DON'T JUST INNOVATE – COMMUNICATE

APME's Innovation Committee asked a Gannett manager to explain how his news operation aims to keep readers in the loop during a time of rapid industry change. Here's the scoop from Mark Baldwin, regional executive editor for the Gannett Wisconsin Newspaper Group:

I think of it as the Newspaper Theory of Relativity.

The pace at which our newsroom operates has increased so rapidly that our daily budget often is out of date by the time we gather for our afternoon news meeting. Reporters and editors, under instructions to file quickly to our Web site whenever they come upon news, are working at such a high tempo that the budget, that mainstay of newsroom life, can't keep up.

It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that that's a good problem to have.

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Nevertheless, it's a problem that has come to symbolize the rapid pace of innovation at the Wausau Daily Herald, where since the fourth quarter of 2006 we have converted to the 48-inch web, launched a weekly newspaper, dramatically expanded our use of online video and audio, and introduced a series of design changes intended to better "marry" our online and print editions. We reduced the national/world report to one page, an important step toward our goal of achieving 70 percent local content in each day's newspaper by the end of March.

Two spoonfuls of sugar helped the changes go over with readers. We effectively banned jumps; if we need to provide more information, we write a second story that runs inside the paper. And we generated a lot of good will by slightly increasing the size of our body type, erasing the source of one of the most common reader complaints of recent years.

Of course, some longtime readers were puzzled initially by the reduced emphasis on national and world news. And some old-timers are less than pleased that we're frequently directing them from print to supplemental online content like podcasts, video clips and photo galleries.

"Not everybody has a computer," is what they tell me.

But we've managed to win most of them over by being 100 percent honest about the reasons for the changes we've made. And we've learned an important lesson in the process.

It's not enough just to innovate, even when the changes you make are based on a sharp, research-based understanding of your community. You've got to communicate, too.

In columns and personal conversations, we told readers things that editors have been talking about for years, namely that the dynamics of the news business have changed and that we have arrived at a fresh understanding of our relationship with our print readers and online users.

It's no secret that information about national and international events is ubiquitous on the Internet and on cable news channels. As the deathwatch for Saddam Hussein wound down on the Friday after Christmas, for example, most us who cared did not wait for the Saturday morning paper to discover Saddam's fate. Instead, we were glued to CNN or MSNBC, waiting for word that Saddam was dead.

So, too, it's fair to say that most of us didn't wait for the morning paper to report on the funeral rites for former President Gerald Ford. We participated in the events surrounding the death of the 38th president through the long lens of television. The morning paper simply ratified what we had seen with our own eyes.

Readers get that.

We've also made sure to talk to readers about our understanding of our own role in their lives.

We are not the New York Times or the Washington Post, publications that rightly claim to be newspapers of record for a worldwide readership.

Nor are we the Wall Street Journal, which delivers the day's most important and useful news for business people.

Then again, none of those publications is the Wausau Daily Herald. None of them will set up a Wausau bureau, the better to cover Wausau city government or report the goings-on in a local classroom. Nor will they pay attention to a local basketball team's next run to the state championship game or a high school band's performance at Walt Disney World.

And they certainly won't report the news that constitutes the nitty-gritty of the lives we lead – the births, deaths, traffic accidents and so forth.

That's our job, and readers get that, too, provided we talk to them about it.

A TIME OF UNCERTAINTY FOR PRESS FREEDOMS

APME director Otis L. Sanford, editorial editor at The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, recently participated in a landmark First Amendment Summit in Washington. Here's his report on the summit, as well as a preview of a PBS "Frontline" series that examines the escalating fight between the press and the federal government:

Not since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate has there been as much acrimony between the press and government as there is today.

That was the conclusion shared by many of the more than 100 participants at a recent First Amendment Summit sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors at the National Press Club.

Speaker after speaker at the Jan. 18 summit raised concerns about government officials, particularly at the national level, aggressively seeking to force journalists to reveal their sources, and using criminal sanctions against them when they refuse.

"This conference couldn't come at a more crucial time," said former newspaper executive Gregory Favre, the distinguished fellow of journalism values at the Poynter Institute, echoing the current crisis point between the press and government.

Geoff Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, added, "The crisis is that we don't have a federal statutory reporter's privilege. That is a crisis that is a travesty."

Stone has written extensively about the need for a federal shield law for journalists. He argues that supporters should press the Democratic-controlled Congress in the next two years to enact such a law. "If we don't do that, we have no one but ourselves to blame."

Uncertainties remain over who should be covered – including bloggers, academics, the student media – under a federal shield law, Stone said. But in the end, that is irrelevant, because, "The privilege is not held by the journalists. The privilege belongs to the source."

The escalating fight between the media and government will be the focus of a four-part "Frontline" TV special on PBS beginning this month. "News Wars: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News" will air in one-hour segments Feb. 13, 20, 27 and March 27.

In the series, Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman also examines the numerous other challenges facing mainstream media companies and their responses to those challenges, which include declining revenues, smaller news staffs and public dissatisfaction.

The Frontline series was previewed during the daylong First Amendment Summit.

The summit also included a panel discussion featuring Len Downie Jr. of The Washington Post and Bill Keller of The New York Times.

They discussed the difficult decisions their newspapers have made in publishing sensitive government information that the Bush administration considers a threat to national security.

In a separate panel discussion, Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, talked about the strain at his newspaper as a result of subpoenas issued to two Chronicle reporters in the BALCO baseball steroid scandal. The reporters face going to prison for failing to reveal their sources of leaked grand jury testimony in the case.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, addressed the summit and said he will push for passage of the federal shield law this session. Conyers also released a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging the Justice Department to rescind the subpoenas issued to the Chronicle reporters.

The summit and the PBS series underscore the strained relationship between the press and government at all levels. Karen Magnuson, president of Associated Press Managing Editors, urged APME members to focus attention on the PBS series and on ongoing government attempts to thwart press freedoms.

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