Tampa and an intern look to the future

Much of the journalism world is abuzz today over the reorganization of the newsrooms at the Tampa Tribune and WFLA.
In brief, the plan calls for merging the news-gathering functions of the newspaper and its Web site with those of  the local television station. The plan also downplays the traditional beat structure and instead creates five reporting teams (breaking news, data, investigative, personal and citizen journalism.)
It's obviously too early to tell how this will work out. And although the details on the plan are few and far between, it is clear that some people will lose their jobs.
Given that, I would have anticipated the usual doom and gloom from the staff.
So it was with great pleasure that I read an optimistic piece from an intern at the Tampa paper. I don't want to paraphrase what Jessica DaSilva had to say. Rather, I'd urge you to read her entire blog post. But suffice it to say that there are young people entering the workforce today who are every bit as excited about journalism and their careers as I was when I was in my early 20s. They can see past the problems of any single medium and imagine a time when the audience comes first.
And that thrills me.

It's worth noting that the news about Tampa's convergence plan comes almost a month to the day since the Associated Press' Kathleen Carroll unveiled the details of the AP's new convergence-focused "'1-2-3" system for filing stories. Close observers of the journalism world will note that the AP's new method (flash a headline/update with a brief/create a longer piece in a variety of media) is reminiscent of the Bloomberg method (headline/two-graf/update and "tour".)
Longtime readers of this blog will no doubt guess correctly that I'm thrilled with the AP's new system. I've been urging journalists for a long time to study the Bloomberg method and create a version of their own as part of the move to Web-first publishing. You can see some of my thoughts on the Bloomberg system here and here.)

(Addendum: A considerable number of people have found their way to this post by following backlinks from Jessica's post. I welcome all such readers. I'm glad to have you on board. However, as longtime readers of this blog know, I do not allow anonymous personal attacks in comments. If you want to use this blog to criticize Jessica -- or anyone else -- provide me with your real name and a working email or phone number. Otherwise, I have no interest in your opinion.  Thanks.)

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, web-first publishing