We're so much more than a newspaper

Early in the spring, I told one of my online staffers I was ready to start a blog.

Things kept getting in the way. There were crises and heavy workloads and more crises. My initial draft blog entry, reviewed a couple months later, seemed dated.

So rather than wait for the perfect moment, or the perfect news story, here it is: my opportunity to tell you a little about how we do business at The Telegraph and your opportunity to tell me what you think about what you read – or don’t read – in the paper or on our Web site, macon.com.

Speaking of our macon.com, we’re spending a ton of energy on it these days. It has made life a lot more complex – and interesting. Our Web site is hardly new, but the urgency with which we produce content for it is. Gone are the days when a reporter or editor storms into my office protesting that a story that we believe is an exclusive shouldn't be posted to the Web.

“Why should we let other media steal our thunder,” the argument went. “We’re our own worst enemy,” was another common refrain.

These days, the Telegraph recognizes its audience is not just the person who expects the newspaper at his doorstep each morning, but the businesswoman or student who throughout the day wants to know what’s happening in Bibb, Houston and surrounding counties.

We’ve turned ourselves upside down to make sure these new readers are not disappointed. Inside the newsroom, it’s been a hard sell. Frankly, that’s because it’s more work, or at least different work. Reporters and photographers are now expected to file breaking news throughout the day. Some are shooting video and taking their own photos. With the web obligations satisfied, reporters then write a story for the next day’s newspaper, mindful of the need to provide more detail to keep the story fresh. Photographers edit their pictures, choosing one or two for the newspaper and a gallery of photos for the Web site.

I was a broadcast major in college, so I have a slight familiarity with newsgathering and delivery that emphasizes the visual. But for most of us in the newsroom, what we’ve learned about producing journalism for the Web has been seat-of-the-pants.

We’ll need to hold on to our britches because more change is afoot. Media companies across the country are experimenting with new forms of news delivery (from cell phones to e-mail alerts), embracing the delivery of other kinds of information (from entertainment news to a week’s worth of recipes), and embracing reader-provided content (from news stories to photos, video and blogs). At a multimedia session held at our newspaper this week, sponsored by the Georgia Associated Press, we got a look at what some other newspapers are creating: Prep football shows, Web sites for niche audiences, short video clips of regular folks telling their own stories, breaking news video and stories about events that a newspaper might once have ignored.

At the Telegraph multimedia reporter Liz Fabian produces a daily newscast that we post on our Web site each day, usually by 8 a.m. Liz’s day starts at 5 a.m., something that might be commonplace for TV stations and big newspapers with big staffs. But it’s a clear investment in our future and our readers’ habits of expecting news more immediately and more often. While her primary responsibility is to get the newscast up early, Liz now catches up with overnight news and gets a jump on early morning breaking news that we might have missed in the days when we had a reporter start at 8 or 8:30.

After she finishes her early morning work, Liz might be sent to shoot video to accompany another story, or she might take a few hours off so that she can come back to videotape a late afternoon or early evening assignment.

Liz isn’t the only one with her own Web show. Sports reporter Jonathan Heeter and features reporter Joe Kovac anchor a high school football show that we post each Wednesday. Liz also shoots a show for our Web site featuring local celeb Mark Ballard. During election season, we videotaped interviews with candidates seeking endorsement from the Telegraph Editorial Board, allowing readers to hear, unedited, everything the candidate had to say. Meanwhile, we continue to add staff-written blogs to our site, on topics ranging from parenting to movies to sports and politics.

None of this means we value the newspaper less; it simply means we recognize the importance of two primary audiences.

Our web site traffic is growing, significantly. To keep growing will require that we continue to report and break local news, maintain our watchdog role in reporting on city and county government, continue to investigate wrongdoing, and stay plugged into the community at all levels. These are the things good journalists have always done.

WANTED: YOUR QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND STORY IDEAS

A lot of what appears in the Telegraph news pages and on macon.com is the result of tips from readers. More on that another day. Meanwhile, let me hear from you. You can post your comment on the blog or e-mail me at smarshall@macon.com.