We're pleased to report that the San Jose Mercury News been selected as one of 10 newsrooms in the nation to be a pilot site for the expansion of the API/ASNE Learning Newsroom training program.

Matt Mansfield and Jonathon Berlin of MG will be the senior Mercury News leaders working with Learning Newsroom project director Vickey Williams to develop a learning plan that will bring organizational development experts into the newsroom.

Experts will coach newsroom leaders to be better communicators, set priorities, encourage innovation and to gain more staff involvement in setting strategy over the next 18 months.

The program will launch at the Merc in early 2006, involving more than one-third of the newsroom staff initially, and if it is successful we will continue the momentum and extend the training eventually to the entire newsroom.

Our partners at API and ASNE said it was a bit of a gamble to take this program to a newsroom in transformation. But they were impressed by the interest in the program shown by Merc staff and the commitment of newsroom leadership to support the process. We are confident our experience will prove it was the right decision.