This Week: On Wednesday, Feb. 23, at Noon ET Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor for Continuous News Robert J. McCartney discussed breaking news coverage for washingtonpost.com and the partnership between the newspaper and the Web site.
McCartney became the first assistant managing editor for Continuous News in 2003, after returning from Paris where he most recently had been associate editor and European economics correspondent. He went to France in early 2001 as managing editor of the International Herald Tribune. Previously, McCartney was in The Post's newsroom as foreign editor, Maryland editor, deputy national editor for defense and national Security and local business editor. In his earlier incarnation as a reporter, McCartney served as New York financial correspondent, Central European bureau chief in Bonn and Mexico City bureau chief. He joined The Post as an assistant foreign editor in 1982, coming to Washington from the Associated Press in Rome.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Robert J. McCartney: Good day, everybody. Thanks for all the interesting questions. I'll answer as many as possible.
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Washington, D.C.:
I'm not sure I quite understand what "Continuous News" means. Can you explain a bit more what your role is? Do you work at the paper or the .com site?
Robert J. McCartney: This is a frequent and very understandable question. The Washington Post created the Continuous News Department (or CND) in August 2003 primarily to handle the rapidly growing importance of the Internet in reaching readers both in the Washington, D.C. area and throughout the nation and the world.
The CND is a part of the newspaper, whereas washingtonpost.com is part of a separate subsidiary of the Washington Post Company. The CND sits in the newsroom, tucked in between the National and Metro desks, and next to the in-house television studio (whose operations are affiliated with ours). The Web site has its offices across the river, in Arlington, Virginia.
The CND has two primary roles. We solicit and edit live, breaking news stories for publication on washingtonpost.com. And we are a primary liaison between the newspaper and the Web site.
Before creation of the CND, there were already two online editors in the newsroom. When we were set up, we added two writers -- Fred Barbash and Bill Branigin, whose bylines you frequently see on the Web site -- and an assistant managing editor (i.e. me). So we are relatively small, but we handle stories from all sections.
There's no question that the "Continuous News" title is awkward. We considered other alternatives: department of "Online News," "Internet News," and even "24/7 News," but decided this was the most descriptive.
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Washington, D.C.:
On a daily basis, how much interaction do you have with the Web site?
Robert J. McCartney: We are in constant interaction with the Web site, from 5 a.m. or earlier until 7 p.m. or later every workday, and as needed on holidays and weekends. We are in touch with them via telephone, e-mail and The Post's internal messaging system.
The Web site's news desk in Arlington is regularly asking us to evaluate the importance of breaking stories, or to try to get staff stories from The Post on different subjects. We advise them on play of stories on the home page, and offer stories that we think are important.
We send them a budget of expected online stories each day, and update it regularly, and report to them on what happens at The Post's 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. story conferences. The Continuous News desk has a daily videoconference with the washingtonpost.com (wp.com) news desk at noon, and a teleconference at 3 p.m.
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Norfolk, Va.:
Are there certain stories that the reporters and editors of The Post are reluctant to break online for fear of tipping off television and radio to a story they might not otherwise know about until the print edition hits the streets?
Robert J. McCartney: Yes, we certainly hold back stories from the Web to avoid tipping off competitors. Many (probably most) exclusive enterprise or feature stories go up on the Web site late in the evening, typically between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., as the first edition of the newspaper is rolling off the presses. We decide whether to break news on the Web or in the newspaper depending on where we think it will have the most impact, and whether we think the scoop will "hold."
For instance, National reporter Dan Balz got a break on the story in 2000 that Dick Cheney was George W. Bush's pick to be the GOP's vice presidential candidate. Balz nailed it down around the middle of the day, as I recall. He knew that wasn't going to hold until the next morning's paper. Other people were going to get it. So he went with it on the Web.
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Atlanta, Ga.:
Robert,
Serving in some capacity as a foreign editor and reporter, could you walk me through the process of, say, a reporter filing from Iraq? Like when the U.S. attacked in March 2003, did you all have a game plan for filing stories, interaction with the desk and getting it right? What is the editing process like? Working at three mid-size newspapers, I know that interaction between the desk and the reporter is key (i.e: a reporter filing a game story from the road.) Is foreign reporting, especially something like a war, like this on a much larger scale? Finding a place to file, making changes, and so on?
Thanks man!
Robert J. McCartney: Filing from abroad, and especially from Iraq, is a major challenge for us. We handle Continuous News stories in three ways. Our first preference is for the regular beat reporter, in this case the foreign correspondent, to file the story himself or herself. That way, we get the maximum benefit of the reporter's expertise, sourcing and credibility.
But frequently, the correspondent is unable to write the story all alone. He or she may have interviews to do, or may only have a cellphone and be away from the laptop, or may even be under fire. (Post reporter Jackie Spinner has filed from Iraq while under mortar attack.) In that case, our second choice is for the reporter to talk to, or give a partial file, to one of our Continuous News writers. We'll take as much as we can get from the reporter, and do some more reporting on our own, and write the story under a double byline. Fred Barbash, who starts work at 5 a.m., does a lot of this kind of work with our correspondents in Iraq and elsewhere overseas. That's because news typically breaks abroad when it's the early morning hours in Washington, owing to the time difference.
If we can't get in touch with the correspondent at all, or the correspondent just can't give us anything at the moment, then Fred or Bill Branigin writes the story on his own.
As for the March 2003 attack, we did have a detailed plan for how to cover the war in real time for the Web. One key detail: we had one of the Foreign editors, Andy Mosher, work throughout the night so we were truly staffed around the clock during that important period.
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Liverpool, U.K.:
Are you any relation to Paul? And how often do you get asked that?
Robert J. McCartney: I am no relation to Paul, but I am regularly asked that. I did visit his boyhood home in Liverpool two summers ago, and it was delightful.
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Washington, D.C.:
Newspaper circulations are spiraling while Web use is going up at the same time. Do you foresee a shift at some point in resources from one medium to the other?
Robert J. McCartney: In one sense, a shift is already taking place. Only a small number of people worked at washingtonpost.com a decade ago, whereas now the operation has well over 200 employees. From the point of view of the Washington Post company, that's an investment that went to online news rather than print operations. However, there was an increase as well over that period in resources devoted to the newspaper, especially for coverage of local news. Moreover, resources have not yet been taken away from the newspaper to be transferred to our partners at the Web site.
Future trends will depend on the evolution of habits and preferences of readers and advertisers. I think many readers will continue to prefer the printed newspaper, but there's no question that growing numbers of people are getting accustomed to getting much of their news online.
On the commercial side, online advertising is increasing much more rapidly (albeit from a lower base) than print advertising. If that continues for a long period, it's inevitable that The Post and other newspaper companies would devote more resources to the online medium.
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Hague, Va.:
Your web site seems to be up-to-the-minute on news, but some of us still prefer to see print and read the daily. With the advent of the Web site, the paper has become extremely lax in including late news directing us to the web site instead. We in tidewater Virginia have learned not to expect print reporting on any news breaking after 9 p.m., and are willing to read about it in the following day's print issue. Recently, the editors have had short memory about what news they've printed in our edition and fail to include in subsequent issues the stories that they skipped the evening before. Cases in point, we never saw either stories (or box scores) for the Maryland men's basketball game or the Wizard's game of Tuesday and Wednesday 15 and 16 February! Shoddy.
Robert J. McCartney: I understand your frustration over this, and will pass on your comments to the relevant editors. That said, there's no easy answer to this. In tidewater Virginia, you're getting the first edition of the newspaper, which accounts for less than a tenth of our total circulation. If the results from the Wizards or Terps game are in time for the 2nd edition -- as they almost always are -- then the editors are reluctant to recycle that news the following day for fewer than 10 percent of readers who only saw the 1st edition. (Sometimes we do recycle the story for the next day's first edition, and then swap it out for the second, but that creates a lot of logistical hassles.) We see the Web in that case as an ideal way to provide readers with the latest news, including what didn't make their newspaper. If you're only interested in seeing the news in ink-on-paper, though, then I can see how that wouldn't be satisfying.
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Anonymous:
So, you hold back breaking news from the Web site until you can get a dead-tree edition out, but you realize that the print edition circulation is dropping while Web site use is going up. Don't you think you're kind of behind the curve here?
Would you not be better served to find a way to leverage the advantages of the real-time medium instead of following a business model that forces you to keep your main emphasis on a medium that saddles you with the same compromises that print media have always had?
Robert J. McCartney: I don't think I quite agree with the assumption in your first question. The main stories we hold back from the Web are exclusive enterprise and feature stories, not breaking news. Nobody else has those stories, so we don't give up anything by holding them back. We get the benefit of the scoop both in the newspaper and online. We consistently get heavy traffic for those exclusives online -- as you can see on the site by checking the "Most E-mailed" and "Most Viewed" lists. So I don't think we're hurting the readers in any way there.
As for the second question, we are very much trying to do all we can to leverage the advantages of the real-time medium. The Continuous News desk was created to get maximum impact on the Web from the reporting, writing and other talents of the newspaper staff. washingtonpost.com regularly wins top national awards for its video and other multimedia journalism. The Live Online Web chats, such as this one, represent another significant effort to take advantage of the medium's interactivity. We are increasingly covering events in more "Webbie" ways. One good example is the multimedia blog used to cover Inauguration Day events on Jan. 20. Another was the multimedia, interactive "Convention Diary" featuring work by Bob Kaiser and Lucian Perkins at the Democratic and Republican conventions last summer.
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Silver Spring, Md.:
Your biography indicates you've spent a fair amount of time in different parts of the world, specifically in different time zones. Does that experience help when you're trying to manage stories coming in at all times of the day?
Robert J. McCartney: I suppose my experience overseas helps a bit in understanding how to cover stories coming in at various times of day. It's not rocket science, though, just addition and subtraction.
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Fairfax, Va.:
What differences to you see in your print and online audience? Are the stories on the front page of the paper always the top stories on the Web site?
Robert J. McCartney: There's a lot of overlap between the two audiences, but also some important differences. The biggest difference, of course, is that washingtonpost.com has allowed us to reach an enormous audience in the United States and the world beyond the newspaper's circulation area (which is in Washington, D.C. and its suburbs). The majority of our readers on the Web site come from outside the D.C. area. Most of them are in the U.S. but a sizable chunk are abroad, especially in Canada and other countries with many English speakers. Wp.com takes this into account to some extent in editing the home page. From midnight to 6 a.m. Washington time, when much of international audience is awake and reading us, the site gives more prominence to stories of interest to a global audience.
Our online readers also tend to be more interested in technology and Internet news, and to be a shade younger, than our newspaper readers. To a significant extent, though, the stories that get the most attention online are also the ones that we believe are most important to newspaper readers as well: exclusive, high-impact news stories, especially about national politics, and stimulating, original opinion and commentary.
As for your second question, the stories on the front page of the newspaper virtually always get top play on the Web at some point. When that happens depends on when the story breaks. If a big story breaks early in the day on Tuesday, say, and is up on the Web site all day, then it's less likely to be at the top of the home page on Wednesday morning -- even though it was on the front page of Wednesday's paper. In that case, on Wednesday the Web site is more likely to post a second-day story, such as an analysis, since it feels it had the news on the day before.
In addition, and this is noteworthy, the home page on wp.com often gives good display to stories that run inside the newspaper but that the Web editors think are important, interesting, or "good for the mix." These are often lighter stories, which brighten up the feel of the home page.
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Northern Virginia:
Are you also the department that would help keep the web site up to date on breaking local news related to traffic or extreme weather? I'm thinking of huge, newsworthy tie-ups or developments like Tractor Man or blizzards, not workaday hassles.
I was upset during a very bad snowstorm a few years ago that the .com version did not alert readers that Governor Ehrlich had closed Maryland highways to all but emergency traffic. People on the road could actually have been ticketed for being there. Other local web sites affiliated with TV and radio had this much earlier. The Post is many things, most of them wonderful, but it is definitely my local paper and needs to live up to that.
Robert J. McCartney: Yes, the Continuous News Dept. plays a big role in keeping the Web site up to date on breaking local news, although washingtonpost.com staffers also do a lot in that regard. We would certainly want to cover a closing of Maryland highways, as you describe. If we missed that story for some reason, then I'm sorry it happened. We are determined to satisfy readers' expectations for local coverage, both in the newspaper and on the Internet. This is our home market.
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Alexandria, Va.:
How open are the paper's reporters to the Web site? Do they like it for the immediacy or is that seen as a drawback?
Robert J. McCartney: This is a smart question. As recently as a few years ago, many print reporters and editors were wary of Internet journalism. They worried about giving up scoops and being distracted from their primary reponsibilities toward the newspaper. The unmistakable trend, though, is toward cooperating with the Web and even embracing it. First, it becomes steadily more obvious that the Internet is going to be a central platform for journalism of the future. Reporters and editors want to be involved in that. Also, many reporters are pleased that the Web allows them to reach a bigger audience than before. Finally, journalists are innately competitive, and we don't like seeing the Post's Web site beaten on a story any more than we like seeing the Post beaten in print (in the, ahem, oh-so-rare cases where that might actually occur).
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New York:
What do you see as the role of the Internet for The Post?
Robert J. McCartney: This is the last question. I hope that all the answers above help provide a response. For The Post and other newspapers, the Internet is a journalistic and commercial frontier and vital area for future growth. It helps deliver Post journalism (and advertising) to a vastly larger audience, and allows us to practice journalism (and business) in new media that were not previously available to us.
Thanks for all the questions! Be sure to come back next Wednesday at noon for "Ask the Post," where the guest will be Yvonne Lamb, head of our Obituaries desk.
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