A small conversation but a meaningful one
It's easy to bemoan the slow pace of digitalization in the news world, especially among traditional staff operations (as opposed to separate digital shops). Among papers, the Washington Post takes its share of hits on this charge, including from me. But I want to pause briefly to highlight a quiet recent example of bottom-up change at the Post.
Sports departments, as anyone with significant time in digital news can tell you, have extraordinarily mixed reputations when it comes to tech change. At some times, a sports department can lead effortlessly, even occasionally unaware of how much ground they're breaking. At other times, they fight tooth and nail and are happy ignore what the rest of an org is doing. You can probably attribute the bipolarity to the needs of deep embedding, event regularity and a love of subject that beats almost every other section. Either change fits the publishing situation, or it doesn't. When it doesn't fit but is still necessary, that's trouble.
So, consider as much context for this Post example, a sports one. Tarik El-Bashir covers the Caps, and he writes the Capitals Insider blog. He also tweets and makes TV appearances. His audience likes him much.
Long story short, he's now leaving the beat. El-Bashir has a heartfelt note to readers in the blog, and their subsequent comments thanking him and wishing him luck are numerous and just as heartfelt. El-Bashir asks them to greet his replacement, Katie Carrera, and points to her Twitter account. Carrera then thanks him on said Twitter account.
There's nothing complicated about the previous paragraph or the acts mentioned. There's nothing heroic or sweeping. It's exactly that ease and comfort — with technology, with the audience — that makes the handover so notable. Amid goodbye and hello, we have progress.
