In shift to digital, all hands on deck

Take a look at this laundry list of duties included in a small-city daily newspaper's help-wanted ad for a managing editor:

"The successful candidate will be an innovator, someone capable of integrating new media dissemination avenues into traditional processes. There are also significant pagination responsibilities (using InDesign). Other responsibilities will include but not be limited to: headline writing and front page design; Web updates; staff management; content management; line and copy editing" (emphasis added).

Whew! I'm tired already.

And, says the ad, the new M.E. will "have no fear of hard work" (duh!), particularly in a newsroom described as "lean" and "accustomed to multitasking."

Hey, I'm no slouch when it comes to working hard. And I'm all for flattening the newsroom hierarchy. But I thought the M.E., the No. 2 executive behind the paper's editor, was more a big-picture planner than someone who got their hands dirty -- right up to their elbows.

But that, apparently, was then and this is now:

• Then (from a 1980s college journalism textbook): "Primary responsibility for news-gathering operations is in the hands of the managing editor ... [who] makes decisions about placement of major stories in the newspaper ... does the hiring, prepares the newsroom budget and makes most of the editorial department policy decisions (in consultation with the editor on major decisions)."
• Now (from the blog of Journal Register Co. CEO John Paton): "Less management, more feet on the street."

The M.E. ad was posted Monday by a Journal Register paper, one of 19 dailies in a company that also has weeklies, niche publications and a commercial printing arm. JRC calls itself a former newspaper publisher working to become a "modern multimedia news company focusing on local journalism," and in January picked John Paton to make that happen.

The company, once described as practicing "cheapskate journalism,"