Link: A new role for editors

Here’s Jeff Jarvis on the importance of editors—and how the role must change in the digital age:

“There is still a role for editors, but it changes. There is a need to add context and fill holes in understanding - by using links. As we move from an economy of scarcity in media to one of abundance, there is a need to curate: to find the best and brightest from an infinite supply of witnesses, commentators, photographers and experts. As news becomes collaborative, editors will need to assemble networks from among staff and the public; that makes them community organisers. I also believe editors should play educator, helping to improve the work of the network.

“Editors are a luxury we must afford. But as their jobs change, so will their character. Editors will become gentle coaches whose job it is to look for the good in the world of the web. They’ll have to be nicer. Based on that, some may still choose to impale themselves.”

Read the full post here (Thanks to Jay Rosen for the pointer.)

A few of my own thoughts about frontline editors here.
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Are editing roles changing in your newsroom? How? Why? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Tools for innovators

In newsrooms, often, everyone wants to be part of the decision and no one really wants to take the final step. So decision-making can be very slow (or occasionally too fast when one person decides without meaningful input). Also, decisions that reflect consensus can be so watered down that they don’t accomplish much. RAID is a process to clarify who is responsible for making a decision and who has advisory power on a given project.

Stacy Lynch, a consultant and project manager at Media Management Center, helped implement RAID as Innovations Director at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This is one in a series of posts about presentations and discussions at KDMC’s annual Leadership Conference last month (more explanation here). Lynch’s presentation on speeding decision-making gave a snapshot of this tool.

The acronym RAID stands for different roles:
- Recommend: Part of the team to weigh options and design recommendation(s)
- Agree: Have reviewed, weighed in and will implement (this one has implicit veto power).
- Inform: Offer subject expertise and information needed to make a decision
- Decide: Chooses among options, makes final decisions

In her presentation, Lynch used the example of an organization looking at adding social networking to its travel site. In virtually every key part of that decision, typically, anywhere from three to five departments believe they are the decision-maker. For example, in Lynch’s “typical” slide (top), news, IT and the executive office each thinks it is the decision-maker on a final prototype. Everyone thinks they are deciding the launch date. That’s a formula for misunderstanding, conflict and delay.

The goal of RAID, Lynch says, is to have “one D on each decision. The (project development) team should have the D as often as you feel they are capable of making that decision.”

Lynch showed a better application of RAID (bottom) to the plan for the travel site. One department alone decides a given issue (the exec office decides on a final prototype, the project team decides the launch date). This model has a lot more Agree and Inform roles—which means everyone gets to have a say without bogging down the process.

Go to Lynch’s presentation for more detail.

Embrace ‘iteration’

Last month, Knight Digital Media Center brought together teams from 12 news organizations to learn more about digital media and make plans for moving their newsrooms forward online. Now those editors are back in their newsrooms making changes—and I will be reporting on their progress in the coming months. In the meantime, I’m preparing a report on the conference—something KDMC can put online to benefit other editors.

As I review my notes and the conference presentations, I will blog chunks of the conference materials and discussions. I hope comments from participants and other editors will enrich the final report.

Here is the report from the 2007 conference. I plan to use a similar format of lists—key takeaways, tools, quotes and questions.

I want to start with the idea of “iteration” from a presentation by Stacy Lynch, a project director with Media Management Center and former Innovations Director at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Lynch focused on decision-making and the difficulty news organizations have in making them quickly because of unproductive loops in the typical process.

“Iteration,” is one antidote. It’s a process of breaking a project into stages and launching them one at a time.

Lynch noted that it’s a model that works in other fields. “In most software development, 60-80% of work is done post ‘launch’ as new versions emerge.”

Those of us who are native to print will have a hard time imagining how that might work on the printed page. And the perfectionistic culture of newsrooms may frown on launching something that is not fully nailed down. But the process seems remarkably simple and suited to online.

Lynch used the example of building a new entertainment site to illustrate iteration:
1, Initially, launch only an events database. Fix any bugs.
2. Add a rating component.
3. Enable users to upload photos from different events.
4. Build in files associated with different performers.

“From the very beginning, say what it will have, but say it’s going to come out in different chunks,’’ Lynch advises.

The process helps prevent overspending resources at the beginning—perhaps adding features that users don’t really want. It builds in flexibility and allows you to get feedback as the project develops. Perhaps most importantly in the digital world, it speeds time to market.

Lynch presented a second tool, called RAID, to speed decision-making. I’ll write more about RAID next week.

Let’s get local

Joe H. Bullard, a former managing editor of The Denver Post, wants to see more local news in the Denver newspapers. Here’s his formula from ”Getting local coverage in gear.”

“I’d fire a third of the editors and convert another third of them to being reporters and give them a laptop. I’d send all my reporters home with a laptop. I would tell each of them his beat is now a circle with a radius of 12 blocks and the center of the circle is his house. I want to know everything that happens within those 12 blocks.

“I don’t want to see you in the newsroom, unless your editor or I summon you. I will count bylines. If you don’t submit at least one story a day, I will be unhappy. If you go a week without a byline, you will be fired. I will expect you to know how to use a digital camera and I expect you to submit at least one picture a day from your circle.

“Because all the reporters and editors are college graduates and have been making a good living for a good number of years, they all live in upscale portions of the metro area, which will limit the news that gets reported. This is a good thing because it would give me the opportunity to hire blue-collar reporters that care about what goes on in their neighborhoods.

“They would be much more concerned about why their Johnny can’t read and why his classroom has 39 kids, one teacher and no aide. Or why their street never gets swept, nor the snow removed. In short, we would start reporting news that is relevant to my readers.

“What do I do with all this news? Put it on my web site as a zone section.”

Is this an organizing principle for the future? Is your newsroom already doing something like this? Please share your experiences in comments.

(Thanks to Ryan Sholin for the pointer.)

Link: Innovation in the newsroom

Chris O’Brien is a business columnist at The San Jose Mercury News and winner of a Knight 21st Century News Challenge grant to study the newsroom of the future. From that vantage point, he offers ”Five Steps to Foster Innovation in the Newsroom.”

O’Brien says:

“No one can simply order up innovation on demand. Wish as you might, the innovation fairy won’t sprinkle pixie dust on your newsroom while you sleep. But you can encourage innovation, nurture it by lowering barriers, supporting those employees with entrepreneurial drive, and providing a fertile environment for their ideas.”

His list:
1. Make it a priority
2. Create a process
3. Foster new collaboration
4. Offer incentives
5. Evaluate and learn

I think it all flows from 1. Make it a priority. Too often, newsrooms are so wound up in getting out that next edition or that next online update that thinking about and creating for the future falls by the wayside day after day after day.

Setting aside time for the future is a choice, a discipline and an imperative.

As O’Brien says:

“If 100 percent of your newsroom’s time is devoted to just producing your current products, then you’re already doomed, even if it isn’t immediately apparent. This is true whether you’re a traditional newspaper newsroom, or an online first newsroom.”

How does your newsroom foster innovation? Please share your thoughts in comments.

Link: 10 ways to improve comments

Derek Powazek offers ”10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments,” in a post worth reading in full.

Here’s the quick list:
1. Require Accounts. Make people register but don’t worry about anonymity.
2. Set and Enforce Rules. Delete bad comments and promote good ones.
3. Employ a Community Manager to monitor comments, participate in discussions and remove offensive comments.
4. Sculpt the Input. Ask for more on a comment, or less.
5. Empower the Community to help monitor comments.
6. Link Stories to Comments.
7. Enable Private Communication so people can vent.
8. Participate and get your staff to participate.
9. But Don’t Feed the Trolls, learn when and how to join the fray and who to ignore.
10. Give Up Control, expect surprises.

(Thanks to Notes from a Teacher for the pointer.)

PEJ: State of the newsroom

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has produced a rich study of the state of the U.S. newspaper newsrooms at a key moment in their migration to the Web.

The findings testify to the growing adaptiveness of newsrooms. At the at the same time, the report raises questions in my mind about whether newsrooms—and newspaper revenue departments such as advertising—are moving quickly and boldly enough to beat the economic clock that is undermining a key competitive advantage—large news gathering staffs.

The report, ”The Changing Newspaper Newsroom,” also speaks to the determination I saw among editors at the Knight Digital Media Center‘s leadership conference last week.

“When it comes to ... the quality of the work, many of these editors express a remarkable - at times eerie - optimism despite the adversities they have faced. In general, the editors we talked to tend to look beyond what their newsrooms have lost in recent years and instead focus on the new vistas that technology has suddenly opened to them and the new energy and purpose of a faster-moving newsroom.”

What these newsrooms have lost is considerable, the report shows.

Here are two lists based on PEJ’s findings—“Less/fewer” covers reductions in staff, resources and coverage. “More” tells what’s growing.

Less/fewer
Staff size (reductions are much sharper at large metros than at smaller newspapers.)
Age and experience of staff
Smaller news hole and newspaper size
Foreign, national news
Arts and features coverage
Institutional memory as older journalists take buyouts
Copy editing
General and specialized editing
Photographers

Meanwhile, editors expect to cut more staff. More than half the the large-paper editors said they expected more cuts; nearly a third at the smaller papers did.

More
Community, state/local news
Education coverage
Investigative, enterprise coverage
Early-in-the-day teams that focus on Web content
Videography
Web-only editing
Database journalism
Mobile journalists
Micro sites
Staff blogs

The changing profile of the journalist
Here is what editors say are the top five “essential skills” in the newsroom:
Writing skills
Overall computer skills
Ability to file quickly
Multimedia skills
Data analysis skills

Key quotes:

On the changing print newspaper:

“In effect, America’s newspapers are narrowing their scope ambitions and becoming niche reads.”
--
“Together, these two developments - shorter news stories and richer enterprise - reflect part of a new, evolving role of the print newspaper in an era of growing online access to news virtually as it happens. In this environment, the role of the print edition of daily newspapers is becoming less a vehicle to convey news developments and more a source for analysis, texture, and context to help readers better understand those developments.”

Staffing and culture:

“The culture of the daily newspaper newsroom is also changing. New job demands are drawing a generation of young, versatile, tech-savvy, high-energy staff as financial pressures drive out higher-salaried veteran reporters and editors. Newsroom executives say the infusion of new blood has brought with it a new competitive energy, but they also cite the departure of veteran journalists, along with the talent, wisdom and institutional memory they hold as their single greatest loss.”

On the quality of the journalism:

“Amid these concerns—and despite the enormous cutbacks and profound worries—editors still sense that their product is improving, not worsening. Fully 56% think their news product is better than it was three years earlier.
“ ‘I believe the journalism itself is discernibly better than it was a year ago,’ said the editor of a large metropolitan daily, whose paper last year lost 70 newsroom employees. ‘There’s an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the coverage of several core beats.’ “
--
“The bottom line culturally is this: In today’s newspapers, stories tend to be gathered faster and under greater pressure by a smaller, less experienced staff of reporters, then are passed more quickly through fewer, less experienced, editing hands on their way to publication. Some editors—but far from a majority of those interviewed—said they could see the costs.
“ ‘I read the stories (in my own paper) today and I see more holes, questions I want answered that are not,’ lamented the editor of a large metropolitan newspaper. ‘I see more stories...that aren’t as well sourced as I’d prefer.’ ”

Editors’ view of the Web

“Although several editors voiced concerns about the web as a distraction that deflects resources from the print edition, overall, the view of the web appears to be increasingly positive.
“Editors’ responses indicated, often with a sense of surprise, that the growth of newspaper websites has also had a positive impact on the content of the newspaper itself. Interviews and survey results strongly indicated that—contrary to early conventional wisdom—the print and website versions of today’s daily newspapers can be complementary and mutually strengthening.”
--
“Increasingly, the web today is seen as a newspaper’s ally, not an adversary. Because of this, it is helping counter sagging morale as newsrooms shrink. At larger papers, where staff cuts have been deepest and the newsroom moods darkest, fully 57% of those surveyed say “web technology offers the potential for greater-than-ever journalism and will be the savior of what we once thought of as newspaper newsrooms.” By contrast, just 4% expressed worry that the web’s pressure on immediacy might undermine the accuracy and values of journalism.”

These news organizations appear to be making significant progress toward the Web and it’s encouraging to see how greatly it has come to be seen as an opportunity rather than a fad to be wished away. Still, the report in many ways underscores the extent to which the print newspaper still drives revenues and staffing—and that may be slowing digital transformation when it needs to be speeding up.

The PEJ report also discusses the changing relationships of newsrooms with the advertising department and with citizens. I’ll post some thoughts about those issues soon.

Meanwhile, how is your organization handling the print-online balance. What are you giving up? What are you adding?

Editors: Determination, not desperation

With all the grim news from the news industry—staff reductions, top editor resignations—it’s easy to fall into a state of hopelessness. Certainly journalism’s most widely read news aggregator—Romenesko—often feels like a relentless chronicle of malaise and decline.

So it has been very encouraging—and enlightening—for me to speak with and exchange e-mails with the two dozen editors who are participating this week in Knight Digital Media Center‘s annual Leadership Conference, ”Transforming News Organizations for the Digital Now.” Like their peers across the industry, they face struggles and challenges both within their organizations and without. They are far from naive. But they are very determined to take their organizations across the digital divide. We’re hoping that determination—and the advice of a couple of dozen experts who are joining the conference—will help them draft bold plans for reorganizing and re-energizing their organizations.

A team of two people - the top editor and the top online editor—from 12 traditionally print organizations will participate in the conference, which starts today and runs through Friday. Participating organizations: The Commercial Appeal, the Dayton Daily News, the (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Journal-Gazette (Fort Wayne), the Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga.), the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Orange County Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review (Spokane), and The Wichita Eagle.

I’ll make a brief introductory presentation identifying some of the patterns and issues that cropped up in my pre-conference interviews. (Later in the evening, we’ll hear about the digital audience from Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and then we’ll explore “Seven Deadly Myths of Innovation” with Krisztina “Z” Holly, Vice Provost for Innovation at the University of Southern California, where the Knight Center is based.

For now, here are a few trends from participating news organizations:

- They’ve reorganized in the past year, mostly to do a better job of getting breaking news online by dedicating reporters and editors to the Web. Those moves are showing results in increased Web traffic.Some of the newsrooms have undergone more radical changes—Rochester adopted Gannett’s Information Center model; at the Orange County Register, two-thirds of the newsroom reports to the online desk.
One editor: “Our priority is to create a fast and flexible culture in which we think online first, then print. Ultimately, it is to transform our newsroom into a 24-7 news organization. We must deliver news and information to readers and viewers when they want it and how they want. We integrate our approach. Our editors plan online coverage AND print coverage. We want to be first and we want to be best. We must continually be changing jobs and approaches. We did this a lot last year; we must do more this year. We do not believe in a big “ta da” approach. It should be organic but should also be urgent. Our survival is at stake in this competitive world we live in.”

- The culture in their newsrooms is improving, with more journalists adopting a Web-first mantra.Still, few believe they have achieved critical mass for a more nimble, online-adept culture. There are fewer pockets of resistance. But traditionally print-centric groups—in some cases copy desks or assignment editors—lack online reflexes.
Here’s one editor: “It’s like most places. There are 30 percent who get it, 30 percent who aren’t sure and 30 percent who are resistant. It’s a mixed bag. Some people are unhappy because they feel like it’s more work. Some people are really enthusiastic about it.”

- Culture aside, newsroom production systems and processes remain still highly print focused.  As their staffs contract, newsroom leaders are pressed to re-evaluate the print-online balance. How will they support both a robust print product - since it still pays most of the bills - with more aggressive moves online. Dayton, Rochester and Orange County have begun systematically repurposing (yes, I hate that word too. Alternative?) online content for the next day’s newspaper.
Here’s one editor: “Print is going to be around for a long time. It delivers 90 percent of our revenue. That’s the difficulty, trying to start this new business and keep the old one going. It’s going to be a struggle. We could do one or the other very well but to do both is a real challenge—especially with considerably fewer resources.”

- Newsroom staff cuts in these organizations range from about 10 to 40 percent from peak. Twenty-five percent is the norm.
One editor: “My goal is to continue to leverage my news staff across as many platforms as we can manage ... The only way we can sustain a newsroom of this size is to master all of these platforms.”

- Newsroom leaders also are frustrated by problems with technology and a general lack of technological resources. Competition for programmers is fierce—within news organizations and in the larger marketplace, which pays better than newspapers. One oneline editor: “It is difficult to attract Web developers because of the perception that the print industry is in decline. Web developers would bring the expertise that is currently lacking as we rely on converting print journalists into online specialists.”

- These problems notwithstanding, these editor report a dizzying array of accomplishments on the Web. From photo galleries, to databases, to videos, to interactive graphics, to broadcast programming, to affinity sites, the migration to online in these newsrooms is going full force. But few think they are ahead of the curve. Social networks, search and mobile delivery loom large on many horizons.

From an online editor: “I try to help quickly move our operation toward a better understanding of audience needs, and a workflow that is multimedia centric. I do this with the realization that we’re asking a shrinking staff to do more every day. The key is in identifying those areas where we can pull back and relax standards or output, and those areas where we must press harder to gain traction.”

Do these newsrooms, taken collectively, sound fairly typical? Please reflect on your challenges, experiments and solutions in the comments.

(Note: I will not be quoting specific conference participants by name or by the name of their news organization without their permission. It’s a tradeoff. We want to make as much information from the conference available as possible. At the same time, we do not want participants to feel inhibited in the discussions. All expert presentations and comments will be attributed.)

From Tampa, “audience editors”

Following a new round of layoffs and reorganization at The Tampa Tribune, much discussion has focused on a blog post in which Tribune intern Jessica DaSilva described the layoff announcement and drew harsh criticism from other journalists (see comments in the same post) for a) admiring the way Tampa Executive Editor Janet Coats handled the layoffs and 2) being too young to have a valid opinion.

This response struck me as symptomatic of old newsroom culture: First, shoot the messenger, then deny there’s a problem or find someone (Coats and other newsroom executives) to blame for it. Happily, journalists also stepped forward to support DeSilva for caring and to support Coats for having a plan.

Indeed, Coats has a bold plan, and it just might work. The reorganization she and her staff are developing should get a serious look from any newspaper editor who is trying to cross the burning bridge to more stable times. You can read a long describing the changes here on Romenesko.

I want to focus on one aspect of the plan, the new job of “audience editors.” There apparently will be 5-6 of them in Tampa and they will operate just below the rank of managing editor in a newsroom that will produce print, online and broadcast reports. Here is how the memo describes the role:

“The Audience Editors are the advocates for the audience in daily and longer-term story choices and story development. Their charge is to make sure we are working on the right things to serve audience needs and wants. They also are responsible for ensuring that we are working on enough of the right things to create relevant, robust newspapers, newscasts and online content.
“· Audience advocacy. The AEs lead the newsroom in thinking about how best to serve the audience. The AEs have a deep knowledge of our audience research across all platforms, and they use that knowledge to guide them in setting priorities for story coverage. They educate and inform the rest of the newsroom about what works for the audience, and they track which stories are moving audience within the news cycle.
“· Quantity control. The AEs are responsible for ensuring that we have enough of the right kinds of stories in production to serve each platform during the news cycle. They can shift resources to focus on different stories, depending on news priorities. They can advance production on particular stories, or stockpile content if we are over-producing for a certain news cycle. They’ll work with the finishing groups to ensure there is a range of stories to be considered for each product.
“· Quality control. The AEs have the responsibility for identifying stories with high audience potential, reallocating resources around the newsroom to reflect those priorities and ensuring coordination among the work groups. If the AEs determine that resources are being devoted to stories with low impact, they can redirect work onto other topics with more potential. They can kill a story or elevate it.
“· Promoting interactivity. The AEs understand that the core of the news mission is to create stories readers can interact with. The AEs identify stories with high potential for interaction, be it through user comments, databases, the potential for user-generated content or by appealing to highly motivated niche audiences. The AEs work with the news circles and the finishing group to apply the best interactive strategies to the stories they have identified as having high audience interest.
“· Communication. The AEs will develop the best method of communicating the daily news priorities to the overall newsroom. They will build a communication system that is real time, focused not on meetings but on the evolution of the news priorities throughout the day.
“· Coordination. The AEs will look for gaps and overlaps among the content circles (reporting teams). They will work with the circle editors to set priorities, mediate coverage disputes and shift reporting resources appropriately. The AEs will communicate daily with the finishing group leaders to track development of each product for that news cycle and to reset coverage priorities accordingly.
“· In summary: The AEs enforce the need for production. They are empowered to shift resources among the work groups to make sure we have enough content for all three platforms. The AEs enforce quality. The AEs are the nerve center of the operation, setting daily goals, looking out for more long-term story possibilities and constantly shifting resources to match priorities.”

Two aspects of this plan hold particular promise for improving content and, perhaps, creating a more saavy, adaptive newsroom culture:
1. Audience focus: “The Audience Editors are the advocates for the audience in daily and longer-term story choices and story development.” Traditionally, the audience is not at the table when editors decide what to cover and who to cover it for different platforms. “What readers want” often is a proxy for what editors want. If these editors can effectively bring audience expertise to the discussion, maintain an independent perspective, and communicate in ways that build staff expertise—without being afraid to use their veto power —Tampa may significantly better its content across platforms.
2. Power to shift resources: The AEs are ...  constantly shifting resources to match priorities. In the traditional newsroom, shifting resources can take weeks, even months, and smart moves often die on the vine of turf politics. Tampa’s plan is likely to see many fits and starts as both Audience Editors and the newsroom as a whole learn what works. But this could be a formula for creating a more nimble newsroom.
How has your newsroom used structural changes to create better content and a more adaptive newsroom culture? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Vaulting into video

“What do you think, can a newspaper newsroom produce quality web TV?” That’s a question posed by John Hassell on his exploding newsroom blog. And Hassell and his colleagues at The Star-Ledger and NJ.com in Newark are about to find out.

The Star-Ledger newsroom recently launched an aggressive strategy to grow audience with news and enterprise video.

“We want to produce great video journalism in New Jersey and to showcase local video of all sorts, whether it’s produced by our staff or not. New Jersey has been traditionally under served by the local network TV outlets in New York and Philadelphia, and that presents an incredible opportunity to build audience and revenue around video content,” Hassell says.

To get started, the newsroom invested in HDV cameras and intensive boot camp training for 20 veejays in May. Within the first few days of training, participants were producing video and Hassell says the quality is improving all the time.

“We believe quality is key when you’re talking about telling stories with video. Our newly trained veejays are still cutting their teeth, but the level of their work is already quite high and rising every week. The visuals should be compelling, the writing taut and the arc of story clearly drawn. Storytelling is really at the heart of what we’re doing, and we feel we bring a lot to the table. All of that said, there is also plenty of room for short clips where production and storytelling values give way to the simple act of witnessing something newsworthy, fascinating or just plain weird.”

The training also attempted to address and help avoid post-production logjams that many newsrooms have experienced in the rush to video.

Hassell explains in an interview with “Newspapers & Technology:”

“The class teaches students how to bridge the gap between gathering news intended for both video and print distribution, Hassell said.

‘What a lot of people do is when they first get a video camera and are sent out to shoot video they come back with a lot of video and that creates an inefficient post-production result because you get back and have three hours of footage that you have to watch and edit,’ said Hassell. ‘We are teaching people how to think about what they need to shoot for the story they want to tell so that the process of producing video stories’ becomes more efficient.’’

The newsroom also shifted three print-oriented journalists to manage the new video enterprise: AME/Video, with overall responsibility for video efforts; Video Enterprise Editor, with a mandate to keep the standards high; and a new veejay who becomes a full-time producer and host of the daily noon web cast that launches next month.

You can link to a recent progress report on the effort by Hassell here and to one example of a new veejay’s work here.

Hassell says it’s too early to tell whether the video strategy is paying off.

“We’ll judge ourselves on the quality of our work, the traffic it generates, the revenue it produces and the extent to which we can build and nurture a network of New Jerseyans who are making and sharing video. It’s early to judge the results, because we only recently launched a video platform at NJ.com, but the viewership trends and number of user submissions are encouraging.”

Link: The online community manager

An emerging role in many newsrooms is the job of gathering and maintaining online community, whether it’s a Reader Exchange Editor at MiamiHerald.com or the Managing Editor at MyTopiaCafe.com. Tish Grier on E-Media Tidbits has a terrific post about what to look for in an effective online community manager, including commitment to the cause, love of people and a willingness to learn and embrace technology and online culture.
Who is building your online community?

Link: Streamlining mobile journalism

Zac Echola has an impressive post on tools for streamlining mobile news gathering and newsroom work flow. The tools—mostly free programs such as Google Calendar and Reader (both of which I recommend highly, especially the sharing feature), Ning and Del.icio.us—can help reporters, photographers and editors keep track of their work and each other on the run. Today’s post is the first of two parts.

Echola says:

“In order to truly become a mobile newsroom, internal communication becomes much, much more important. The first post in this series deals with how to build an internal communication infrastructure. It will help reporters stay on top of their sources and help editors stay on top of what their reporters and other editors are working on. The second post will deal with how to radically transform your news gathering process, generate more traffic and discussion on your sites and build better, more relevant top-tier products.’’

Newsroom confidential:  The reality of frontline editors

Rupert Murdoch says a “ridiculous” number of editors—8.3 to be astonishingly (or perhaps facetiously) exact—deal with an average story in The Wall Street Journal. I’m not sure what “deal with” means. Counting a couple of assignment editors (one launches the story, another plays cleanup later in the day), a copy editor and a slot, multimedia editors, and perhaps someone who posts to the Web, it’s easy to see how the number who briefly touch a story could add up. On the other hand, if 8.3 editors are routinely revising and tweaking a single story, that does indeed seem like a lot.

It is true that newspapers by tradition have let too many editors massage too many stories too much, often to with little or no improvement. I am big on the idea that a good line editor (a job I had for about 25 years) approaches every story with a skeptical eye and aggressively challenges facts, omissions and underlying assumptions. But I think editors sometimes try to put their own stamp on the story or there is perfectionist editing by committee—and that can spell death to any personality and creativity the writer has brought to the piece. The unintended message to writers is that they should give up taking chances or figure out a way to avoid editing. I once consulted at a well-respected metro newspaper where several writers told me they tried to avoid pitching their stories for the front page because the “serial editing” of these stories was such a hassle for them and damaging to their stories.

What a message. “Don’t try.” A good editor must always be ready to pull a story back from a precipice. But she also must encourage the reporter or photojournalist to step to the edge of the cliff and look up, down and sideways.

Murdoch’s editor-to-story ratio tells only part of the story. A sad reality of newsrooms is how little time many line editors actually get to spend on editing. So the more important issue for newsrooms in transition (and I am thinking more about the many local newsrooms that are crossing the digital divide than the few national ones like WSJ) is to fully understand the wide-ranging and powerful role assigning editors can play in fostering change and innovation as they work 14-hour days six days a week, decide what gets covered and what gets left out, deploy and coach the staff, field calls from readers, learn about audience and multimedia, tend to administrative details such as scheduling, foster creativity, put out the daily fires of poor planning or interpersonal disagreements, attend overly long daily and weekly meetings, encourage young journalists, keep the newsroom trains running on time, counsel colleagues in crisis, and, yes, edit stories.

In ”News, Improved: How America’s Newsrooms Are Learning to Change,” we devoted a full chapter to the job of the frontline editor and, in particular, to this editor’s role as the guardian of newsroom culture. We wrote:

“This editor touches virtually everything and everyone in the newsroom, and that touch can push change forward or hold it back.
More than anyone else, these editors translate their understanding of a newsroom’s mission into its daily work. They can foster honest give-and-take. They can open the door to culture change and creative risk. They can be evangelists for staff development and drive newsroom goals into the news itself, into both print and online. Or not.”

A complicated role continues to change and deepen and that translates into a steep learning curve for many editors from a print background.

“In the old culture, editors trimmed stories, editors held stories and editors exercised something called ‘news judgment’. In the new culture, we need editors who can enhance stories, editors who can speed stories along and editors who can present readers with a wide variety of choices,” says Bob Rose, deputy managing editor for presentation and online at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “It’s too early to say whether the new job is more demanding. It’s worth acknowledging that both types of editing require a great amount of skill. It’s also worth noting that those skill sets don’t necessarily transfer over.”

Steven A. Smith, editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., says he is searching for ways to help editors in his fast-evolving newsroom because they are critical to the newsrooms ability to deliver news in multiple ways.

“The burden of the cultural transition falls mostly on the editors, particularly the line editors,” Smith says. While reporters and photographers learn to use new technology to cover the news, the demands on editors are more challenging. “The editors have to be constantly thinking about how this content may play across platforms.”

This is a moving target. But for now, perhaps, the best strategy is to encourage frontline editors to tinker (in the traditional sense of editing) less, less, less and experiment, learn and grow more.

I think that’s a more productive approach than Murdoch’s editor-to-story ratio. You tell me. How are you helping frontline editors in your newsroom learn, cope and grow? Please add your thoughts in comments.

Moving the furniture, moving the needle

The traditional newsroom model—with its compartmentalized teams or departments and assembly-line production for end-of-day deadlines—has proven ill suited to a 24/7 news environment that requires speed, creativity, collaboration and the ability to turn on a dime. The structure, systems and processes of the newsroom drive both culture and results. That’s not to say moving desks around a few times a year will change the newsroom. But smart newsroom leaders are finding reorganization—some sweeping, some in small steps—really helps.
The continuous news desk (which now even has the acronym of CND) has come to symbolize digital transformation in many newsrooms, especially larger ones where cross-disciplinary communication tends to be diffuse. I described that change at the Miami Herald here.
This week, I talked with the editor of another Florida newspaper, about a similar change that yielded striking results.
Janet Coats, Executive Editor of The Tampa Tribune, said the organization in the past year:
- Combined online and print newsrooms under the one editor (Coats). (I confess, I was a little surprised that Tampa, a poster child for media convergence, had separate print and online newsrooms as late as 2007.)
- Reorganized into “deep” and “now” teams in an effort to balance getting the story of the moment with investigative and explanatory journalism.
- Moved a significant number of print staff to a new continuous news desk.

“The results,” Coats said, “were immediate and gratifying - a 60 percent increase in (local) page views year over year.” Breaking news page views were about 11 percent of total before the change, Coats said. “Since continuous news desk, that share has grown to about 30 percent.”

Those results in turn pushed culture change in the newsroom, buoyed the staff, and convinced even Web-resistant staff members. “The launch of continuous news desk was the best thing that happened culturally in the time I’ve been here,” Coats said. “It was one of those wonderful moments when we actually launched the continuous news desk we saw immediate results. That was a glorious thing for people who were demoralized. ... We saw that pop, a dramatic pop, in Web traffic. The only thing that had changed was the journalism. That was powerful.”

I bet other newsrooms have similar stories of change. I’d like to hear yours. Please share them in the comments to this blog.