Ask the Editor: What’s going on at WORLD?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mryna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming up next, our monthly Ask the Editor segment with Executive Producer Paul Butler. Today he comes with an update on some of the things going on around WORLD News Group—both behind the scenes and across our platforms.

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: In my capacity as Executive Producer for WORLD Radio, I sit on our Editorial Council. There are four other executive editors from across our content divisions plus our Chief Content Officer and CEO. We meet nearly every week. We discuss editorial standards, we think through challenging stories, and work hard to set an example for healthy organizational culture.

In January we asked our entire editorial staff a series of questions to get at two big ideas: “How might we work together across platforms to create ideas and solve problems?” and “What opportunities exist for us to do some things differently or try new things?”

41 reporters and editors responded—many at great length. We collated and analyzed those answers for weeks. That data led our council to take a dramatic step: to totally restructure our news organization. We did so to increase cross-platform cooperation, coordination, and deeper reporting.

It’s been a slow roll-out, but that new structure is now fully in place. It’s meant a lot of internal reorganization and some exciting new hires. It’s been a lot of hard work, but when I consider what we’ve been able to do over the last 9 months, I couldn’t be happier.

Crack open the latest issue of WORLD magazine and you’ll see an amazing new design…but what’s even better than the fresh look is the increased depth and quality of reporting, the variety of stories, and the rich cultural analysis you’ve trusted for years.

WORLD Digital rolled out a new app a few months ago. It also continues to create superb newsletters, and great web-only content. This spring’s investigative report on how Southern Baptist leadership responded to sexual abuse allegations was top-notch. We’ve sent reporters to Uvalde, the Southern Border, to Ukrainian refugee checkpoints and dozens of other locations around the country.

We’ve created a brand new breaking news team that feeds our podcast, digital, and magazine platforms…you see their work in your email inbox every day with the Sift. And as I mentioned last month, you can now hear it all across the country as more than a hundred fifty Christian radio stations carry our 3-minute newscast, updated throughout the day.

Here at WORLD Radio, it’s been an exciting podcast year. Next week wraps up Legal Docket season 3. This season, Mary and Jenny visited a death row inmate, ran the Boston Marathon, dropped by a shooting range, interviewed a football coach on the steps of the Supreme Court building…and spoke with dozens of legal experts.

Lynn Vincent traveled from coast to coast interviewing dozens of people who knew Terri Shiavo for the Lawless podcast…season 2 and the rest of Terri’s story coming next Spring.

Effective Compassion season 3 took a deep dive into the US prison system—bringing us behind bars and back out again as churches seek to break the cycle of incarceration and hopelessness. This summer we partnered with the Patrick Henry College journalism program to present five memorable stories that made us take a second look at topics we’re familiar with. Some of those stories were also covered in WORLD Magazine. The latest season of Listening In began today.

Our mission at WORLD includes informing and inspiring our readers and listeners, but we’re also committed to education. WORLD Journalism Institute expanded its reach—not only in our annual collegiate and mid-career courses—but by hosting nine European reporters in Poland for the first time this fall. And this weekend eight journalism professors are meeting with us to look for ways to strengthen their programs with our brand of Christian worldview reporting…

We also have a full catalog of products for kids and families. Season three of WORLD Watch kicked off with a bangin August—with more reporters and correspondents. God’s WORLD News magazine is working through its own redesign, and there’s even a new podcast in the works for families.

And on top of all that, over the past year we’ve created an amazing library of thoughtful and Biblically informed commentary on world events through WORLD Opinions.

This is a great time to be a journalist. There are so many opportunities to tell the story of what God’s doing in the world. And thanks to a few thoughtful questions earlier this year posed to our highly invested staff of reporters, we’re doing more than ever before.

I’m Paul Butler.

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