“Events” Items

Running Technology at Phoenix Newspapers

In early 1997 I took on the assignment of running Phoenix Newspaper’s technology department for an 18 to 24-month period.  The goal was to bring some of my strategic thinking to the daily operational aspects of the department.

Here’s what John Oppedahl, PNI’s publisher and chief executive officer is quoted in the Arizona Republic story about the announcement:

“In essence,” he said, “we are restructuring the information services department to address some of our operational challenges and provide better service to all PNI departments.”

Here’s what I said:

“I’ve had the strategic view of technology and its importance to the company…The goal now is to get us in a position to go into the next century, and to use technology to better serve our customers.”

Customers, always the key to success.

Newspapers and the Dilemma of Innovation

It was clear, even to me, that by the early 2000s, the newspaper industry would be facing its greatest challenge.  The disruption was widespread in many industries and there were lessons from book publishers, record companies and even the steel manufacturers.

I gave a presentation at media-convergence workshop sponsored by The Media Center at the American Press Institute at Newspaper Association of America’s technical conference, NEXPO, in Orlando, June 21.

As reported in TechNews, the NAA’s convention daily, I said the newspaper industry

 … sits at an “inflection point,”where disruptive technologies surround the medium and demand that companies “throw off the existing culture and methods of doing business.

“Our customers  are getting smarter. Their expectations are higher,”he said.“They want to do business in their time, not yours,”aided by “forces of disruption,”such as cellular-data services, instant messaging and real-time businesses.

Some of this presentation referenced one of my favorite books, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.

 

Preparing Newspapers for Third Wave of Technology

At the invitation of Olivia Casey, I was invited to write an article for the “ASNE and SND Technology Survey ’96” report.  My topic was on the impact of technology and pagination upon the newsroom and journalists.

One of my key points was the need for editors to take more active control of the issues around pagination and other technology:

The challenge for today’s newsroom managers is to look at these new technologies and see how they might reshape the landscape of news and information gathering and how to make plans to adapt to those changes. It is time to get proactive and stop being so reactive to the changes that have affected and will continue to affect newspapers.

My concept was that newsroom technology was about to enter into a new wave or stage that would be driven by databases and computer systems that allowed for the easy storage and access of information bits and pieces. The industry’s attempts to modernize its backshop production can be divided into three
waves:

  • First wave – electronic paste-up
  • Second wave – electronic composition
  • Third wave – database publishing

Finally, I think I was pretty accurate about how journalists would need to be more generalists:

Where does that leave the journalist as specialist? My career advice is this – get new skills, learn new aspects of the business. This holds true whether you are a reporter or designer. In the future, newspapers will need more generalists, fewer priests guarding the gates of knowledge. These generalists will need the skills to deal with multiple forms of communication – the written word, the audio clip, still and video images. This new form of collaborative publishing will provide the potential of tapping a great number of people to assemble the news. And with more people involved, more and different ideas of how to inform, entertain and enlighten. That is the risk and reward of the third wave.

I also wrote a sidebar about how journalists need to think about the customer:

Tomorrow’s journalists — from reporter to designer to managing editor — must play an increasingly more important role in getting the customer to buy our newspapers, fax services and audio lines and to visit our online areas.  It doesn’t matter how good the content is if nobody reads it.

Again, its all about the customer.

 

Newspaper Training Days: It’s About the Learning

Shortly after the launch of Poynter’s e-learning platform, News University, I was interviewed by the Newspaper Association of America’s monthly magazine, Presstime.  The author, Teddi Dineley Johnson, used the 2002 Knight Foundation survey about training, as a way to explore how various organizations are dealing with training issues.

In an industry that prides itself on breaking the big story, newspaper executives were caught by surprise three years ago when a landmark study found that lack of training was the No. 1 source of job dissatisfaction–ahead of salary and benefits–among U.S. journalists.

Data from this survey actually helped me figure out the direction of NewsU and its conclusions were supported by Poynter’s own research on the topic.

Here’s what I had to say about training:

“It’s all about getting smarter,” Finberg says. “It’s not about a grade, not about an application, not about a certificate. It’s about learning and, ideally, the kind of learning that’s important to your job.”

Some interesting historical notes:

* There were lots of references to the American Press Institute’s training programs.  API has evolved into more of a ‘think tank’ and no longer does traditional seminars.

* NewsU stats: 4,500 users; as of early 2014 there are more than 280,000 users.

* NAA’s online training efforts at naauniversity.org is gone.

Such is the evolving nature of training for the newspaper industry.

Poynter NewsU Registers 100,000 Users. First Big Milestone

When I wrote the original grant request to the Knight Foundation to create an e-learning program at The Poynter Institute, I put in estimate about how many people would take courses.  It was one of my greatest lapses in predicting success, as I thought we might have 35,000 users by the end of the five-year grant.

After four years, we passed the 100,000 registered user milestone.  In March we launched a marketing campaign thanks to the efforts of Susan Crain of LTV Marketing and Vicki Krueger, my deputy. Part of that campaign involved a press release and a paper called “NewsU Servcs Global E-Learning Audiences.”

We also ran a contest to gather stories about how NewsU change the lives of its users.  My favorite was a reporter at newspaper in the northwest:

“I credit NewsU for helping me do my job better than I could on my own, giving me courage to try new things,” says Sheila Hagar, a reporter for the Walla Walla (Wash.) Union Bulletin. “I don’t feel alone when I take a class.”

One of my goals, not yet realized, was to find a way to create a community around people who took NewsU modules.  I still have hopes that this will happen.

“The idea is to create a sense of community for those who want to share and ask questions of their fellow participants,” says Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute. “You could call it a learning network. Your training should be much more than what’s on the screen.”

Editors Told Big Changes Needed. Did They Listen?

Even though it was 2007, I was still making speeches to editors [and publishers] about the need to embrace change and transform the newspaper business.  One such plea for change was made at a Texas Associated Press Managing Editors convention in San Antonio. A fellow trouble-maker at the event was Michael P. Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center at Northwestern.

I said that not even popular online sites can rest easy and the challenge is young people who aren’t newspaper readers.  And I talked about “control”  of content and media.

From a story published in the San Antonio Express-News:

And editors can’t forget they’re dealing with an audience that’s “digitally equipped,” as more people own devices that give them control of a medium such as digital video recorders like TiVo.

These digital devices give control.

“No one wants to give up something that gives them control, Finberg said.  Young people, especially, “want to take somebody else’s content and add to it.”

 

 

Come Together: Defining the Complementary Roles of Print and Online

In 2001 I worked with the Newspaper Association of America’s circulation federation to develop a report on how print and online departments could work together to further the sales of subscriptions.  Working with me on the project was my consulting partner at that time, Leah Gentry.

From the report’s opening:

… the NAA Circulation Federation began looking at how consumers use print and online news sources and how their choices affect our business. We began looking at the challenges and opportunities both media would encounter as this new consumer channel developed.

Here’s what we wrote for the introduction to the report, which runs 72 pages.

Newspaper marketing executives confront more challenges and opportunities as the media landscape evolves at an ever-increasing pace. No longer can our audiences be solely identified as newspaper readership; online also is becoming an important path for customers to access news and information. As our customers select from an increasing number of routes to us, we conversely enjoy expanded opportunities for marketing to them through multiple routes and for using each platform to strengthen its siblings.

When we wrote the report, pay walls and online subscriptions were just a glimmer on the digital horizon.

The report is too large to load here, so I’ve put in my SlideShare account.

Saying Goodbye to Great SF Chronicle Photographers

One of my great joys working at the San Francisco Chronicle was the photography department.  I was the first real photo editor at the paper and one of my goals was to improve the opportunities for the photographers to contribute to the paper’s journalism.  [Before I arrived at the paper, photos were often dropped off at the news desk into a wooden box.  I like to joke that I put that box out of a job.]

The photo department did a visual goodbye when I left for The Arizona Republic in June, 1987. It was a great team of friendly and hard-working journalists.  These photos are by Gary Fong, the chief photographer.  Gary and I remain friends.  He is in the front row, in the center.

On the far left side is another friend, Bryan Moss.  I hired Bryan as a food photographer, with no experience in food photography. But that’s another story.

 

Learning Culinary Confidence

And now for something completely different. 

During the “sectional revolution” at the Chicago Tribune, there was an opportunity for those with a little extra time and some energy to write articles for the paper’s new feature sections.  Since I liked food, I offered a couple of different stories, including a review of  high-end hamburgers.  I also got an opportunity to write about a newly developed passion for cooking and took a cooking class.

Like most Americans, I was raised on a steady diet of meat and potatoes, all cooked in the same basic manner: unexciting. It wasn’t until I opened the doors to a variety of food palaces here and in San Francisco that I began to enjoy food, even look forward to it! But eating out  puts  a cramp on the  budget.

So confronted with bankruptcy or more meat and potatoes, I took up ethnic cooking and soon discovered that all knowledge does not come from a cookbook. I decided it ’twas time for a cooking class.

It was a fun class and lessons learned are still applied today.  And it was a fun assignment to write about my experiences.

NewsU Makes the Connection to Educators at AEJMC

The initial plan for News University, the e-learning site created at The Poynter Institute and funded by the Knight Foundation, was to focus on professional.  We didn’t think there we had much of a role to play in helping educators.  That turned out to be wrong.  And by the time I presented NewsU to educators at the Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communications [AEJMC], we knew our e-learning would be helpful in training the next generation of journalists.  Here is a tidbit from the AEJMC Reporter, which was the convention newspaper:

hif pyramid of training reach 08_03_2006
The Pyramid of Training Reach at AEJMC 2006

“Initially, NewsU was about professionals, but we wanted to reach out to the academic community,” said NewsU director Howard Finberg during a presentation Wednesday. “We did this for two reasons. First, journalism students become journalists. We want to get them early. Secondly, teachers need help.”

This presentation was one of the first public showing of my “Pyramid of Training Reach,” a device to help explain how different training methods have different audience potential and different intensity of experience.