Social media is a powerful and swift tool. Shortly after the Daily News Journal began its restructuring of the information center (newsroom for you old-school readers) on Tuesday, Facebook and Twitter were filled with messages, questions and more.
So what’s going on?
First, contrary to one Facebook poster’s comment, this is not “the beginning of the end.” However, we do have to do things differently.
The simple fact is the media world is changing. I’ve chatted about that with you in this blog a few times already, and the DNJ’s information center needs to make changes to adapt to the disruption that is hitting our industry.
We are moving forward with a plan that will make the information center less management-centric and less print-centric. Digital is the name of the game and we’ll be opening up some new positions that have a focus on digital, tablet and mobile delivery of content. And yes, these people will be capable of writing for print as well.
This means more feet on the street covering news. We’ll be increasing our focus on passion topics related to economic development and growth, family issues and faith. We’ll be increasing our coverage of MTSU and of local sports. And what about breaking local news and service-oriented work? Well, that will once again become priority number one at the Daily News Journal.
And our digital capacity will skyrocket. Once the reorganization plans are fully implemented, not only will you see the quality writing you’ve come to expect, but you will see more local video, more photo galleries, and more special digital products.
Other changes are also coming down the pike. A new content management system is being rolled out later this year or in early 2014, along with redesign of some of our digital products, including the iPad app.
The Tennessean and the DNJ are working on greater cooperation that will allow the digital products to be updated, even during periods in which we have no staff on duty. We also will be making some exciting announcements concerning sports, opinion, and other types of content.
We continue to print seven days a week, but we are also increasing our ability to serve your content needs on the web, on the tablet, and on your mobile device.
If you have any questions, feel free to post them here, or email me at cmorgan@dnj.com. I’ll do my best to answer them.