Tough times, but The Star is adapting

Many of you are aware that last week The Star announced a workforce reduction of 82 positions, 28 of them in our information center (newsroom).

News staffs work crazy hours at an often hectic pace. More than many organizations, we bond with each other and lean on each other. We are passionate about what we do.

So the loss was difficult for my colleagues and me.

As is the case with all other organizations going through such an experience -- and in this economy there are many -- some people are questioning our future. So I'll get directly to the point.

We'll be around for a long, long time.

We are undergoing a major reorganization of our news operation, a process that began late last year. We recognized that a newsroom organized much like it was in the 1950s no longer meets the needs of readers served by a vast array of 21st century digital technology.

We are flattening our management structure, focusing more on topics than on the traditional sections, and committing more human resources to growing our already strong digital platforms.

We are emphasizing these things:

Stronger issues and people coverage. We will help you more than ever before sort out complex community issues, from Indianapolis' recent privatization of its parking systems to the financing of urban and suburban schools. When a person is in the news -- a political candidate or a business leader or an individual who overcame a huge obstacle -- we will tell you the story of that individual's life better than anyone else.

A continuation of our strong watchdog coverage and community leadership initiatives such as Our Children/Our City, and Beyond the Big Game.

Strong voices, on our opinion pages, including columnist Dan Carpenter and cartoonist Gary Varvel, and in other sections metro columnist Erika Smith, political columnist Matt Tully, and sports columnist Bob Kravitz.

The continued work of veteran journalists covering everything from politics to sports to the cultural arts.

Stronger "utility coverage" to help you decide everything from what to do with your family next weekend, to how to be a smarter shopper. Next month we will add more family content in our Sunday IndyLiving section to help parents and grandparents be more successful.

How will we do that with fewer people?

We'll cover fewer of those "middle" stories that don't advance issues significantly. We will adjust our product mix, including how we cover suburban communities. (We're doing that with the help of 4,300 subscribers who have given us incredibly good guidance.)

We're changing the process of copy editing, using a system already in place at several other good newspapers. Is it better? No, and it is inevitable that we'll have some hiccups as we figure it out. But figure it out we must.

Many people relish painting Star Media as a dying relic. They are flat wrong. Just ask anybody who has appeared recently on our front page.

They include the choir director at Manual High School. One column by our Matt Tully raised $100,000 to send the school's choir to Carnegie Hall in New York City and to create a piano lab.

They include the family of a kindergarten student at School 61, who had a bright Christmas after Bobby King reported about the parents and three children living in a motel room.

They include the second highest-paid official of the nation's largest utility company, forced to resign after The Star revealed e-mails he sent, illustrating a fox-in-the-henhouse relationship between the company and Indiana utility regulators.

Ask those who for years tried to get Indiana lawmakers to strengthen their ethics standards. Only after The Star's opinion pages led a coalition of Indiana newspapers to focus on the issue did lawmakers approve the most far-reaching ethics reform in decades.

Ask the people who flock to our online photo galleries, at times as many as hundreds of thousands of them, reliving the Indy 500 or other major sporting events.

That kind of work will continue. You can count on it.

We reach nearly 840,000 people in Central Indiana each week, including 50 percent of women ages 25 to 54. Our mobile sites are growing fast.