Here is my Monday column:
When I was editor of The Gazette, people would frequently send me complaints, suggestions or praise dealing with advertising or circulation.
I had nothing to do with the matter in question, but I still felt responsible for responding to people who went to the trouble of contacting me. My response was to thank them for their feedback and to explain that I was not responsible for that particular issue but that I was forwarding it to the right person, who would address the matter.
I will be doing a lot more of that, because some changing roles in our changing organization will result in more confusion among the public, for a while at least. Lyle Muller has taken the role of editor, though it’s not the same role as when I was editor. And I have taken the role of information content conductor, which isn’t the same as editor or as any role in any media organization. (I explained that new role last week in my blog and will write more about it later in the column and blog.)
Lyle is responsible for editing and production of The Gazette, the newspaper that nearly 180,000 adults read each day in Eastern Iowa (more than 220,000 on Sundays). If you have suggestions, praise or criticism about The Gazette, you should call or write Lyle. He is ultimately responsible for the changes to The Gazette that you will see starting Tuesday, though the changes are the result of a companywide planning process in which I was closely involved. (To share your reaction to those changes, we ask you to e-mail feedback@gazcomm.com or call (319) 398-8333 or 1-(800) 397-8222.)
Unlike other newspaper editors, Lyle doesn’t supervise a single reporter or photographer. The reporters and photographers still work for me. However, we’ll simply call them all journalists now because they will perform more roles than they have in the past. (I’ll explain more about those new roles in the coming weeks.)
It has been clear for years that newspaper companies needed to transform their organizations. We were structured for decades as newspaper factories. Though we staffed our newsrooms with skilled professionals who became experts at specific tasks such as reporting, photography, editing or graphic arts, we were focused on producing a manufactured product each day. We had strict production deadlines and the amount of content we could publish was determined by the space available, which was heavily influenced by the price of a raw material, newsprint.
Reporters and photographers always gathered more information and images than their newspapers published.
As newspapers started publishing content online, we had to change some of our work in the newsroom. We added new positions specializing in operations of the web site. We started publishing breaking news online. We published new kinds of content, such as videos, blogs and slide shows. We started covering some events live as they happened and interacting live with the public. We also started niche products such as Edge Business Magazine, Hoopla and IowaPrepSports.com.
But our organization remained structured and focused primarily on the newspaper product.
We have decided that we can best meet the challenges of the future by changing our company completely. We will have an independent organization which I lead focused exclusively on developing content from our professional journalists as well as from the community. We will publish this content digitally without editing and without the limitations of products. Another organization will plan and edit products, such as The Gazette and GazetteOnline, using content from my organization as well as others. As editor, Lyle has one of the key leadership positions in that organization.
We will tell you more about our changes as our transition to the new structure continues. You will see some of the changes first in our coverage of sports, starting soon.
Please tell us what you like and what you don’t as we make changes. And don’t worry if you tell Lyle or me about something that isn’t our responsibility. We’ll pass your feedback on and make sure the right person responds.
Steve,
Sounds exciting.
Moving forward.
We have an incredibly strong community and dedicated readers.
Keep on with it.
Sometimes we don’t know where we’re going until we get there; and other times we realize that “we ain’t been nowhere, but we’re comin’ back!’
Either way, it’s life’s journey and the back roads that lead us to the appreciation of the day.
This morning’s paper was a little wet.
There are smudges on these keys.
As it rains we’ll all spring forward.
John
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Thanks for the information, waitig for future posts.
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[…] Steve Buttry, Information Content Conductor, is responsible for creating another C3 – Content Creation & Collaboration, a networked set of blogs and information organized around topics or micro-geographical areas. We are trying to create a visual description of this activity, and our current attempt is below, although we already know that we don’t like the name “Superblog”: […]
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Hi Steve. Congratulations on the new role and the reorganization. I think taking “print” out of the newsroom is an essential step to transition to digital. More thoughts http://tinyurl.com/dl9g2l
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[…] Roles change as The Gazette changes (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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A similar organization is working now in El Tiempo group, the main media group in Colombia. A big newsroom creates the content for 3-4 newspapers, 4 magazines, one radio and a couple of webs. Then, depending on how big is each newspaper, radio…, a number of true editors adapt that general content to their audiences.
Obviously each media has its freelances and columnist, but the 70-80% of the content is basically the same. Shorter for the free popular newspater and complete for the ‘serious’ one. Is similar to having a press agency for all your group.
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[…] most interesting stuff that comes their way. So when the Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced it was re-engineering itself, with the newspaper as just one container for its news, Rosen saw the news tweeted by Scott […]
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Wow. Congratulations!
Both for the focus, the courage and the phrase “We were structured for decades as newspaper factories.”
I blog about the Print industry at http://toughloverforxerox.blogspot, and am the “Print Correspondent” at Mediashift.org.
Consider that an 180,000 press run could be manufacturing as 18 versioned editions of 10,000 each.
Here’s the paragraph from my next column, which should be posted in a day or so.
“The Newspaper Association of America reports that the Chicago Tribune’s Triblocal.com uses Kodak’s Microzone Publishing Solution to create 35 Web sites and eight weekly newspapers catering to diverse, “hyperlocal” neighborhoods in suburban Chicago. The full run of the eight weeklies is 100,000. In the language of “versioned print”, that means eight versions, 12,500 each.”
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I see you used the term ” Eastern Iowa” in you atticle. hope that trend will expand the current ” coridor ” which is constrictive.
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Wish you would add spellcheck to my sumissions.
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[…] Our editorial discussion was primarily planning, laying out the week’s content and dreaming up articles for later weeks. Daniel also encouarged all members to listen to This Week in Tech, which he thinks could serve as inspiration for a new kind of roundtable podcast, moving away from the one-on-one interview format. Greg’s been sitting on this week’s podcast for days now (which must be a first for the organization), which is with Steve Buttry on the restructuring of the Gazette. […]
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[…] But Newsmixer came out in 2008, so it doesn’t count to fulfill my 2009 prediction. This does: […]
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[…] But Newsmixer came out in 2008, so it doesn’t count to fulfill my 2009 prediction. This does: […]
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[…] Buttry’s role is to understand what has been frustrating the staff members over at the Gazette. According to Buttry’s blog, for too long newspaper companies have needed to transform their organizations. First, they acted […]
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[…] there. But Twitter is an unquestionably valuable tool for driving blog traffic. When I wrote the post that got my most traffic ever, explaining Lyle Muller’s and my new roles at Gazette […]
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[…] Steve Buttry, Information Content Conductor, is responsible for creating another C3 – Content Creation & Collaboration, a networked set of blogs and information organized around topics or micro-geographical areas. We are trying to create a visual description of this activity, and our current attempt is below, although we already know that we don’t like the name “Superblog”: […]
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Blogs like this are why I use the internet.
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[…] Our editorial discussion was primarily planning, laying out the week’s content and dreaming up articles for later weeks. Daniel also encouarged all members to listen to This Week in Tech, which he thinks could serve as inspiration for a new kind of roundtable podcast, moving away from the one-on-one interview format. Greg’s been sitting on this week’s podcast for days now (which must be a first for the organization), which is with Steve Buttry on the restructuring of the Gazette. […]
consacepo
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I sincerely hope the sports coverage does not continue to put so much weight on supposedly household name players and actually have people observe the contribution of players that enable the win rather than focus just on the easy big name players that are trying the get their stats published each game “especially in the high school basketball”games. It seems the writers go after these players too quickly. They may be missing the up and coming talent.
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Thanks for your comment, Mike. I have passed it along to the people responsible for covering high school sports.
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[…] Buttry explains further: We have decided that we can best meet the challenges of the future by changing our company completely. We will have an independent organization which I lead focused exclusively on developing content from our professional journalists as well as from the community. We will publish this content digitally without editing and without the limitations of products. Another organization will plan and edit products, such as The Gazette and GazetteOnline, using content from my organization as well as others. […]
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[…] Rapids Gazette. Editor and other assortedtitles, 2008-2010. Still publishing under the same […]
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