Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Digital First Media's centralized news project…

An initiative by Digital First Media to centralize the production of national and digital news for its 75 newspapers is closing, a cost-cutting move stemming from a continued decline in print advertising as more readers flock to online sources.

While other newspaper companies, including USA TODAY publisher Gannett, has adopted the approach, DFM's experiment -- called Project Thunderdome -- was one of the earliest industry efforts to allow local newspaper staffs to focus on local news while a separate team of reporters and editors produced national news and digital-first content at another centralized location.

John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, has been a leading advocate of the urgency for print newsrooms to heighten their digital news offerings, and launched Thunderdome in 2012 to eliminate repetitive reporting, produce content quickly, and enhance several areas that were emerging at the time -- data journalism, video production, website and mobile developments.

In confirming the company's new direction, he wrote in his company blog Wednesday that such skills are now "shared by many in our company" and the need to have them centralized has diminished.

"Today, we are going to be making some changes to our Project Thunderdome activities and go in a new direction," he wrote. "We have explored, experimented but more importantly we have learned and have a much higher level of digital skills than we did before."

"What once were fairly isolated skills located in one place are now skills shared by many in our company. And that means it is time to change again," he said.

Paton didn't specify the number of jobs that will be cut as a result. Jim Brady, editor-in-chief of DFM, and Robyn Tomlin, editor of Thunderdome, tweeted messages Wednesday that urged other news organizations to recruit Thunderdome staffers. The website of the project, which is based in New York City, lists 45 staffers.

Some of Thunderdome's work will be redistributed to staff in DFM's regional new! spapers. Others will be discontinued. Paton didn't specify, but said Brady and Tomlin will implement the changes to reflect the company's increasing focus on local news.

The project shutdown will be followed by efforts to sell DFM newspapers by the company's majority owner, Alden Global Capital, according to industry analyst Ken Doctor, who writes about the news business at Newsonomics.com.

DFM declined to comment on the possible sale.

"They're not yet on the market, but expect regional auctions of DFM properties (with clusters around the Los Angeles area, the Bay Area, New England, Philadelphia, and Texas) — unless Alden can find a single buyer, which is unlikely," Doctor wrote on his website.

"In the closing, and in other cuts at Digital First Media, we see the impact of unending high-single-digit loss in print advertising. The ongoing devastation in print is overwhelming even DFM's relatively faster pace of digital innovation," Doctor wrote.

As Thunderdome launched, Digital First Media said it redesigned its websites, mobile sites, apps and newspapers "to allow for greater content sharing and to simplify publishing workflow." The design was also aimed at creating new advertising opportunities, the company said.

In introducing Tomlin as the Thunderdome editor in 2012, Brady said her job was to focus on "all non-local news gathering efforts on all platforms" and coordinating "coverage with our local editors – allowing our newsrooms to free up resources for more local content."

DFM had managed the print and digital properties of MediaNews Group and 21st Century Media. In December 2013, DFM finalized combining the two companies, running all news operations under the Digital First Media name.

The combined company has about $1.3 billion in annual revenues and about 10,000 employees. DFM says its news content is distributed to about "800 multi-platform products" and a monthly audience of more than 67 million Americans.

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