Brauchli Announces Major <em>WaPo</em> Changes

This morning the following memo was sent to WaPo staffers from managing editor Marcus Brauchli, announcing major reorganization changes, including changes to personnel, coverage groups and the universal news desk. Effective May 1st, Kevin Merida has been named National Editor, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz named Local Editor and Sandy Sugawara named Editor of the Universal Desk. Also, when WaPo's print and online desks merge, Scott Vance will become News Editor. Brauchli will hold a town hall meeting today at 2pm to address any staffers' questions. To the staff: Today, we are beginning a reorganization to create newreporting groups, streamline editing desks and anticipate the impending integration of our print and digital news operations. The changes reinforce our longstanding belief in great reporting and writing as the vital center of The Post's journalism. We want to empower journalists and encourage them to work across departments and platforms. In addition, we want to simplify the handling of words, pages, images and new media, building on the prescient move to "two-touch" editing under Len and Phil. Decisions about space and play must happen faster, both in print and online, and in a way that pulls together our now-separate newsrooms. A single editor ultimately ought to be able to oversee all versions of a story, whether it appears in print, online or on a BlackBerry or iPhone. Space in the newspaper and editing firepower in general should be allocated based on a day's news priorities, not a predetermined formula. These changes will alter the way we do things, but they will not affect the commitment to journalistic depth, authority and excellence that has defined The Post. Just the reverse: We think these steps will help us to adapt more easily to the economic and technological challenges that face us, while preserving the best of our traditions and values. Memo continues after the jump... Key Personnel Changes: In keeping with our strategic focus on serving readers in and interested in Washington, we will put most news reporters under two senior editors, a National Editor and a Local Editor. Much first-line editing, copyediting and production will occur on a new Universal News Desk under another senior editor. Together with the executive editor, the managing editors and the deputy managing editor, these people will form the core leadership of the newsroom. - Kevin Merida, now Assistant Managing Editor for National News, will become National Editor. - Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, now Assistant Managing Editor for Sports and Weekend Editor, will become Local Editor. - Sandy Sugawara, now Assistant Managing Editor for Business, will become Editor of the Universal Desk. These changes, which become effective May 1, will set in motion other personnel moves. - Scott Vance, now Assistant Managing Editor for News online, will become News Editor when our print and online desks merge, working closely with the National and Local editors to drive coverage across platforms. - Bill Hamilton remains Enterprise Editor, working for Liz and helping to guide many major projects into the paper and online. - Bob McCartney, now Assistant Managing Editor for Metro News, will become a columnist on metropolitan affairs. - Matt Vita, now Emilio's deputy, will become Sports Editor. - Greg Schneider, now Sandy's deputy, will assume responsibility for Business. Coverage Groups: Local, National and Business reporters and editors who "commission" or drive coverage will be organized into coverage groups. Decisions about what we cover and who should handle what story will be made by the leaders of these reporting groups. Each reporting group will be responsible for a specific area of coverage and be led by an editor and probably at least one deputy, who may also write. To give you an idea how this will work, we recently posted a job running Science, Health and Environmental coverage. That editor will have primary responsibility for coverage of those areas, across the paper and the website, and will oversee the reporters on those subjects. Most stories from these coverage groups will be edited on the universal desk throughout the day. The groups will manage blogs and may edit major projects internally. Other groups will be created around subjects such as National Security, Local Business and Development, Social Issues, and so on. We will announce their formation in coming weeks and post available openings for editors and deputies. All the news reporting groups will work for Kevin or Emilio. Kevin has run National since January, but already has displayed great talent as a story conceptualizer and the special effectiveness of someone who is both a leader and a role model for many of his reporters. Together with his deputy, Marilyn Thompson, Kevin has been building a highly capable team whose coverage goes beyond the routine and brings real insight. Emilio, a native of the Washington area, has run sports brilliantly in his second stint here at The Post. His focus on breaking news and exclusives, on strong narratives and the superb work of our columnists and photographers, has made our Sports section the best. He's also pioneered print-online integration for The Post this year, bringing together our sports journalists in what has been a very useful and successful experiment. We will place great emphasis on developing strong local journalism, especially online. Emilio's exceptionally talented and versatile deputy, Matt Vita, will succeed him as Sports Editor. A former national-security editor and Congressional reporter for The Post and a former foreign correspondent for Cox Newspapers, Matt shares much credit for the Sports departmentâ€™s recent successes. Bob McCartney, who has served the paper so well as AME/Metro for the last four years, will become a Metropolitan columnist, one of our leading voices in the community where Bob grew up and has lived and run coverage for so long. His distinguished career as a foreign correspondent, managing editor of the International Herald Tribune and the first AME of the continuous news desk, and as a business editor and a reporter gives him the kind of depth and wisdom that will infuse his writing with authority and insight. Universal News Desk: The Universal Desk will ultimately combine what is now spread across departments and two separate newsrooms, bringing together many people now in the ranks of assigning editors, copy editors and the news desk, as well as many producers at the website. It will handle editing tasks large and small, and make decisions about space allocation and story play, deciding what appears where on the paper's news pages and online. Most stories will be edited on the universal desk, rather than in reporting groups. Stories edited during the day for use online will form the basis for their print versions, and vice versa. We still have a lot of planning and consultation to do before the desk will be up and running. We invite your input and ideas, and expect to be discussing with many people both downtown and in Arlington what the right organization is. Anyone who has watched Sandy's incredibly agile oversight of the business and financial staff, especially the way she and Greg led The Post's super coverage of the economic and financial crisis, will understand immediately why she is the right person to take on the immense task of creating a new, high-octane news engine. Greg, a smart, seasoned editor with experience on National as well as Business, will take over the business staff from Sandy and become The Post's main national economics and business editor. Greg has more than learned this field promotion after the often-heroic hours and exacting editing he put into the business staffâ€™s outstanding coverage of the financial and economic crisis. Like Kevin, Emilio and Sandy, Greg will work with us in mapping out the detailed newsroom structure. The bridge between the coverage groups and the Universal Desk will be Scott, when he becomes News Editor. Among his many roles will be setting intraday deadlines, guiding our homepage and ensuring that The Post is competitive on all platforms, on all stories that matter to our readers. A veteran of National and the printside before he took on a key news job at washingtonpost.com, Scott has worked with just about everyone here, and to great effect. Another central figure in the universal desk will be Ju-Don Roberts, Managing Editor of washingtonpost.com, who has steered our digital edition's continued success and whose print and online experience are vital to re-imagining our editing operations. She's been a top-class leader and will remain point person for The Postâ€™s digital edition, working with Raju on innovations and development of the best possible website for our readers. Future Changes: While we have outlined major changes here, there are many gaps still in our plan. As you will see, there are unanswered questions about some departments, including Style and the presentation, visuals, interactivity and web tools/innovations groups. Working with the new leadership team, we will come back to you with more specifics in coming weeks. We plan to move as quickly as possible to announce further details of the structure of the reporting and editing groups. Some new roles will emerge from this process, and we expect to post those jobs as well. We are, as you know, embarked on a number of big projects. Most notably, we plan to bring in a new content management systemâ€”production software, in plain Englishâ€”and are rethinking aspects of our newspaper's design. We expect that system will take a year to go live, but our reorganization anticipates the changes in workflow that will result from a single editing and production system. Design changes in turn will reflect what the new technology and newsroom organization will enable. We also are on track with plans to meld our print and digital newsrooms over the summer and into the fall. Shirley Carswell, Claudia Townsend, Peter Perl and a small army of others are leading various efforts, and we undoubtedly will have more to say about these plans in coming weeks. We believe the changes we are undertaking will enhance our competitiveness by focusing our journalistic energy on coverage of core areas and by simplifying editing processes. As we integrate editing and production, print and digital, we will be able to deliver smarter, faster news online, while preserving the writing, depth and range of coverage that define The Post. Finally, for anyone who gets this far, we have one final tidbit: We'll hold a town hall meeting at 2 p.m. today in the auditorium to take questions and discuss these plans or any other issues. Marcus Liz Raju

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Brauchli Announces Major WaPo Changes

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