Convention’s Over, Boss: Start Your Brown-Bag

To: Convention-going Bosses
From: Butch

When journalists leave Poynter after a week in a seminar, we warn them that they’ll be greeted back in their newsrooms with the question, “How was your vacation?”

Well, bosses — at least those of you who showed up for this week’s NAB/RTNDA sessions in Las Vegas or the NAA/ASNE gathering in Washington DC — you’ll probably get that question, too.  So, turn that “vacation” into continuing education. Whether you made it to the conventions or not, here’s a suggested agenda for a staff meeting that I’m guessing may be overdue anyway. (I’m drawing from my own attendance at NAA/ASNE, but gather that my broadcast colleagues discussed many of the same issues in Vegas.)

1. We do a lot of things right. Over and over this week, your fellow executives talked about the strengths that these hard times obscure. Strengths like: Our reach touches all segments of our markets. Our content is our greatest asset. Our newsrooms have made great strides in learning new technologies and using them to reach our audiences in new ways. Using multiple platforms, we serve a larger audience than ever before.

2. We have plenty of weaknesses. And real transformation requires us to be brutally honest about them. Procter & Gamble Chairman and CEO A. G. Lafley, speaking at NAA/ASNE, recalled this as a key to his company’s dramatic turnaround. Weaknesses in the newspaper business? Number 1: Our economic model is broken. (Translation: We don’t know how to make money in this new media world.) Our sales staffs remain largely print-focused. Our companies, overall, are averse to sales initiatives that risk any print revenue. Our staffs are unevenly trained, especially in the business of new media. We know far less about our customers than the most successful players in the electronic marketplace. Our current revenue picture makes investment difficult.

3. We can succeed.  Yes, our challenges are significant. But so are our strengths. And other companies — think P&G, Kodak, Dow-Corning, Western Union — have transformed themselves in very difficult circumstances. Success will require effective leadership, a clear and sustained strategy, an unwavering focus on the needs of our audience and a willingness on all of our parts to learn new skills and try new tools. Can we do it? Absolutely — look no further than our Web sites, and realize how much of their content is being produced by journalists who, only a few years ago, thought a blog was something that backed up your sink. We can succeed.

4. We will take risks — and learn from our failures. One thing was clear this week: No one has discovered THE answer. We heard lots of talk about creating new verticals (pets, moms, luxury real estate, etc.) And figuring out how to compete successfully in this space and that space and, oh yeah, in that space, too. We heard about targeting niches and directing users on our pages to material produced by other news organizations. But if anyone had THE answer, he or she kept it a secret. So we’re going to be trying a lot of things, and that means we’ll be launching the imperfect and seeking excellence as we go along. We’ll abandon things that don’t work and watch what others try that does work — and adapt the best ones for our audience. We’ll encourage risk-taking by rewarding innovations and learning from efforts that fall short. And we’ll treat all ideas — from all corners of the company — with respect.

5. We must move quickly — and expect a long ride. Yes, the situation is urgent, because with every newsroom job lost, we lose more of our capacity to produce the content we have identified as our greatest asset. So we must move quickly to develop a strategy — and an aptitude — for successfully generating revenue from our non-newspaper platforms. It won’t be easy: We heard a panel of economic experts forecast that real estate prices could continue to fall for several years, and that the national economy may move into a period of high inflation. And we already knew that some of our traditional revenue sources — classified, major retail — almost certainly will never approach their former levels. We must be patient and impatient at the same time.

6. Much is riding on our effort.  Our work never has been more important. Think election year. Think Iraq war. Think Walter Reed. Think Katrina. Imperfect as they may be, our news organizations remain the public’s most reliable source of independent journalism. Preserving our ability to do that journalism is worth fighting hard for. We must succeed.

7. If you believe, don’t be afraid to show it. One of the high points of the D.C. convention occurred when a Kodak executive aired the company’s “Winds of Change” video (enjoy it on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/2znn9z).  We’ve been using that video when teaching change management sessions at Poynter – maybe you’d like to show it to your team at your brown bag session. Can I be that excited about our future? Can you?

Thanks for listening. Let’s get to work. And if you convene such a meeting (or participate in one) please let me know how it does — either via the Feedback attached to this article or privately via e-mail.