EDITORIAL: R-J reorganization boosts local reporting

The Las Vegas Review-Journal today announced a sweeping staff reorganization aimed at improving coverage of several topics, including news, sports, features, politics, opinion, entertainment and betting.

We’ll have more reporters on the street covering things people care most about. We’ll provide more expertise and more hard-hitting content by going in-depth in some areas while adopting a more efficient production process.

In the days and weeks ahead, readers will notice changes in most sections of the Review-Journal, as well as improvements in online content. R-J online will become much more aggressive in coverage of betting, politics and Las Vegas entertainment.

The newspaper will commit more resources to the coverage of Henderson, North Las Vegas, the Clark County School District and the courts.

The Sports section will shift its focus to bring readers more commentary, analysis and features.

Changes in our features pages will make them more useful, more local, more immediate — and more fun.

The Opinion pages are being redesigned to give readers more content in a format that’s easier to digest. More cartoons. The best zingers from social media. More perspectives. The same strong editorial voice with an updated look.

Reporters and columnists assigned to entertainment, politics and betting will boost online coverage of their beats with frequent, shorter, information-packed posts in a blog-style format.

More news coverage

Local government: Henderson and North Las Vegas: In addition to community news provided by the View newspapers, each of the suburban cities will receive more coverage from Review-Journal reporters.

Education: The Review-Journal now has two reporters assigned to this important beat.

Courts: Family Court has been rocked by scandal in recent months. Our two full-time court reporters will be joined by a third, who will focus on the most important trials and issues from the courts beat.

Transportation: One reporter will be assigned to a consolidated beat, which will include McCarran International Airport, issues related to taxis, the Regional Transportation Commission and Nevada Department of Transportation. The reporter on this beat also will write the Review-Journal’s popular Road Warrior commuter Q&A column.

Sports

Our award-winning columnists and sports writers will search for a Las Vegas perspective on sports here and elsewhere.

We’ll provide the best coverage of sports in Southern Nevada. That means we’ll focus on the teams and sports that call Las Vegas home: the Rebels, the 51s, the Wranglers, UFC and boxing. We’ll also cover all the sports that flock to the valley, including motor sports, rodeo, poker, golf, bowling, rugby, running and college basketball tournaments.

Because this is Las Vegas, we will increase our commitment to covering sports betting, primarily online, but readers also will see more betting coverage in our print edition.

We’ll continue to provide the state’s most complete coverage of high school sports with our Nevada Preps staff.

Readers still will be able to find results in an expanded Scoreboard section.

Features

We’ll produce a mix of topics on most days to capture the vibrancy of the Las Vegas community. Reviews of performances and restaurants. Profiles of the people who make the valley home. Trend stories. Stories about upcoming events and organizations. Reaction. Fodder for conversations around the water cooler.

Readers of the print edition will notice the biggest difference on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Going forward, those sections will not be dedicated to food and entertainment exclusively and instead will feature stories of all types.

Some things will remain the same. We plan to keep the Friday Neon magazine and the Monday Health section, and to keep popular columns in familiar places. But the topics covered on other days will be less regimented.

Too often we have found ourselves passing up good stories because of the way we themed our features sections. These changes should give us more options in how and when we present stories and reviews.

We’ve already made some changes, adding regular features such as Locals Only and Small Plates. Other changes will be easy to spot, such as an expanded daily television grid and increased local coverage of religion. Others might be less obvious, such as a redesigned community calendar that will expand and contract with the number of charitable events taking place each week.

Opinion

The plan is to make better use of space on our daily opinion page to include more perspectives.

We’ll have plenty of syndicated and locally written columns, and we know our print readers love editorial cartoons because we heard as much when we briefly cut back on their use. We’ll also sift Twitter for our tweets of the day from across the political spectrum.

We are increasing the number of journalists covering Southern Nevada. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions. Feel free to call the phone numbers listed in each section, email our staff members or submit a letter to the editor.