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Behind the scenes with Gannett’s mojos

Posted by Cory Bergman on December 4, 2006

The Fort Myers News-Press has 14 mojos (mobile journalists) on the streets covering stories for the web first, newspaper second. It’s part of a larger Gannett experiment to reinvent the newspaper online. Many of the mojos — who work out of their cars with wireless laptops — are focused on covering stories for the site’s hyperlocal sections. Some of the other interesting initiatives at the News-Press include “crowd-sourcing” investigative stories, hiring a managing editor in charge of “audience building” (who tracks popular stories in the stats) and liberal message board policies that even allow profanity. “We’re trying a lot of things. Some will work; others won’t,” said Kate Marymont, the executive editor. “It’s like play.” Very interesting stuff.

  • Jim wilson

    oh boy.. I can hear the bad ideas being created in TV people’s heads right now…

    some of this is soooo 1999 it’s incredible..

    two things that frighten me about this:

    1) “some things will work, some won’t” uh, yeah, I remember hearing that a TON in 1999-2000 with a TON of dumb ideas… those of us left standing aren’t humored by it any more

    2) 58,000 unique visitors per week in 2002 to 140,000 per week… uh, isnt that about what the growth rate of online usage is? I mean, that’s just barely doubled in four years.. so, 30 percent growth a year as the internet grew…. at what pace?

    I don’t mind the new ideas.. but here’s the awful process this will take:

    1) news director or station manager reads Washington Post article about this.

    2) the same Washington Post article that misses key things like other web staffing or revenue or… the triffling page views associated with such things

    3) ND or station manager emails article around to imply “we’re really behind.. look at this”

    4) web people WHO ARE JUST TRYING TO MAKE THINGS WORK EACH DAY cringe and try not to become defensive…

    5) ND/station manager work behind the scenes to “make things happen” because reluctant web staff (who knows better) won’t dare do such ridiculous wastes of time..

    6) bad ideas are implemented taking resources from the things the web staff has been CRYING about trying “fix” the right way since everyone got laid off in 2000/2001

    7) nothing changes.

  • W

    There’s a reason nobody showed up to the calendar signing thing – nobody cares. Throwing resources at topics that no one cares about isn’t a solid strategy.

    That said, they’ve been getting tons of ink on their ‘mojos’ because newspapers are desperate to become relevant again and they’ll latch onto any new idea, nomatter how bad.

  • Z

    I like the concept, if maybe a tad too micro-local. But I’d be concerned about having these 14 folks hired, but, oh, wait, we need to layoff three other people (“other people” is my inferment from the text, not theirs).

    But even when I went out to go shoot post-Black Friday crowds for my site, everyone asked “When’ll that be on TV?” and simply didn’t understand why it was a “web story”

 
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