Something about the Washington Post’s story on the “mojos” at Gannett got journalists in a tizzy. Mobile reporters at the Fort Myers News-Press work out of their cars, filing several times a day to the Web site, without editing.
Interesting, but . . .
Where did the FTEs for those mojos come from? After all, the News-Press is undergoing job cuts, not expansion. Step back to one of the original announcements about the mojos and Executive Editor Kate Marymont explains:
We redeployed reporters. The message from our corporate leaders is clear -- increase the attention our news staffs are giving to online, weigh our old goals vs. new ones and make hard, strategic trade-offs. We chose to reduce our Lifestyles Department from 6.5 reporters to 4.5 reporters. Decisions like this will be tough, but they will be necessary if we're truly going to make online a priority.
Allow me to revise a point I made a few days ago. The point was basically, “Get a local beat, or lose your job.”
I’d like to add, “Or worse, lose your desk.”
Comments (1)
As one of the 4.5 Lifestyles writers remaining at The (Fort Myers) News-Press, I'd like to add a qualification to your earlier assertion that food is a national beat and in danger of elimination or outsourcing.
We are able to justify writing locally based food stories by picking topics that are of local interest. In Florida, for example, we have a lot of native produce that is ripe for the picking in terms of writing cooking stories. And many times we can spin off national trend stories by bringing them home to local kitchens and restaurants.
Admittedly, we do run a lot of wire in the food section. With 4.5 writers, we can't commit a single person to writing only about food. But when we can justify a staff-written story that appeals to our readers' sense of place, it can be done. We just have to make smarter choices. Food for thought?
Posted by Drew Sterwald | December 5, 2006 12:11 AM
Posted on December 5, 2006 00:11