This may be too much inside baseball, but we’re developing a plan to change our beat structure.

Beats are the coverage areas to which our reporters are assigned. They can be geographic or focused on a subject, like public safety.

Our current beat structure is fairly traditional and similar to newsrooms around the country. Reporters are assigned to cover the major institutions – city hall, schools, courts, cops, state government, etc. We also have reporters who specialize in topics like health care, the arts, state government and the environment.

So why change? We must adapt to our audience, which is turning to the Web for breaking news. That means we need to be more aggressive about what we’re doing online. We also need to focus our staff on finding and reporting so-called “unique content” – stories of broad interest found only in the Press Herald or at pressherald.com. And we need to make both of these changes with fewer resources.

The question we’re asking now is: Are we covering the right things? What changes, if any, need to be made to our beat structure to meet the demands of a 24-hour newsroom? What new topics should we be covering? Are there stories to which we should pay less attention?

We’re hoping to answer these questions over the next couple of weeks. As always, if you have some constructive ideas along these lines, send ‘em along.

For the better part of a year, our investigative reporter, Kevin Wack, has been working on a story about people who drive with suspended licenses in Maine.

Along the way Kevin battled state officials over access to public information; crunched thousands and thousands of numbers; visited jails; rode with police officers; conducted hundreds of interviews on the phone and in person; written and rewritten countless drafts; and dealt with cranky editors.

On Sunday, the world gets to see the fruits of his labor. That’s when the first part of Kevin’s three-part series – “Danger behind the wheel: Suspended drivers on Maine roads” – will be published. Parts 2 and 3 will follow on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

In addition to Kevin’s stories, there are some fantastic web-only videos, slide shows and graphics produced by online producer Suzi Piker, photographer Gregory Rec and graphic artist Jeff Woodbury.

So what does the series say? You’ll have to read it. I’m not giving it away.

It’s not easy to do investigative journalism. The work is complicated. The hours are endless. The process of writing, editing, rewriting and re-editing stories can be frustrating. We take it seriously and we’re proud of our newspaper’s commitment to this vital work.

I just e-mailed the following note to our news staff regarding the hiring of our new Washington, D.C., Correspondent:

Folks,

Jeannine, Bob and I are pleased to announce that Jonathan Kaplan will join our news staff on Dec. 17 as Washington, D.C., Correspondent.

For the past five years Jonathan has been a staff writer at The Hill, where he has covered both the Republican and Democratic majorities in the House, business and lobbying and political campaigns. He made two reporting trips to Iraq in 2003 and 2005, and covered elections in Venezuela.

A Chicago native, Jonathan is a 1994 graduate of Colby College, where he majored in government and economics. He received a Master’s in public policy from the University of Chicago in 1996.

Jonathan joins the Press Herald at a busy and exciting time. He will lead our coverage of the 2008 election, focusing on the U.S. Senate race between Susan Collins and Tom Allen, and the presidential election. He will also write a weekly column for the Telegram and help launch our first political blog on pressherald.com.

We expect to have him up here within a few weeks of his start date, so please be sure to stop by and say hello when you see him.

Andrew

We’re making some changes on one of our prime reporting beats, the courts.

For the past six years our court reporter has been Greg Kesich. An award-winning journalist, Greg has written, or contributed to, just about every major story we’ve covered since the start of the decade. This includes - but is not limited to - clergy sex abuse, allegations of abuse at the Portland Police Department and the Newry quadruple homicide.

Greg has been promoted to editorial writer, and his new assignment begins Monday. He’s sharp, intelligent and witty, and readers of the opinion pages are going to enjoy his commentaries. I’m going to miss having him on the city staff because besides being a top-notch journalist with great story ideas, he’s fun to work with.

To replace him, we’re promoting Trevor Maxwell to the courts beat. Trevor joined the newspaper in early 2005 as our night cops reporter, where he distinguished himself covering the murder of a 14-year-old Fayette girl by her classmate. He moved to the metro desk last summer to cover South Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough.

Trevor (along with Greg) was a member of the Press Herald reporting team that won the Society of Professional Journalists’ national Sigma Delta Chi award for their coverage of the Newry homicides. He’s a strong writer and enterprising reporter, so readers should expect to see many of his stories about Maine courts and the legal system on the front page. You can e-mail him tips at tmaxwell@pressherald.com.