(Stock image from Deposit Photos)
Some call me the Sun Sentinel’s digital cop. I’ve made it a personal mission to keep the journalists who create content from thinking in print terms.
Will a story zone? What is the 1B centerpiece? Should we contain that story? Those are important questions handled by our print production desk, a select group of talented copy editors who previously lacked control over the packaging of the print edition but now own it.
The rest of the newsroom, those who gather and crystallize the information that serve as the backbone of our storytelling, focus on how best to tell the stories of the day. Is it a narrative? A video? A photo gallery? An interactive database? All of the above?
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Our evolution has been at times painful and inspiring. Much of the pain came early on, a little more than four years ago, when we decided to blow up the structure of the newsroom. Rather than have a small cadre of producers, community mangers and the like, we decided to grow our online army by undergoing intense training to raise the digital IQ of editors and reporters.
The first year felt like a baby learning to walk – there were a lot of bumps and bruises. And maybe even a little crying. Editors just learning how to navigate the space accidentally spiked our most popular photo gallery. They misfired when trying to make video the centerpiece on the home page of SunSentinel.com. Mistakes were made every week, if not every day.
Some wanted to give up. They said what we were trying to do couldn’t be done. It was too much work: two jobs (digital producer and editor) rolled into one. After a year under our belt, the clouds slowly began to part. Editors and reporters began to hit their digital stride. What once felt like extra work – balancing digital demands while continuing to juggle print — became second nature.
Last year, we decided to take the big leap – and liberate content creators from print production.
Sun Sentinel reporters now live and die by digital deadlines. Their editors aren’t crafting print lineups; they’re packaging and programming SunSentinel.com. They make sure each hour has a steady stream of content posted for desktop and mobile audiences.
Even our biggest investigative projects, such as our recent report on U.S. welfare flowing back to Cuba, adhere to an aggressive digital deadline and review as important and meticulous as pouring over print proofs. Imagine top editors huddled behind a computer, another holding a cellphone, clicking every link and making adjustments to anticipate different reader behaviors on desktop and mobile. And that’s after the weeks of story edits, refocusing and fact-checking.
Reengineering how a newsroom thinks starts at the top. As leaders, we set the tone in how we speak, what we praise and when we decide to jump into a discussion.
The language we use matters. What does your language say about you?
Here are a few telltale signs you’re too print-centric:
You send newsroom-wide congratulatory notes that highlight the day’s front page. Great story! Great headline! Great design! Instead, what about sending a note the day before, as those great stories and engaging interactive graphics are posted online? It doesn’t matter if you know the difference between a unique visitor and a page view. If the note you regularly send to the newsroom is about the great front page that day, the message you’re sending to your staff is clear – print is paramount.
Allocate too much staff time on print-related features that have little or no value. You know the kind I’m talking about: the ones that readers wouldn’t even notice if you eliminate. Last year, Sun Sentinel newsroom managers met to discuss the things that suck up our time but have little return benefit. At the top of the list were these print features at the top of each section called “tophats.” (Don’t ask. One of the many silly names coined inside a newsroom. I’m sure you have a few.) These bite-size items each had cut-out photos. I came to learn that it took a photo editor nearly half of his shift each day just to find and snip those photos. Needless to say, we bid farewell to tophats and freed up the photo editor to use his newfound time to edit video.
Use performance evaluations to praise how many 1As or section-front stories reporters/editors had in the previous year. How about acknowledging how many of their stories surpassed (insert your relevant benchmark) page views, or how many videos drew a considerable number of views? Perhaps a writer has managed to get every major source on her beat to follow her on Twitter. Quantifiable goals are important. Just make sure you’re focused on the right goals.
Complain only when the newsroom blows print deadlines. Hold reporters and editors accountable for failing to post a story online in time for the daytime peak traffic period – usually the lunch hour – or earlier. If you’re meeting digital deadlines, chances are you’re beating your print deadlines. Creating a sense of urgency is near impossible when a writer’s day is structured around a print deadline.
More than any big digital pronouncement or memo, it’s the small and deliberate steps we take each day that ultimately will change a newsroom’s culture.
Previously: Today at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a switch to digital thinking
Last year, The Sun Sentinel made digital a priority. So how’s it going?
