As we first wrote about earlier this month, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philly.com will indeed be coordinating their sports coverages in an attempt to avoid redundancy and best use their resources for more enterprise material.
Today, the Inquirer's Mike Armstrong added more details of how this may work (although it seems to some extent they're not entirely sure just yet):
Under the plan, some elements of sports coverage, arts and other
features stories, city and suburban reporting, and various editing
functions would be coordinated and shared, Wischnowski said.
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The same story might appear in both newspapers.
For
example, the papers' sports departments intend to have one editor in
charge of reporters from both staffs covering the Philadelphia Phillies,
another for those covering the Philadelphia Eagles, and so on. Two
reporters may still cover a Phillies game. However, one may be
"digitally focused," Wischnowski said, posting news and video interviews
to the Web, while the other may concentrate on a story for print.
The "digitally focused" bit is quite interesting. Does that mean a regular old newspaper writer could pen something that would only appear on the Internet? Who does that?!? Also curious about whether some sports writers would cover games only for digital. How does a print guy feel about that were it to happen?
Would a David Murphy game story appear in the Inquirer and the Daily News on the same day? Could Matt Gelb's stories start showing up in the Daily News? What about columnists covering a game? Where does the line get drawn?
News
It should be pretty interesting to watch develop. Not so sure how the rival reporters at each paper are going to feel about it all.
UPDATE: A source tells us that there is only going to be one "beat writer" per team going forward and that existing beats will either be reassigned or eliminated.