NY Times to Integrate Print and Web Newsrooms

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NY Times to Integrate Print and Web Newsrooms

August 3, 2005 10:15 PM Posted by mac

News that the New York Times will merge its print and Web operations is a classic "so what" scenario for most of the world. I'd venture that regular readers of the Times (Web and print consumers alike) assumed both staffs already worked side-by-side.

But for online journalism geeks (I'm a card-carrying member), the Times' announcement is the natural conclusion to many hard-fought battles.

It wasn't so long ago that Web journalists had to fight every second of every day to achieve a modicum of respectability from journalism's traditional factions. That's why a quote like this is so affirming:

"By integrating the newsrooms we plan to diminish and eventually eliminate the difference between newspaper journalists and Web journalists -- to reorganize our structures and our minds to make Web journalism, in forms that are both familiar and yet-to-be-invented, as natural to us as writing and editing, and to do all of this without losing the essential qualities that make us The Times. Our readers are moving, and so are we." -- From a Times memo announcing the integration

The memo's authors, Executive Editor Bill Keller and Senior VP of Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz, have eloquently expressed the longtime hope of all Web journalists: our work should be judged by its journalistic merit, not by its form.

Kudos to the Times for taking a huge leap forward. -- Mac Slocum