Interesting read on rethinking the newspaper at the San Jose Mercury News. While I’m at it, I’ve been meaning to link to this American Journalism Review piece on the changes already underway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Good inside baseball stuff, if you’re interested.

Here’s the list of the Top 10 newspaper Web sites, according to the Bivings Group:

1.) The New York Times
2.) The Washington Post
3.) USA Today
4.) Houston Chronicle
5.) The Denver Post
6.) The Knoxville News Sentinel
7.) The Fresno Bee
8.) Austin American-Statesman
9.) The (Nashville) Tennessean
10.) San Jose Mercury News

Not sure who the Bivings Group is — but they make great Top 10 lists.

The name reminds me of the Bivans Brothers, a guitar duo that played Greenville, N.C., back in the early 90s. Ahh, good times.

Good insider account of how the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is changing its structure to accomodate the Internet. From the paper’s editor, Julia Wallace

Our news-gathering operation has also been split into two groups, both of which will supply content to the newspaper and to online. One department of about 50 reporters and editors will take a more specialized approach, focusing on investigative and watchdog stories, personality profiles, narrative stories and stories that explain complex local issues.

A second group of about 170 reporters, editors, photographers and information specialists will focus on covering the daily news of metro Atlanta, with an increased emphasis on breaking news. If there’s news in metro Atlanta, we want to tell it to you first…

… As part of this restructuring, we’ve had to reduce the size of the newsroom by about 15 percent. So what will you see less of? In the past, we sometimes assigned reporters to write about national news even though it was available through other sources. Now, if we write about a national or international story, it will be because we can add some local element to it.

For example, we won’t go to Iraq to cover the war, but we will continue to send reporters there to write about our Georgians fighting there.

Makes sense to me. The staff cuts are needed because the paper’s bringing in less money from advertising. And nobody needs to read the AJC’s take on national and international news. Increasing local coverage should keep the daily newspaper viable in the Internet age.