Romenesko Memos
The Travel, Food, and Books sections are affected. “While these changes are meant to enhance the quality, quantity and range of content we produce in these groups, they will affect a small number of newsroom jobs,” says a Post memo. “We don’t make these decisions lightly; they are a necessary part of our continuing effort to create a lean newsroom structure capable of producing the high-quality journalism our readers expect from us.” The full memo is after the jump.
From: Marcus Brauchli
Date: Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:42 PM
Subject: Books, Food & Travel
To: NEWS – All Newsroom
To the Staff:
We are reorganizing the structure and staffing of several of our weekly feature sections. These changes will simplify and streamline our operations, allowing us to improve coverage in certain areas.
Travel and Food are being consolidated into a single staff that will report to Joe Yonan, who already oversees both existing staffs. Food will continue to produce its award-winning section and Travel will remain a key section
in our recently beefed-up Sunday features package. We will place new emphasis on regional travel and weekend getaways — areas that are popular with readers. We believe this will provide more useful and engaging content
for readers on Sunday, our most important paper of the week.
Our books staff, ably led for the past two and a half years by Rachel Shea, will now report into the sections where their reviews run. Non-fiction editor Steve Levingston will report to Outlook, which publishes non-fiction
reviews, and fiction editor Ron Charles, and the rest of Book World’s assistant editors, will report to Style, which hosts most fiction coverage and reviews. The assistant editors will support both fiction and non-fiction reviews and coverage. This approach will allow tighter and smarter integration of our books coverage with the host sections, in print and online. We’re not trimming coverage; we will publish the same number of reviews, in the same places where readers are accustomed to finding them.
While these changes are meant to enhance the quality, quantity and range of content we produce in these groups, they will affect a small number of newsroom jobs. We don’t make these decisions lightly; they are a necessary
part of our continuing effort to create a lean newsroom structure capable of producing the high-quality journalism our readers expect from us. We remain firmly committed to deep, smart and relevant coverage of travel, food and books.
These changes will be phased in over the next few weeks.
Marcus
Liz
Raju
Kevin
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