Thursday, March 20, 2008

Bay Area News Group Asks Staff
to Devise a 'NewPaper'

Leave it to the cost-cutters at MediaNews to try to sell their East Bay readerships a newspaper makeover that will improve the quality of journalism with fewer journalists.

Last week, local management sent its employees — well, those who survived the recent buyout purge — at the company's 23 East Bay newspapers, which include The Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune, a memo detailing a bold restructuring plan.

According to the March 12 memo, the key feature of the so-called "NewPaper Project" will be a task force of newsroom employees who will ask a series of fundamental questions about journalism in order to design an "innovative newspaper blueprint." The task force will question such elements as design, coverage priorities, and the breadth of coverage areas. In the memo, Kevin Keane, the executive editor of the Bay Area News Group (BANG), MediaNews' local consortium of papers, said he expected to roll out the NewPaper makeover by the end of the year. [Click for MORE]

> Despite the cuts, we're still dedicated to our community

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