USA Today's 'big elephant' in the newsroom

A Gannett Blog reader writes from USA Today:

One of the big elephants in the room amid the 45 buyouts at USA Today is the longstanding animosity between many print and online staff at The Nation's Newspaper. And it's not going away, especially since the buyout plan exempts anyone with five or more years with the online operation.

Although we're supposed to be "one," USA Today really has two newsrooms. One is a collection of aging print veterans who barely knew what e-mail and the Web were when the staff was issued personal computers in the late 1990s -- and still don't understand the Web revolution, much less Web 2.0. The other is a collection of younger upstarts with lots of enthusiasm and HTML skills but little experience in or appreciation of the basic things that journalists do -- interviewing, writing, editing, etc. Many print people (who are at the top of their game) don't consider the online staff journalists at all (which angers the online people mightily). Many in the online staff (who have the forward-thinking vision we need) regard the print people as dinosaurs who really ought to take the buyout and head off to the retirement village asap.

Management has tried many ways to bring the groups together, including moving the staffs into the same office areas, holding cross-training sessions, and so on. But there's far too much of the entrenched thinking on both sides.

Unless management can bring these groups together, the company cannot move ahead in a meaningful way. My fear is that the buyouts and budget issues that created them will prevent us from really re-making the staff in the way it needs to be.

Do you see this same tension between print and online at your place?; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.