This month at Poynter, I spent a week in a seminar room with 19 editors who are trying to re-imagine their newsrooms for a 24/7, digital news cycle. They left with ideas, strategies and the belief they will succeed.
“We will succeed,” announced a closing presentation from the Tulsa World‘s Jason Collington. “If you hold on.”
Success for these editors and their newsrooms, of course, will involve a good deal of trial and error. Thousands of journalists in newsrooms that formerly were dedicated solely to print publishing are slogging through the evolution into publishing throughout the day and night — and on at least two platforms.
They’re gaining a new appreciation for process — how it can help, how it can cripple. Let’s face it: A bad process can bury a great idea every time. And the challenge of using one staff to gather news for online and print — especially with diminishing resources — is forcing us to rethink almost every process in the newsroom.
We need new skills, and we frequently have to learn them in real time.
We need to create new jobs, and often we must assign them to people who did something very different, for a very long time.
And we need a real commitment to learning — and doing so quickly.
That sounds obvious, but how do you integrate learning into a news day that challenges the staff to find time to eat?
Here are three ideas:
- Learn from real examples when they happen. Let’s say your goal is to cover breaking news more effectively, getting better and faster at first posting to the Web and then developing a story for tomorrow’s paper.
The breaking news story you produce today can provide a terrific learning moment.
Get in the habit of jotting down a few notes during the course of the day as you observe what works and what doesn’t. Maybe you have places in your work flow where the process bogs down. Maybe the writing or the editing takes too long. Maybe the story you produce for the paper is too similar to the news you had posted on the Web hours and hours earlier.
If you gather the principal players soon after the story to revisit how it was covered, you can try something different right away or identify the need for longer-term solutions. You can try a different work flow immediately — but helping people write or edit more quickly might require some training. In either case, possible solutions are more apparent in the immediate aftermath.
And just the act of paying attention to the process will reap benefits.
- Learn new things — even if their application isn’t apparent. You might not know today how to integrate social networks (Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo, Ning, LinkedIn, MySpace) into your newsroom’s coverage, but you can’t go wrong learning about tools that so much of your audience is using. Seek out members of your staff who use social networks — or Google Docs or Twitter or Utterli or any emerging digital tool — and invite them to teach others.
Then brainstorm. Gather your most adventurous staffers and invite them to play “What if?” Remember, only a few years ago newsrooms weren’t sure how to use blogging software; today that software affords our newsrooms and the public essential ways of exchanging information and opinions.
- Commit to giving feedback. Especially when we’re trying to learn new skills and apply them appropriately (think video and audio), it’s essential that we let people know how they’re doing. And yet in seminar after seminar, I meet journalists (including newsroom leaders) who say they rarely, if ever, get meaningful feedback from their bosses.
How are we supposed to know what to do more of? And less of? Do we just guess?
I suspect some of the reluctance to offer feedback stems from the boss’ own insecurity — after all, many print newsroom editors aren’t sure themselves what makes a good video. But let’s be honest: The failure to offer regular, meaningful feedback dates back to long before the dawn of new media. We didn’t do feedback well when our biggest challenge was the anecdotal lead.
That needs to change if we’re going to learn, and improve, while on the run. And it’s a two-way street. Bosses need to give individuals on their staffs specific feedback on a timely basis, and staffers need to demand it. (Hey, you can’t demand a raise these days; the least you’re owed is some honest, constructive feedback.)
Where will we find the time? Think of it as an investment. The time you spend showing me what I need to do differently can save you the time it will take to correct my mistake again the next time.
Those are three ideas for integrating learning into your very busy operations. There are lots of others. Most importantly, I try to keep in mind these two facts:
- There is much I do not know.
- In all probability, someone on my staff can teach me and my colleagues what we do not know.
Give it a try.
