When Will a Web Editor Lead a Major Newsroom?
From EDITOR & PUBLISHER Since mid-August, The Washington Post’s fifth-floor newsroom has been essentially empty, except for work crews renovating the place. The newspaper’s center of newsgathering is being transformed from a traditional newsroom to a converged news center, complete with a “Universal News Desk.” Staffers are working at other locations around the 15th Street building, but will return before the end of the year to complete the paper’s long-planned Web/print convergence. While the online operation has slowly been melded with the newsroom during the past year under Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, who took over in September 2008, the physical relocation of the online staff from suburban Virginia to downtown D.C. will complete the move. When the dust settles, sometime in December, the paper will boast its first completely integrated news operation. “It dramatically broadens what we can do,” says Managing Editor Liz Spayd, who spent two years on the online side but is now on
