|| Author: James Johnson|Tags:

The Seattle Times Revamps Newsroom, Begins Focusing On Digital Content

The Seattle TimesSince the launch of Medacity I have been reporting on the Guardian Media Groups shift towards a “digital first” approach and now another traditionally print based newsroom is doing the same. The Seattle Times on Thursday revealed that they were restructuring their newsroom to focus on digital content.

The company will now focus their efforts on creation, curation and community.

What exactly do those three efforts mean for journalists at the publication? According to the EditorsWeblog:

“Creation refers to the journalists themselves, those who gather news, write news or document it in images or video. Curation is the process of presenting the news, designing the digital (or print) format in which selected news stories appear, a task that is handled by the production staff.”

The final part of the process known as “community” refers to staff members engaging with the local and digital community through digital processes. For example staff members will engage with users through the sites commenting system and will coordinate efforts of local bloggers who work for the paper.

Blogs are an important part of the company’s digital first approach with each section of the newspaper featuring an accompanying blog.

As part of the paper’s new focus Kathy Best the managing editor who has been leading The Seattle Times digital team have been assigned with managing news gathering efforts for online story reporting.