Breakout session time. My other choice was to learn about the projects that won the Knight Foundation's grant money.

Presenters include:
Raul Lopez, GM for Miami Herald Online
Gail Griffin, GM for Wall Street Journal Online
Perry Solomon, senior director for FAST
Mitch McKinnon, account director for Scarborough Research

2:32 p.m. -- Lopez says there are 200 employees on the ad side at the Miami Herald, and each one will be required to complete a six-hour training about online, starting with "what is a pixel." On the news side, they've found that the best way to integrate was embedding their small group of online journalists within the newsroom. Today, Lopez says there is a less of a line. "We consider the Web site our first edition . . . Everyone in the newsroom is more engaged."

2:35 p.m. -- WSJ fully integrated the circulation of print and online about a year ago. Before, they had two separate P&Ls.;

2:38 p.m. -- Solomon says newspaper Web sites need to think beyond classifieds and become more of a player in things such as video advertising and yellow pages. Be a local prescence aggregating local content.

2:40 p.m. -- How do you define your brand online compared to the Web? Breaking news. The Miami Herald, which had struck down the miami.com Web site as its default home and went back to MiamiHerald.com, is planning to relaunch Miami.com as something entirely new and different from what it had been. Apparently users still thought of the old miami.com site as being from The Herald.

2:42 p.m. -- Solomon is still on the idea that newspapers need to be more than the online version of the newspaper. He cites Schibsted as a good example because they provide a lot of search content at sesam. Let's not forget Solomon works for a search vendor and sesam is one of his clients.

2:45 p.m. -- Lopez says the integration of the newsroom with online really kicked off with the idea that the Web site is the first edition of the newspaper. A team starts at 5 a.m. in the newsroom and in the field to chase down local news stories and file immediately. They're also planning a reorganization that will make them more of a 24-hour news service. Sounds like someone will be working very late. Or early.

2:48 p.m. -- Griffin says the newsroom gets how important the Web is for WSJ. "If they don't understand it, at least on some basic level, it's not going to be good for them."

2:50 p.m. -- Are you more involved with the editorial or sales part of your group? And are the demands for profits a factor in your daily decisions?

Lopez says he's responsible for the overall site, and he grew up in sales, so he ends up being mostly involved on that side. The news content on The Herald's site is decided by the newsroom. The business side, though, has more influence over what the site is going to look like, where classifieds are located, and whether an intrusive ad is going to be used.

Griffin says she spends a lot of time negotiating between the sales side, news side and ciculation. "If we don't work together very seamlessly all of the time, then we're not going to be able to grow our business the way we need to." Does it influence your decision making? No, but it definitely influences "my day to day quality of life" Griffin says to laughs.

2:55 p.m. -- Griffin recommends building Web expertise within your staff before deciding just to combine all of the staffs into one. "We like to joke about hostile takeovers of online divisions by print." Can be tricky stuff if there's a general lack of experience. She cites sales staffs specifically.

2:57 p.m. -- As far as users go, WSJ is trying to convince readers of the newspaper to also use the site. Focusing on the benefits of using both is built into their marketing and strategy.

3 p.m. -- Griffin says 15 percent of online subscribers at WSJ are from educational institutions. Not sure if that's part of a program or just coincidental. They're making some of their non-core coverage free as a way to attract younger and less frequent readers.

3:02 p.m. -- Lopez says they use coverage of high school sports as a way to attract the younger reader, but it's a challenge. "We will do a lot more in that area," he said. "We think it's a place that's passionate and people care about. We think it's a battleground that we have a chance to make a run at."

3:05 p.m. -- Prediction. Griffin says print will become more in depth and analytical and less about breaking news. The understanding at WSJ is the Web site is the place to break news, not the newspaper.

3:09 p.m. -- Are you seeing declines in circulation as the same rate as smaller newspapers? Nope, the larger the more they lose circulation, according to McKinnon. He attributes the declines much to the faster lifestyles of readers in major metros compared to rural areas.

3:10 p.m. -- Audience questioner wonders whether cuts to the newsroom are being camouflaged by changes in structure and staffing on Web sites. Panel basically said no. But I thought it was telling to show the suspicions of some folks.

3:12 p.m. -- Has the WSJ's new coverage of the business of life changed who is reading their newspaper and Web site, a questioner asks. Not really, says Griffin. She hopes that making the content free will make it easier to attract the traffic needed to sell advertisers into it. That's probably the only negative thing she's said about the paid wall. Otherwise, she's said repeatedly that the paid model is beneficial and helped the newsroom and sales integrate with online.

3:18 p.m. -- Should newspapers be creating new online brands? McKinnon says he's found that newspapers are abandoning their brands too quickly. "(Newspapers) realized afterward that they should have had more faith in their legacy product to begin with." Newspaper brands are strong in local markets, and should be used as much as possible, McKinnon says.

THE END