News organizations would be wise to integrate their online journalists into the main newsroom
This column appeared in the May 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review.
Walk into the newsroom of almost any newspaper with a Web site and here’s what you won’t see: Web journalists. That’s because the online operation has been ghettoized — shunted off into a farflung no man’s land.
The Los Angeles Times‘ Web team? They’re down the street. The New York Times‘? Across Times Square. The Washington Post’s? Across the Potomac.
“What does that tell you psychologically about how the newspaper bigwigs view the Web operation?” says Howard Witt, The Chicago Tribune’s associate managing editor for interactive news. [Read more…] about Exiling online staffers to the hinterlands