USA Today Merges Online and Print Departments

Posted on December 13, 2005

Editor and Publisher reports that USA Today is the latest major newspaper to combine its online and print newsrooms. USA Today has 75 Web news staffers which will now be part of 500 editorial employees.

"The goal in combining the two newsrooms is to create a single 24-hour news organization that will inform and engage readers on multiple platforms," USA Today Editor Ken Paulson said in a statement announcing the move. "That means going beyond arm's-length collaboration. Starting today our goal is to begin conceiving and planning our coverage as one unit, thinking more strategically about the deployment of our newsgathering resources in a world in which news has become an on-demand commodity."
Spokesman Steve Anderson said the move does not increase or decrease staffing, but it does realign the management structure for more of a streamlined process.

The move makes sense: the only reason most newspapers put the Web people in a separate department was because no one was sure at the time if the Internet would even last. Now, the Web is just part of the presence of the newsgathering organization -- which makes more sense.