As Smith came to understand the possible Web-enabled ways Times Union news could be delivered to readers, he decided it must first address its outdated technology. For example, its pagination system (an automated way to organize stories for print) was by 2006 nearly 15 years old. The program did not allow editors to easily see a final image of what a story would look like when published, nor did it accommodate quick and simple transmission of photos and stories from the field to the Web. Moreover, incompatibilities between different generations of Mac- and PC-based computer systems in various departments made adding or editing photographs and graphics a headache.

However, the lack of a central repository to store information and facilitate communication—the purpose of a content management system—frustrated Smith the most. “There was no place where we could all turn to and say, here’s a story idea, who’s working on this?” he says. “We had circumstances where we ended up in the afternoon meeting, and there was a story that appeared on some editor’s budget that another editor already had a staff person working on in a different way.”

Without a single place for everyone to see assignments and information, staff manually moved information through the newsroom, one piece of paper and email at a time. Stories were emailed or hand delivered through a factory-like system of editors, reporters, pagination specialists, and clerks. More than once, miscommunication led two reporters to appear at the same community press conference. Other times, the paper missed an important story because one person thought another reporter had it covered. “It’s like the outfielder and the centerfielder both going for the fly ball, and each one sort of taking a step back expecting the other to get it,” Smith explains. “The ball drops between the two.” There were so many steps in the system that when mistakes were made, it was often difficult to pinpoint the source.

Listen to Smith’s explanation of lost opportunities.

Inefficiencies extended to other parts of the newsroom. Smith recalls arriving early to the building and passing a printed photo assignment taped to the studio door for the first photographer to find. “It was just amazing that in the 21st century we were still depending upon a piece of paper taped to a door to communicate with someone,” Smith says. “What happens if the first photographer in the morning did have another assignment and never got to that note?”

In March 2006, Smith gained an ally. Hearst hired Mark Aldam , a young executive from the Hartford Courant , as publisher. Unlike his predecessor, David White, Aldam had instructions from Hearst to explore the creation of a hybrid newsroom and to give the Internet more weight and attention in the newspaper’s operations. Aldam made it his goal to increase the newspaper’s circulation through both print and online in order increase the number of adults the newspaper reached per week from its current 60 percent to 70 percent. In a radio interview eight weeks after his appointment, Aldam articulated his vision, which included better use of the Web: “Our Number One objective is the transition into new channels of distributing our content... giving it to consumers, readers, where they want it, when they want it, and how they want to receive it.”