News Leadership 3.0

September 20, 2011

The Seattle Times: Newsroom reorganization reflects new priorities

The Seattle Times recently reorganized its newsroom and the new structure recognizes three key roles for the organization: Creation, Curation, Community

The Seattle Times newsroom previously had a managing editor for print and an managing editor for digital.
The new structure separates functions quite differently, Executive Editor David Boardman says, with three key roles:
1. Creation. The news gathering staff, including reporters, editors, videographers.
2. Curation. The production staff, which oversees design and presentation.
3. Community. Staff engages with commenters and coordinates The Times’ growing network of more than 40 local bloggers.

“We portray these three things as being interlocking circles and in the center of it all is engagement. We want to engage the community all through the process,” Boardman says.

Boardman sees the reorganization as formalizing many of the practices and roles the newsroom had already begun to adopt. It is a significant milestone in a journey to integrate the newsroom that began when Boardman became executive editor five years ago. Then, print and online were separate. “We were in the same newsroom physically, but it was a situation where the online operation was just a processing operation and the website was just the newspaper online with a few updates throughout the day. There was a little bit of dabbling with multi-media, blogging, but not much.”

He believes the structure will help the newsroom play to the strengths of each platform. “I’ve always rejected the platform-agnostic option. I believe in taking advantage of the strengths of each platform.”

Interestingly, the reorganization puts Kathy Best, the managing editor who has led the Times’ digital efforts for several years, in charge of the news gathering time. In that way, it is similar to a recent “digital first” reorganization at the Wichita Eagle, which has the deputy editor for digital leading most of the news gathering staff.

Both seem promising departures from structures in many newsrooms that still focus on the print cycle rather than putting digital on equal or primary footing.

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