How To Run A Newsroom - Cheap and Easy

ABOVE: Miami Herald’s waterfront newsroom, from Venetian Causeway.

“A newsroom is the place where journalists—reporters, editors, and producers, along with other staffers—work to gather news to be published in a newspaper or magazine or broadcast on television, cable or radio.” Wikipedia

Ever since my paperboy days,  I have been fascinated with the newspaper industry; it always seemed so immense to me. I loved working for the newspaper. I was an expert at folding my papers. I was good at delivering and making collections. But I wanted to know more about the newsroom. How was the newspaper made? How many stories did the reporters have to write everyday? Must be hundreds, I thought? The answer is, not as many as you think!

Relax. I’m not here to discuss the demise of the newspaper industry. We’ll leave the newspaper death watch to Bob Norman and the gang over at Daily Pulp. Bob loves writing about the trouble South Florida newspapers are experiencing. Bob picks through the wreckage like Dexter at a crime scene, cold and heartless. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he should avoid the subject; on the contrary, newspaper layoffs are newsworthy and the newspapers are sure not covering it.

Well, thanks to Bob Norman’s blog, I finally got my question answered about running a newspaper. In the comments of a recent post.  A commenter named, By the numbers, broke it down like this…

By the numbers says:

Good question.

Just how small could a newsroom get and still produce a newspaper - not necessarily a good newspaper - but a printed version of some kind?

On a daily basis, a paper could get by with one of two local stories on 1A.

Play a couple of more local stories on the Metro front, a few police briefs and your done. Change the traditionally Local section to a “City and Region’ section and use the news partner copy that other posters have mentioned to fill the remaining space.

Lifestyle - if it survives at all - could be 100% wires most of the time. Drop in one locally reported centerpiece story once a week.

Sports needs several reporters to handle the local sports report, ‘local’ meaning high school and non-professional sports that sell the paper. No paper these days needs staff writers to cover a professional team or a national sporting event. You can get that content from a hundred sources, most of which are cheaper than the AP, and all of which are cheaper than keeping a full time staff writer on hand to duplicate stories that aren’t exclusive to your coverage area or your readership.

National and world is all wires anyway. Nothing to change there.

Bizness needs one or two local stories per day.

Opinion: One opinion writer to write one or two local editorials to run someplace in the Sunday paper.

Photogs: Need a couple of real ones to handle certain things. For the rest, give cameras to reporters and use the pics that readers email to you.

Photo editors: Let the photogs pick their favorite pics.

Designers: Create a handful of templates for every section front and get rid of all but three or four designers for the entire newsroom.

Copy editors: Keep five or six on staff to run a spell check on the local stories and write headlines. They would also do a lot of the layout production.

Graphic artists. One would be enough.

Management: A publisher to handle the business side of the newsroom and deal with the public and a one real managing editor to run the newsroom. Everyone else can go. Schedule rotating daily coordinators from the remaining members of each section.

Now, do the math.

A media company could create and maintain the facade of an actual print newspaper with less than 50 full-time journalists in the newsroom.

This is the best recipe for baking your paper. It would be a worthless paper editorially.

But a media company could continue to look like a newspaper and create enough stuff to wrap around the ads to keep the advertisers happy.

Don’t think that media execs are worried about anything other than that. These days, they can’t afford to

Posted On: Saturday, Mar. 7 2009 @ 11:09AM

Sun-Sentinel Lays Off Unknown Number; Herald Staff Cuts Imminent

After breaking it down, running a newspaper is not as immense as I thought, and the newsroom sounds as exciting as I imagined when I was a paperboy.

Save The Newsroom - Print Less Paper

The newsroom costs are not what is bankrupting the newspaper industry. Nor is it Craigslist and other competitors. What is bankrupting newspapers is, printing the paper.

An online-only newspaper is a profitable business model.

If it means saving the newsroom, would you give up your paper copy?

If they stop printing a daily newspaper, would you miss it very much?

We all miss the paperboy, but we learned to live without him.

Please share you comments below.

Related Links: • BarCamp to Newspapers: You Need Us More Than We Need You • Introducing: Weekly Columns by Local Experts • SunPost Newspaper Has Gone Out of Business • I Want To Be A Writer in South Beach • Gus and Michelle Outed By Miami Herald • Miami Beach 411 Keeps Watch on Mainstream Media Related Categories: Newspapers & Magazines Technology, Gus Moore heads up Miami Beach 411 as site administrator. You can reach him at 1-305-754-2206. See more articles by Gus. See more articles by Gus Was This Post Helpful? Please Share It With Others! Tweet

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