Executive Editor Jenner realized that if the website was attracting readers without even trying, he needed to reevaluate what the Californian was doing across the board. The time was not far distant, he suspected, when the website would eclipse the paper both in terms of readers and advertisers. Publisher Moorhouse agreed. “She realized earlier than most that there was going to be a day when the paper would become a niche publication,” says Jenner.

Jenner and Assistant Managing Editor Logan Molen sat down to study the website’s use patterns. They discovered only a small crossover between long-time Californian readers and Bakersfield.com users, those Jenner calls a “new world” of readers. “Logan [Molen] and I said, ‘We’ve got to figure this out. We need to make sure that the newsroom takes ownership of the [website] content,’” recalls Jenner.

As a first step, the executive staff began to expand the company’s online offerings. In 2004, they launched two websites (each with an associated biweekly print newspaper) targeting two of Bakersfield’s neighborhoods. The news items on both websites, Northwestvoice.com and Southwestvoice.com , were reported and written mostly by residents plus an editor—not by Californian reporters. Each website linked to Bakersfield.com . Thanks to a vigorous sales effort and low operating costs, both Northwest Voice and Southwest Voice turned a profit.

But while these Web-based projects thrived, the company by 2005 was experiencing financial pressures similar to other newspaper publishing firms. Although advertising revenues continued strong, in surveying the industry management recognized that this would not last; meanwhile, circulation was declining. To survive, Beene (who had become CEO) and Jenner resolved, required draconian measures. They decided to migrate newsroom staff from the newspaper over to the website—forcibly if necessary.

The union proved amenable to their proposal. Management and the union had a history of collaboration, and the union (which was local) had over the years been willing to give new ideas a chance. Management presented the reorganization as key to survival, and a way to protect jobs. Their agreement called for universal training in new technology, with no sanctions for mistakes made as staff mastered novel skills. There would be no jobs lost, no demotions, and no financial loss to staff members.

Revamped newsroom. In May 2005, Jenner and Molen (by then managing editor) sketched out a revamped organizational chart using a simple two-page PowerPoint that he then hung in the newsroom. These two pages, labeled “Old Structure” and “New Structure,” outlined the Californian ’s current editorial structure and the Web-focused newsroom Jenner envisioned. Jenner wanted the Californian ’s staff to think of themselves as working for the publishing company, not just the newspaper—which Jenner called “ink on crushed paper.” The PowerPoint also included new job descriptions.

Among other changes, Jenner eliminated business as a full department in the News Division. ^[4] The change to business “was very symbolic, because it sent a clear message to the staff that we were willing to sacrifice some traditional coverage we once treasured in order to create resources for us to set off in a new direction,” recalls Jenner. He also abolished the agriculture beat, a once sacrosanct job in a city dependent on agriculture. He announced video training for both reporters and editors, who in the future would be expected to take along cameras while reporting stories.

Many staff were at first of two minds about the changes. Steve E. Swenson , the Californian ’s union shop president, was among the doubters. ^[5] He had been the agriculture reporter and over a 30-year career had held almost every reporting job at the paper. He studied the new job descriptions and came away disheartened. “I didn’t see myself up there,” he says of the PowerPoint. ^[6] But slowly Swenson and other skeptics came around. In Swenson’s case, he began to appreciate in a very personal way just how much the reading experience of Bakersfield news readers had changed—because he was in charge of the new product known as “blogs.”