this year at graphicdesignr.net. The listed total is more than 4,880. You can also find one for 2007, which includes the cuts at my newspaper, The Spokesman-Review.

Two points: First, this map is more affecting than the daily reports on Romanesko or a simple number. Which is another example of why multimedia just makes information crackle.

Second, take a look at Erica Smith’s site while you’re there. She’s an accomplished news designer at a major metro who also has chops in flash design and mashing up data.

My news design background is scantier, limited to the B section and wire pages at the S-R and a few A1 design shifts at the Missourian. But I would love to develop skills and a portfolio like Smith’s. It’s one big way I can help avoid becoming part of her next map.

At right, one of my better page one efforts.

I remember walking in my grad school commencement a couple years back. Like most fellow graduates, I was smiling. Unlike quite a few fellow graduates, I was smiling about the achievement AND the fact that I’d already lined up a job.

This week, my former adviser Daryl Moen noted in an email to his listserv of Missouri J School grads that he’s noticed more anxiety among graduating seniors/grad students and fewer of them heading into a full-time job right away. This shouldn’t be surprising if you’re following the industry news.

Fortunately, there are some good collections of advice floating around out there. And they’re not limited to how to get a job. If you’ve got a minute between writing cover letters and updating your resume, check these out.

• Journerdism: “Make organization and the elimination of clutter (especially information clutter) a life long process. Twitter is neat, but addicting and dangerous. We lost a lot of good men in the war to Twitter.”
• Innovation in College Media: “Look beyond what job you’ll be doing and take a look at the snapshot portrait that’s being developed right now about the profession.”
• Online Journalism Blog: “As you do your job, as you walk the streets, as you read the newspapers and browse the messageboards, keep your news sense about you: is something happening that is newsworthy?”
• JournalismJobs.com: Besides publishing tons of help-wanted ads, this site has some good career articles.
• My previous post, while a little tongue in cheek and not about getting a job, offers 15 observations I’ve gained in 24 months in the field. “Somewhere, somehow, there is a perfect nexus of efficiency and quality, and it takes more than two years to find it.”

Are you happy with the way your city’s daily newspaper presents news on the Web?

If not, I’ve got a hunch you might like it briefer and more current.

That’s the germ of an idea that’s sprouted in the past few days as I’ve stumbled upon (and sought out) what bloggers have to say about newspaper websites. Spoiler warning: It’s not all good. But there are a lot of good points.

First, we ought to be more direct on the Web. The Journalist Iconoclast is dead-on when he notes that the written report on many newspaper websites is often bloated and indirect.

This complaint is, I think often deserved, especially when you factor in some empirical evidence about how little of our stories site visitors actually read.

But while the era of shovelware is thankfully mostly over, some of its habits remain. My newspaper, for instance, republishes its entire daily report on the Web for the benefit of print subscribers. Paring these down would be pointless.

We are more active with breaking news, which is, by necessity, often much briefer and more direct. But sometimes this “breaking news” is a complete story slated for publication the next day. Should we be boiling these versions down? What about for special packages that run upwards of 40 column inches? How do we present this idea diplomatically to our writers?

(Pixar’s Brad Bird has some broad agreement-fostering suggestions, which I found via Teaching Online Journalism via Journerdism via GigaOM.)

Keeping news brief and direct could be easier if we think of the Web as the primary product - not in terms of revenue, of course, but order of publication. Mindy McAdams riffs on this theme, pointing out that some newspapers have taken this approach. The Spokesman-Review is among them, but we may only see three to four “Web first” stories on a given weekday. A lot of sports and weekend stories fall through the cracks because of staff limitations. In general, I imagine larger metro papers have an edge in this department.

Hey folks, I’m on the front lines in this battle to keep newspapers relevant and afloat. I’m in a position to try new things in terms of story presentation online — or at least run them up the flagpole — and I recognize that we need to keep refining our craft. If you’ve got a brilliant idea or even a simple gripe that could spark one, please jot it here for the love of the First Amendment and good of your favorite watchdogs and newshounds.