Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

miami converged

There are changes afoot at the Miami Herald and miamiherald.com. In a memo to staffers yesterday, executive editor Tom Fiedler had some interesting things to say about the relationship between the newspaper and the Web site.

I have two messages to deliver today.

First, my goal is to remain as relevant, as important and as influential to this community in the future as we have been in the past — and to do it through world-class journalism. It’s a goal we all share.

Second, we will make delivering that journalism on MiamiHerald.com and our other media platforms just as high a priority as delivering it in The Miami Herald. Let me repeat that for emphasis: Just as high.

We are beyond being satisfied with incremental change and giving polite head nods toward other media platforms. We are going to execute fundamental restructuring to support that pledge. Every job in the newsroom — EVERY JOB — is going to be redefined to include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio. For news gatherers, this means posting everything we can as soon as we can. It means using the web site to its fullest potential for text, audio and video. We’ll come to appreciate that MiamiHerald.com is not an appendage of the newsroom; it’s a fundamental product of the newsroom.

No more will some people be strictly newspaper staff and others will be strictly on-line or multi-media staff. If you produce news, you’ll be expected to produce it as effectively for the electronic reader or listener as you would for the newspaper reader. If you edit or design for the newspaper, you’ll learn to edit and design for the web site.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as print-focused people are asked to take on more Web-related tasks. I wonder what the role of the people who currently specialize in the Web will be, and how the new focus might help or hinder workflows and attitudes toward the various media the Herals serves.