Great Falls Tribune will be designed in Phoenix, Arizona

Gannett Corp. announced Tuesday that its newspapers will be designed at five “hubs” nationwide: Asbury, Des Moines, Louisville, Nashville, Phoenix.

The changeover will begin in 2011.

That means local newspapers will ship off their stories and photos to page designers who are thousands of miles away. And those people will determine how the next day’s newspaper looks. They’ll position the stories and photos on the pages.

That means the Great Falls Tribune will be designed in Phoenix, Ariz.

And that’s a bad idea.

If we’ve learned anything during the last two years of newspaper closures and downsizing, it’s that community newspapers are the future of print journalism. They’re stronger than ever, and will only gain strength as the nation pulls out of the recession.

But the reason community papers are robust is that they’re local.

They look and sound like their communities. They’re essential reading. Every morning. They are the place where important community discussions happen, where everyone turns to find out what happened today – and what’s likely to happen tomorrow.

And that just doesn’t happen as well if half of your newsroom is pulled out of your community and shipped off to Arizona. (And, of course, all of those current employees won’t have jobs at the new design centers, as downsizing is part of the overall plan.)

Gannett’s plan also demeans the importance of page designers – called assistant news editors at the Missoulian – in a newsroom.

Our news editor and assistant news editors help to decide where every story appears in each day’s newspaper. They work back and forth with reporters when there are questions on stories, clarifying and correcting as our last line of defense.

They suggest stories from their interactions in the community. They suggest stories that flow out of what’s happening elsewhere in the world – as part of an assistant news editor’s job is to read and edit the state, national and world news wires.

They help keep our website running, help innovate changes on our website. They design graphics, working hand-in-hand with reporters and often traveling on-site for the more elaborate informational graphics.

I could go on … as you can see, I am passionate in my support for, defense of and insistence upon a strong and creative – a local – design desk.

This IS NOT in any way a criticism of the Great Falls Tribune. I have known many of them for most of my career; they are pros. I can assure you folks there don’t want to ship off their work to page designers in Arizona. To folks who don’t live in Great Falls, don’t know Great Falls, probably haven’t ever even been to Great Falls.

As one blogger said, “Will they know Choteau from Chouteau?”

Sherry Devlin