Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, while I was making my way through J-school and starting my career in journalism, one of the trends developing in many newsrooms was W.E.D. — which stood for Writing, Editing, and Design. What was it? Let this Poynter article from 2000 explain:

It is a marriage of words and visuals. It is a practice that encourages teams of writers, editors, photographers, artists, and designers to tell stories in the most effective and vivid way. Here is how it works.

HOW IT WORKS

A team discusses a story to determine how to tell and display it. For example, if photographs will enhance the story, photographers are involved before a word is written to discuss with the writer the most compelling images and the best display possibilities. If graphics are needed, a graphic artist is present at the start talking over what information is needed to strengthen understanding. If a typographic treatment alone is the best way to convey the message of the story, a designer gets involved early to talk about the content and design of the headline and all other type elements. Then an editor, copy editor, and designer join the team to discuss space and overall packaging. In the end, W.E.D. pages work together like a well-directed symphony.

This idea had a good amount of support back then, especially from designers and photographers because it set up a mechanism that allowed them to inject their expertise into the story-development process at the beginning rather than at the end. This meant developing stories and other text elements that are specifically designed to jive with the visuals rather than getting the text elements and than trying to come up with visuals to fit them (usually on deadline). It resulted in a more cohesive final product, and it was also a way to spur collaboration among various departments that traditionally didn’t have a whole lot to do with one another.

Personally, I thought this was a terrific idea, mainly because it advocated advance planning, which newspapers generally suck at. Even though the newspaper I spent most of my journalism career didn’t really have this mechanism in place, I tried to put some of its principles — advanced planning with writers, editors, designers, and photographers — into practice, and it did pay off in some situations.

Fast forward less than 10 years, and the W.E.D. concept has pretty much faded into dust. The idea of consistently getting together a team of journalists, each with his/her own specialized skill, to work on a project seems like wishful thinking in a time when most newsrooms have been cut to the bone, especially in the visual departments. Forget getting a designer to work with a team on a specific project. At many papers, a designer is all you have for entire sections most days. Instead of teaming up specialists to combine their expertise, newsrooms have been forced to take a detour and hire (or keep) journalists who are jacks-of-all-trades instead.

It’s not only journalists with traditional skills who are being affected by this shift toward individuals who can do a little bit of everything. Journalist Angela Grant wrote yesterday on her blog, newsvideographer.com, that she’s taken to referring to herself as an all-purpose journalist rather than a multimedia specialist because she’s seeing so few job opportunities in news for people with that title. Instead, she writes,

Nearly every reporter job description I’ve seen indicates that multimedia skills are either part of the job requirement, or that it’s highly regarded if you can produce multimedia. This indicates to me that there are many more opportunities for multi-skilled journalists who can write, shoot, and produce multimedia all at the same time. It indicates there are fewer opportunities for the multimedia specialist.

So how do I feel about this? Personally, I’ve always placed a huge emphasis on versatility. If you ask me what my strongest skill is, I would tell you, without being facetious, that it’s my ability to be solid in many different areas. There are no doubt many better writers, graphic designers, Web programmers, photographers, Flash developers (and so on) than me, but there are significantly fewer who can easily transition from one of those tasks to another and then to another and another. I feel like my versatility is one of the biggest reasons I’ve been able to remain gainfully employed in the information/communications field and make myself valuable to my company. That’s especially true where I work now. They hired me to write and edit (before that I was a designer in an ad agency), but the position has morphed over these two-plus years around my skill set. What I offered was someone who is intermediately skilled in many different things, and that was what they needed (even if they didn’t know it when they hired me) — a little bit of everything rather than a lot of any one particular task. They have graphic design needs, but if I were just a master designer, I won’t have a job there. They have events and people that need to be photographed, but if I were only an ace photographer, I won’t have a job there. They have programming needs, but if I were just an code ninja, I won’t have a job there. They hired me to write, but if I were just a writer, I won’t be as valuable because I would not be able to meet the needs of the company.

I know that there are many who subscribe to the “jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none” school of thought on this, who believe that you should have one specialty that you really kick ass in. However, I feel like many jobs in the communications field might be shifting toward the versatility end of the spectrum because many companies don’t have enough recurring needs for any one particular communication skill to warrant creating a full-time position for it, and outsourcing is expensive. So if you can hire someone who can address a host of these occasional needs, all the better. And that’s especially true in journalism, where legacy companies are slashing staff and most startups are forced to stay small while they figure out how to make money off content online. It’s not that the do-it-all guys can take better pictures, develop better Web sites, shoot better video, or design better looking pages than those who specialize in those fields. It’s that these do-it-all guys can do those things decent enough, and when you are in the financial situation that many journalism companies are in, decent enough is, well, enough.

On the other hand, it stings to see that newspapers are increasingly unable to afford specialized experts. A newsroom of journalists who are solid/decent at everything makes sense from a business standpoint, but there’s a part of me that still delights in seeing amazing photography, wickedly creative designs, and stunning illustrations. Those are things that can only be produced by masters of those respective crafts, and you can only attain that level of skill by specializing. I’m saddened to see more and more of those masters jettisoned from the field because of economics. Yes, if it comes down to picking between either journalists who are good at news reporting or journalists who are good at those “peripheral” skills — and that certainly seems to be the case now — news organizations should pick the ones who are good at reporting since that is the skill most critical to their core mission. Nonetheless, it’s just disheartening that journalism no longer seems to have the capacity to have both.