Memo of the week

A memo from an editor at the Oregonian has been circulating as a prime example of how-not-to-write-a-memo. It's so full of management-speak and buzz words that it's hilarious. BTW, I've never used the word, pillar, in any memos I've written.

To: Everyone

From: Sandy Rowe

In the past several months we have spent a great deal of time examining the work we do, deciding and further defining what work is most important to our future, how to best accomplish that work, and talking through how to adapt the organization and our systems to support it.

Many of you have been involved in discussions of research we have and may need, the pillars of our journalism, possible changes to sections we should consider and other initiatives. Now, we are beginning to pull that together.

As you know, we must transform The Oregonian into a news organization characterized by a reader-first culture across platforms, by agility, and by rigorous and shared standards of success. Our leadership jobs must align with and support our mission, and provide clarity of purpose for the rest of the organization.

You recall that throughout this there have been three clear goals embedded in our mission. First, we believe we can improve the content and our connection to readers in such a way that we can increase readership of the newspaper. Second, we know the work we do in this newsroom can drive increased readership of our content on OregonLive and that we can build our value to readers and viewers by creating content on OregonLive that is more suited to online utility rather than print.

In order to accomplish this, we know we must fully integrate online goals into the newsroom. Third, we know that to accomplish any of this, we must become organizationally stronger and more effective. We must learn new tools and how to best utilize them, we must prioritize our work, and we must find new ways to maximize the talent and impact each of us has in print and online. We must have clearly focused goals for individuals and teams, and continue to improve training. In short, we must expect and help everyone do the very best work of their careers during this time of transition and challenge. We must all be committed to this transformation.

To accomplish that, Peter and I are announcing the following leadership changes:

Therese Bottomly becomes MANAGING EDITOR -- READERSHIP AND STANDARDS.

Therese will lead us in establishing the highest editing standards throughout all operations and will oversee all copy editing. She will be our expert on readership and reader research, and will establish, institute and reinforce methods of building readership in our daily decisions. Therese will also lead the expansion of reader communication and involvement. She will continue to lead us on open access issues and be our newsroom liaison with attorneys. She will establish and lead improved systems of goal-setting for individuals and teams. She will oversee our training efforts and with George Rede ensure training is focused on our goals. She will continue to supervise the national-international team leader and will do the same for the copy desk chief. She will continue to edit columnists and will determine how we can best increase the impact of columns, criticism and personal journalism. She will be the point person and chief advocate for the opinion pillar as it pertains to non-editorial page operations.

Therese will report to Sandy. Mia Bush, George Rede, Holly Franko, Steve Duin, Renee Mitchell, Margie Boule and Marjorie Helton will report to her.

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Steve Engelberg becomes MANAGING EDITOR -- PRINT.

His responsibility will be making the newspaper as good as it can be every day. He will lead newsgathering and deployment of our news resources and lead coordination between all the paper's sections, including for the Sunday paper. He will oversee all the fourth-floor reporting teams, Living and Arts, and the Sunday editor. Steve will be the primary keeper of the enterprise, watchdog and specialty reporting pillars.

He will report to Peter. Pete Lesage, Chris Hunt, Barry Johnson and the fourth-floor team leaders (other than Sports) will report to him.

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Mike Arrieta-Walden becomes MANAGING EDITOR -- ONLINE.

As Mike has done so well for us the past many months, he will continue to lead the integration of online work into our operations. He will continue to be our online evangelist, will set online goals and priorities, and help us measure success. He will continue to be our main liaison with OregonLive and will be the prime keeper of the online pillar as well as leading us on implementation of the principles of the community connections pillar with Bruce Hammond.

Mike will report to Peter. Jeff Wohler, John Killen, the data editor to be named, multimedia editors and the online operation will continue to report to him.