Off and running with the new gig

Last month, I sat down to describe my transition at The Oregonian, from the editor of a pullout section of political and social commentary to a Web-first journalist focused on Portland community news: "1-11-11: Starting a new career chapter"

Well, here I am exactly 40 days later with a glance back at the past few weeks and, more importantly, a look to what lies ahead.

-- Today's Sunday Oregonian carried a Metro section cover story, "Oregon nonprofits raise a unified voice" written by yours truly. Next to it was a blurb alerting readers to a online-only package of additional stories, photos, videos, statistics and an interactive questionnaire designed for executive directors and board members of local nonprofits.

I can only hope that print readers made their way to the OregonLive web page to see the online-only components, which were gathered together under the headline "'New normal' for Oregon nonprofits brings new stresses and a determination to be heard"

That, after all, is one main thrust of my new duties -- to help generate news and feature stories, along with visual and audio elements -- that will entice readers to visit our Web site and keep coming back. The challenge of building online traffic has several aspects: Trying to create new habits in readers who prefer to get their news in print; competing for the time and attention of those who already spend significant time online; using new media to tell stories in different ways.

For me, the latter meant packing up my bag containing camcorder, wireless mic and tripod to four different interviews; inserting dozens of hyperlinks in four stories; building a resource base; drafting the questionnaire; and working with six different editors to pull together the videos, photos, graphics and online documents. Such is the Web-first mentality that the print story came at the tail end of the process.

-- The other big aspect of the new job is community engagement. That is, finding creative ways to get the word out about how ordinary citizens and community organizations can tap into OregonLive, whether by directly posting their own content or by discovering people whose stories might not get told otherwise. This means regularly getting out and about in the community, with little or no set agenda, and just depending on my journalistic instincts and serendipity to guide me from day to day.

-- This idea of being a mobile journalist (or MoJo) is many of us hope to master. Some of my colleagues are ahead of me in that regard while others lag behind. With a newsroom reorganization that two weeks ago included an overhaul of our so-called "Portland team," I'll be working with a whole new group of editors and reporters -- all of us focused on this Web-first mission.

With this initial project on nonprofits now safely behind me, I'm eager to get going with a new routine that promises to be rewarding in a whole new day.