NIAC friends,

Following is a memo I sent to the staff this evening announcing some pretty major changes in newsroom leadership and, to a lesser extent structure. I thought some of you might find it interesting.

Staff:

By now most everybody has at least some knowledge of the upcoming shifts, adjustments and staff changes. The changes were announced this morning at our annual manager retreat and they are summarized in this e-mail.

I'll schedule a staff meeting for next week so that we'll have an opportunity to discuss things in more detail.

The changes were driven by a couple of significant demands. The change begins with an understanding we need to realign our existing staff to meet new challenges in journalism and newspaper technology. We will not be growing the staff next year to any meaningful extent. If we are going to make changes, we must make them with the staff we have in place.

The first imperative is to grow the number of people devoted to online and electronic media. The second imperative is to realign and grow our Voices operation (restoring some of what we lost in years past). The third imperative is to leverage our staff across media systems and new editorial products in such a way that I can successfully argue for maintaining newsroom staff at current levels.

The changes announced this morning should help us accomplish those goals.

This is how the newsroom management team will look, department by department (note there are some significant promotions in the list below and a couple of departments where leadership does not change):

City desk: Addy Hatch, city editor; Dan Hansen, deputy city editor; David Wasson, assistant city editor; Pamela Fitzsimmons, assistant city editor; Nancy Malone, assistant city editor/online.

Business: Alison Boggs, business editor; Jim Allen, deputy business editor.

Features: Ken Paulman, features editor; Rick Bonino, deputy features editor

7: Shadra Beesley, 7 editor; Tom Bowers, assistant 7 editor

Online: Ryan Pitts, online director (responsible for online production and development).

Voices: Tad Brooks, Voices editor; Jeff Jordan, assistant Voices editor/Valley editor

Photo: Larry Reisnouer, director of photography; Liz Kishimoto, interim assistant director of photography.

News desk: Bertil Peterson, news editor; Richard Miller, deputy news editor.

Sports: Joe Palmquist, sports editor; Gil Hulse, deputy sports editor; Vince Grippi, deputy sports editor/Sportslink.

Art and Design: Ralph Walter, deputy design director.

The new table of organization has the following lines of supervision:

Reporting to Steve Smith: Doug Floyd, editorial page editor; Mary Beth Donelan, chief editorial assistant/office manager; John Webster, associate editor administration/systems; Erin Daniels, the Vox; Shadra Beesley, 7.

Reporting to Gary Graham: Carla Savalli, senior editor local news; Geoff Pinnock, senior editor design/presentation; Ryan Pitts, online director; Tad Brooks, Voices editor, Joe Palmquist, sports editor.

Reporting through Carla Savalli to Gary Graham: Addy Hatch, city editor; Alison Boggs, business editor; Ken Paulman, features editor; Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele, investigative reporters.

Reporting through Geoff Pinnock to Gary Graham: Bertil Peterson, news editor; Ralph Walter, deputy design director; Larry Reisnouer, director of photography.

In addition to the above changes in the management team, there are several staff changes:

Tom Sowa will move to the city desk/online group to develop an online version of .TXT which will continue to be produced by the business desk. Joe Barrentine will move permanently into the online producer position he has been filling temporarily. Amy Cannata will become a full-time online breaking news reporter. Jamie Neely will move from the features department to become an associate editor on the editorial page. Hilary Kraus will become a general assignment reporter in features. Tom Lutey will become one of three full-time Voices reproters. Lisa Leinberger will move from editorial assistant to the Voices where she will become a reporter. The third Voices reporter will be named shortly. In addition, former intern Parker Howell, who will be our legislative intern in Boise this winter, will be hired full-time to work on the business desk replacing Tom Sowa.

Clearly, all of these changes will mean some changes in beats and assignments. Many of those adjustments already have been determined and the individuals affected have been involved in the discussions. Other changes may yet develop. I have asked Carla to lead a complete zero-basing of our local news beat structure shortly after the first of the year to make sure gaps are covered and coverage priorities set.

It will take a few days to work out a transition schedule. But I hope most of these changes can be made by the middle of next month.

As always, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. And my door is always open.

Tnx
steve