Washington Post: A river may no longer run through it
The Washington Post reached across the Potomac River to name one of its managing editors today, indicating that the newspaper may be closer to merging its print and digital operations. Elizabeth Spayd is currently editor of washingtonpost.com, which operates out of Arlington, Va., in an awkward split that has never served the Post well. She admitted as much to me in an interview this fall, calling the arrangement “far less than optimal.”
Spayd, who was previously an editor on the print side of the river, will now return to Washington as managing editor for hard news. (Raju Narisetti was named managing editor for the feature sections.) But she will leave behind the programmers, producers, online editors, and a few writers who compose the web staff in Arlington. In announcing today’s move, Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli focused on Spayd’s experience in both mediums but didn’t mention the paper’s ongoing efforts to merge its two newsrooms. This is what Spayd had to say about those plans when we spoke on October 22:
We want to make sure that we do it right, so we’re not going to be merged by next month, but we’ve actively begun that process, and we’re gathering information outside our newsroom, and a couple others went on these trips that have been written about, going to the Telegraph and the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, looking at other newsrooms and figuring out how they’ve done it and try to apply the best of that to the Post newsroom. [...] If we were going to move downtown, then there’s a certain amount of renovation that needs to take place to make that physically possible and actually happen in a way that makes sense structurally. But that’s also not right around the corner. But I do think that there’s space in the building.
In a wonderful and scathing piece last year, Erik Wemple of the Washington City Paper laid bear the tensions and inefficiencies between the Post’s two newsrooms. I asked Spayd about that article, and she said.
I think there were some legitimate points in there. I think you could see in that article that as much as we have come closer together in terms of cooperating with each other and working together, there’s still tension in the relationship, and there’s still miscommunication. And so partly because of that — that, and our effort to work more efficiently — we are trying to merge the two newsrooms.
The Post’s leadership has been in flux over the past year, beginning with the appointment of Katherine Weymouth as chief executive of Washington Post Media, becoming — believe it or not — the first publisher to oversee both the print and online operations of the newspaper. Spayd said that was when the Post began formulating plans to merge the print and digital newsrooms. In July, Marcus Brauchli was named executive editor of the Post, overseeing both newsrooms, and later this month, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com, Jim Brady, is stepping down. It remains to be seen if that all change will speed or impede these long overdue reforms.
And if you’re wondering why the Post, in 1996, chose to launch washingtonpost.com
Regardless of the aims ascribed to Don Graham by Erik Wemple (and repeated here without any apparent vetting), the fact that WPNI was setup separate from the Post did yield many benefits for washingtonpost.com. Having worked at both places, I know and respect the leaders of both. But there is no way – zero chance – that washingtonpost.com would have been permitted to try many of the things it did (some of which failed) had it been run by the editors of the paper.
That freedom, which in my experience Don Graham did quite a bit to guard, was essential in the ability to attract talented people and allow them to do innovative things. To simply state that the arrangement “has never served the Post well” may accurately reflect the opinion of some of my former colleagues at the paper, but it does not accurately reflect reality. Wemple’s piece, as “wonderful” as it was, also tended to be one-sided in that regard.
I agree with Liz Spayd that the situation is not optimal, and I am optimistic about the outcome of merging the newsrooms. But your piece, like Wemple’s, ignores the benefits that came from allowing WPNI to grow outside the structure of the Post, and cheapens the discussion by relying on simplistic reasoning.
I have to agree with Derek here in that these arguments are always so one-sided. And we have been here before, have we not? Wasn’t it just a few years ago that everyone was all about separate operations like the Post’s, and now everyone is all about merging. I’m a former WPNI employee who happens to think merging is probably a good call. I am, however, disappointed in all the trend chasing and lack of any thoughtful, fresh perspective on such issues.
There are benefits to having separate online news operations, especially when these new entities are seeking to establish themselves as legitimate forms of journalism.
As a former founding news editor at the BBC News website in 1987, there were significant advantages to having a separate newsroom from TV and radio. While many of the journalists came from other parts of the BBC, the website attracted those who were interested in exploring how online could enhance journalism.
Even in 1998, we create a special on the Clinton impeachment that included elements that have only recently being adopted by other news outlets, such as timelines and multimedia: http://is.gd/fTho
An important factor to consider is institutional support. In the BBC’s case, the director general was a strong advocate for the internet.
With institutional backing established, the team at the website were relatively free to develop online journalism. Being physically and psychologically separate from the established radio and TV newsrooms was an important contributory factor towards the success of the BBC News website.
To be digital or not to be…is no longer a question. Technology is like a steam roller, if your part of the road, your going to get ran over.
I use to sell hard copies of my music out on the street, but now I’ve become a bit more tech savy. I’ve built a website that sells my music for 25cents. With over 12000 hits a month, it pays for it self and then some. I still sell hard copies, but not as much since I was able to merge this online store with my outside store. Now profits have increased dramatically. SO MERGE ALREADY!!!