News Is Really Continuous at washingtonpost.com
By Steve Outing
Wednesday, January 14 2004
Wednesday, January 14 2004
Published on AllBusiness.com
Updated at 10 a.m. ET, Jan. 16
In the season premiere of NBC's The West Wing last September, there was a great scene where fictional Washington Post correspondent Danny Concannon pressures White House press secretary C.J. Cregg to comment on information he's confirmed about the clandestine assassination of a Qumari terrorist leader by the U.S. government. When she feigns ignorance, Danny blurts out, "You've got two hours to find out before we post it online."
I had to smile when I watched that scene, because it represents the idea that the printed newspaper is no longer king -- even in the upper echelons of the newspaper industry. Getting out hot news before everyone else trumps the scheduled print press run, even at The Washington Post.
Is that just fiction? Nope. That's really the way it is at the Post these days.
The Post is one of the leaders in this movement to become less paper and more news. You can spot it elsewhere among leading newspapers -- The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times. Each of these papers will periodically break stories off the print cycle, on the Web because they want to beat their Internet and broadcast competitors.
But I'll put the Post at the head of the pack thanks to its "Continuous News Desk," which was set up last year and now has grown to employ five experienced news editors and writers (who work for the newspaper, not for washingtonpost.com). That small department, which sits smack dab in the middle of the Post newsroom (you can see their desks on CNN when Post reporters do regular on-air interviews), is fast rewriting some old rules about how the venerable Washington Post operates.
The Second Coming (of Gibbs)
To understand the significance of the Continuous News Desk, we only need to look back to last week when a HUGE story hit: the return of three-time Super Bowl winning coach Joe Gibbs to the Washington Redskins. To the D.C. market, this story was as big as a presidential impeachment.
The Gibbs news broke at around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, and the Continuous News Desk quickly sprung into action. Through the day, the desk worked with Post reporters and washingtonpost.com in:
* Writing and updating a main story through the day, as events unfolded -- reported and written by newspaper sports writers Mark Maske and Leonard Shapiro, in concert with Continuous News Desk editors.
* Facilitating a Washingtonpost.com audio interview with Maske, on his cell phone in his car, about the news.
* Facilitating the scheduling of a "Live Online" audience discussion
In the season premiere of NBC's The West Wing last September, there was a great scene where fictional Washington Post correspondent Danny Concannon pressures White House press secretary C.J. Cregg to comment on information he's confirmed about the clandestine assassination of a Qumari terrorist leader by the U.S. government. When she feigns ignorance, Danny blurts out, "You've got two hours to find out before we post it online."
I had to smile when I watched that scene, because it represents the idea that the printed newspaper is no longer king -- even in the upper echelons of the newspaper industry. Getting out hot news before everyone else trumps the scheduled print press run, even at The Washington Post.
Is that just fiction? Nope. That's really the way it is at the Post these days.
The Post is one of the leaders in this movement to become less paper and more news. You can spot it elsewhere among leading newspapers -- The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times. Each of these papers will periodically break stories off the print cycle, on the Web because they want to beat their Internet and broadcast competitors.
But I'll put the Post at the head of the pack thanks to its "Continuous News Desk," which was set up last year and now has grown to employ five experienced news editors and writers (who work for the newspaper, not for washingtonpost.com). That small department, which sits smack dab in the middle of the Post newsroom (you can see their desks on CNN when Post reporters do regular on-air interviews), is fast rewriting some old rules about how the venerable Washington Post operates.
The Second Coming (of Gibbs)
To understand the significance of the Continuous News Desk, we only need to look back to last week when a HUGE story hit: the return of three-time Super Bowl winning coach Joe Gibbs to the Washington Redskins. To the D.C. market, this story was as big as a presidential impeachment.
The Gibbs news broke at around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, and the Continuous News Desk quickly sprung into action. Through the day, the desk worked with Post reporters and washingtonpost.com in:
* Writing and updating a main story through the day, as events unfolded -- reported and written by newspaper sports writers Mark Maske and Leonard Shapiro, in concert with Continuous News Desk editors.
* Facilitating a Washingtonpost.com audio interview with Maske, on his cell phone in his car, about the news.
* Facilitating the scheduling of a "Live Online" audience discussion
