One year at the Statesman

April 16th marked exactly one year since I started working at the Statesman.  It seems like just yesterday that I was observing six months.  Time flies when you’re juggling a dozen projects and multiple deadlines.  I can’t say that I’ve learned too many new things in the past six months, but I have deepened my knowledge of topics that were already in my bag of tricks.  And of course we built and/or launched some new features.

Shiny, happy features

These are just the highlights of the past six months.  Obviously we did a lot more than four things, but a lot of it was behind the scenes.  For example, I set up a new Web server and moved ten of our external sites over to it.  You didn’t notice?  Perfect.  Anyway, the high points were:

On the horizon

The next three months or so will be extremely busy with at least four sizable projects in the works as well as a dozen or so little ones.  There’s never a dull moment at the Statesman.  Sorry, I can’t say anything more about the upcoming stuff until it launches.  You’ll just have to stay tuned.

Challenging times

It’s no secret that many newspaper companies are struggling to adjust to changes affecting the industry.  Some of these changes are cyclical while others are sadly systemic.  I often joke that we share a morbid problem with tobacco companies: our customers are dying.  The obvious difference is that newspapers don’t kill people, but we still have to find new readers somehow.  A lot of very savvy people are working on these problems day and night, but the outlook still isn’t too good in the near term.

The Statesman (like many McClatchy papers) has undertaken some cost cutting measure in the past several months.  The paper is narrower now and has fewer pages to save on newsprint.  During the current hiring freeze, several people have left the newsroom and not been replaced.  Recently we’ve seen a couple involuntary layoffs.  While I’m confident that we will emerge from this in a strong position, I’m not sure what the company will look like or how many people will be left.  At least for now, I feel like my job is safe.  However, in these turbulent times I’ll close with a classic Magic 8 Ball response: “Ask again later.”

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April 21, 2008 | Filed Under Web development 

Comments

2 Responses to “One year at the Statesman”

  1. Tac Anderson on June 4th, 2008 7:05 am

    Patrick,
    It’s crazy to think that it was just a year ago.

    I have to say (and I am biased towards new media) the work you have done with the Statesman has by far been the most impactfull work done at the Statesman.

    I would be interested to know how much their online readership has grown over the last year. Commenting and blogs alone have had to have a huge impact on page views (which of course drives ad rates).

    Of anyone at the paper I think you have probably had some measurable affects on the business.

    Here’s to another year, I can’t wait to see what you have up your sleeve.

  2. Patrick on June 4th, 2008 11:25 am

    Tac,
    Thanks very much. Coming from you, those compliments carry significant weight. However, I feel a need to clarify a couple of points:

    1. The Statesman was already planning to add a lot of the new features (blogs, forums, comments, etc.) before I arrived. I was hired in part for my experience with these sorts of features, but I didn’t come up with the ideas.

    2. Due to my participation in the local tech community, I’m probably the most visible person who works on the Statesman web properties but I’m really just one cog in a very large wheel. Most of the credit is really due to the other members of our small local online team, the dozens of developers at McClatchy Interactive who back us up, and of course all of our reporters, editors, and photographers who produce such great content day in and day out.

    Having said all that, I do like to think that I’ve made at least a small mark on this place so far. And you’re definitely right about the Statesman having more tricks up its sleeve for online. I can’t talk about any of them right now, but stay tuned for several interesting launches in the coming year.