Rethinking the Merc

Kudos to the San Jose Mercury News. After a series of demoralizing cuts that seemed destined to precipitate the newspaper’s slide into oblivion, the remaining staffers have refused to write their own obituary. They’re fundamentally rethinking how their organization should function — and, more importantly, they’re doing it out in the open.

My favorite recommendation (so far): “Our newsroom structure is flopped: 70 percent of our resources are dedicated to online, while the remaining 30 percent work to create a print experience that focuses on doing one thing on each section cover better than anything else. The rest of the paper is culled from our online report.”

Mark Glaser over at PBS has a nice summary of the Merc’s effort.