Nobody home in PD newsroom because they're all at home

The Plain Dealer, reduced to 95 editorial and production employees, has abandoned the 1999 building it constructed for 1,000 workers and reverted to Backpack Journalism, a Columbia Journalism Review article says.

Most of the paper’s reporters and editors will relocate to Tower City Center in downtown Cleveland, above Cleveland’s Hard Rock Café. 30 to 40 designers, editors and print production staff will move to the company’s printing and distribution plant in the Cleveland suburbs. Northeast Ohio Media Group will move its employees into renovated space at the Superior Avenue building.

Reporters are filing stories directly, without editors editing, and writing their own headlines. The PD is encouraging reporters to work out of their homes with a laptop and a backpack. No desks. Anywhere. 

Debra Adams Simmons, who left the BJ in 2007 to become PD managing editor, is the PD editor. She replaced Susan Goldberg in that position in 2010.

For more information, click on http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/newsroom_culture_is_gone_at_cleveland_plain_dealer.php?page=all