A Newspaper Chain Sees Its Future, And It's Online and Hyper-Local

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Could this be the future of newspapering?

Darkness falls on a chilly Winn-Dixie parking lot in a dodgy part of North Fort Myers just before Thanksgiving. Chuck Myron sits in his little gray Nissan and types on an IBM ThinkPad laptop plugged into the car's cigarette lighter. The glow of the screen illuminates his face.

Chuck Myron is one of more than a dozen "mobile journalists" -- mojos -- for the Fort Myers News-Press. He doesn't have an office or even a cubicle, so his car is his newsroom. The paper's parent company, Gannett, hopes the mojos' local focus will drive readers to its community-specific Web sites. 

Myron, 27, is a reporter for the Fort Myers News-Press and one of its fleet of mobile journalists, or "mojos." The mojos have high-tech tools -- ThinkPads, digital audio recorders, digital still and video cameras -- but no desk, no chair, no nameplate, no land line, no office. They spend their time on the road looking for stories, filing several a day for the newspaper's Web site, and often for the print edition, too. Their guiding principle: A constantly updated stream of intensely local, fresh Web content -- regardless of its traditional news value -- is key to building online and newspaper readership.