(4 of 5 in “From good to great” series)

At the Associated Press, the Web staff of 10 multimedia producers is so overwhelmed that the duty of posting breaking news is being transferred directly to desk editors. JSOnline.com has already made the switch. HeraldTribune.com followed their lead because it frees up time for Web producers to answer the demand for multimedia.

To be frank, most Web sites don’t have enough staff to respond to requests, nevermind if new mandates (via performance management) are given to editors. Some reporters who want to learn and participate are pushed to the back of the line, or told that someone else’s project is more important. At current staffing levels, good journalism opportunities are missed all across this nation on a regular basis.

What would all of these new staffers do? First, the more basic question is, where will they sit?

After increasing the staff level to respond to our newsroom’s demands, Web sites should adopt another national trend. All online producers should sit in the newsroom alongside other reporters and editors from their section. For example, the Online Producer for A&E; would sit with the staff for features and the weekend entertainment book. As we’ve learned from our convergence efforts here in Sarasota, proximity can be the most important factor in making communication easy and assured.

And before we discuss what producers will be doing, it’s important to note that their main job will be empowering the newsroom. Small Web sites can be many times larger than the size of their staffs if the power of the newsroom can be put to work.

Producers would solicit ideas and create content such as this:

• Topics pages, the great idea for SEO from NYTimes.com
• Video interviews with reporters
• Podcasts
• Staff and community blogs
• Harvest video packages and raw footage from TV partner
• User-submitted content sections
• Photo galleries
• Flash multimedia presentations
• Daily extras such as documents

All of these areas of coverage are woefully inadequate at the Web’s current staff levels. And online producers should be responsible for usability testing of their section, optimizing it for discovery by search engines, and for reporting traffic statistics to reporters and editors.

Adding FTEs can take an act of Congress these days at newspapers, but the pay off is significant in more content, more page views and a significantly more professional final product.

Tomorrow’s entry: Can this be done?