PLEASE REPLY! - Lunch with Ron's group
EHarris
Tony and I met with Jim Swenson, Steve Suo and Michaela Santen
Thursday. We had printouts of mission statements, etc from both
groups, and talked about the different approaches so far and if the
goals were close enough to merge.
Here's the summary of differences with our group as Jim saw it:
1. Scope: the geographic focus of news coverage and audience should
be at least statewide, not limited to the metropolitan area
2. Technology: they believe there is not in our group an
understanding of and appreciation for the importance of web
technologies and the importance of producing a dynamic web product.
Staffing of this effort should be part of the newsroom and sufficient
to present news in a visually interesting and communicative way (more
resources).
3. Political agenda: There is concern that our group is driven by a
liberal urban political agenda, reflected by histories of people in
our group and by the potential funding sources discussed (same old
liberal donors). Safeguards would have to be built in.
I disagreed with #2 - I don't think anyone in our group believes the
others don't have an understanding of etc. technology; I just stressed
that was a major focus including structuring core editorial staff.
They also told us that while that group had started thinking it would
focus a lot on video, it's moved away from emphasizing that to be
medium neutral/ cross platform.
On #1 and #3, I think his summary of our take is accurate. Neither
seemed insurmountable however. My take at this point is that it makes
sense to plan to merge. I say plan to because if there turn out to be
major differences that can't be worked out, then who knows. I guess
the next step would be meeting together to air any issues/questions
and then plan. They have a pretty robust work program in place, in the
march toward putting something together to fund.
Your thoughts??
Thanks,
Emily