News Journal keeping needs of readers in mind
We're reorganizing our news operation for the future – mindful that we've been privileged to serve Delaware daily since 1871 because our staff knows and cares about this state.
The realignment is necessary to meet the needs of more and more readers who consume news through digital channels. Delawareonline.com, easily the state's leading news web site, has enjoyed tremendous success, and we're restructuring our team to improve your experience on desktop, mobile and tablet.
In coming months we'll have more reporters working the state, and you'll see from them a greater sense of urgency. Their charge is to be more entrepreneurial in nature than in the past, depending as much on tips from readers as assignments from editors. So if you have an idea, or a slice of perspective you feel is missing from a story as initial reports roll onto delawareonline.com, please make your voice heard.
The News Journal stands on the bedrock of watchdog reporting, which we know from market surveys is the No. 1 priority of Delaware readers. I talk to readers almost every day and most recognize, as we do, that the success of our report is predicated on the quality of the ideas we pursue. Readers expect stories they can't get anywhere else, and they expect that work to be presented in innovative ways.
The two-day series we published last weekend, "Paladin Club Massacre," illustrates the way we'll present deep stories in the Newsroom of the Future.
It had a huge presence in Sunday and Monday editions of The News Journal and a magazine-like look at delawareonline.com's desktop, mobile and tablet platforms – with video, photographs and a graphic embedded among the chapters.
Before the work was posted online, reporter Cris Barrish alerted readers on Twitter and Facebook that it was coming. Once it was published, reader comments poured in.
So no matter how you consumed the content, our intent was to improve your experience.
That's the future. And we see our digital products getting more sophisticated.
We have a delawareonline.com app for the iPhone, an app for Android, an app for the iPad, and a brand new app for coverage of the Philadelphia Eagles.
If you're already a subscriber, you can also read our print edition online.
Speaking of subscribing, you can do so at delawareonline.com/subscribe.
The printed newspaper will continue to be delivered – and sold by vendors statewide –seven days a week. Yet as we restructure, you will notice better responsiveness to your ideas from reporters and editors. You'll get better community coverage. There's a new beat designed to chronicle solutions – the best ideas bubbling up from citizens and governments. There will be more energy on stories that have statewide impact and new focus on the creative ideas coursing through Delaware.
The professionals on our staff are looking at a range of new opportunities in our organization to help bring you this kind of journalism. To effect this change we have streamlined management and consolidated some production jobs. But we are breathing new life into the reporting ranks, ensuring that we continue to have far more boots on the ground than any other news organization statewide.
Again, our strength is our people – journalists who know and care deeply about Delaware.
Thank you, Delaware, for the trust you've placed in us the past 143 years. We view it as a privilege to continue daily delivering the news in a place we love.
David Ledford
Contact Vice President/Executive Editor David Ledford at (302) 324-2860 or dledford@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @TNJ_editor.