Today Jennifer Saba reports on an Editor & Publisher blog that she received the following e-mail from American Press Institute associate director Mark Mulholland:
“Because no reportable consensus was reached at last week’s ‘API Summit on Saving An Industry In Crisis‘, today’s press conference call originally scheduled for 11 a.m. EST has been canceled.
“The summit conference was a constructive dialog among senior industry leaders, serving as a catalyst for continuing conversation and efforts at reversing declining revenue and profit trends. As progress toward those goals is made, additional information will be provided.
“We apologize for the short notice of the press conference cancellation.”
On Nov. 14 — the day after this closed-door, invitation-only summit that included 50 top news executives — API published a summary of the event. The news from the turnaround specialists they brought in, James Shein and Steve Miller, was pretty dire.
According to API, Shein concluded that as a whole the newspaper “is at or approaching full-blown crisis stage — though individual companies are in various points on that continuum.” And he was “pessimistic about their ability to halt their fall without outside help.”
Shein is quoted as saying, “The biggest hurdles to progress the industry’s senior leadership, including some of the people in this room. I am not sure you can take a look at your industry with fresh eyes.”
And Miller is quoted as telling the executives, “Cutting staffs will reduce costs — but it won’t happen fast enough, and will erode the product.You have to reinvent your business model.”
But perhaps even more discouraging to many who care about journalism was the “next steps” section at the end of the document:
“Participants agreed to reconvene in six months, and to explore additional collaboration. Some spoke of joint investment in research and development of both technologies and products, others of more formal means of sharing information.”
In response, former newspaper publisher Martin Langeveld noted: “Six months? What are they thinking? They’ve laid off more than 10,000 people in the last six months. What will be left six months from now? They need to launch a Manhattan Project to blow up their industry and start over. Now — not six months from now.”
Tidbits contributor Steve Outing also blogged his dismay at this outcome. This attracted a lengthy discussion in the comments (41 so far), including this clarification from API’s Donna Barrett:
“The API report got it wrong,” wrote Barrett. “No newspaper executive in the room suggested that we wait six months to meet again. When someone said we should have a timely follow-up, the facilitator said, ‘Like in six months?’ and was quickly told by the participants that it needed to be much sooner than that.”
…Which makes it all the more strange that API would cancel its follow-up call today.
Fortunately, API’s “closed-door” summit actually had a couple of open windows. Gazette Communications publisher Charles Peters liveblogged it, and there was some commentary on Twitter (hashtag: #APIS).
The liveblog achieved considerable engagement with many online journalism leaders and other interested people — but virtually none from the API summit attendees. “I made an announcement when the session started, I tweeted it, and I discussed it during breaks. I’m kind of at a loss as to why news executives don’t get this,” Peters said. He plans to highlight the main takeaways from the seven-hour-long liveblog, using timestamps to provide a guide to the conversation.
But regarding the conference call, Peters said, “I was stunned that it was canceled.”
