The Chicago Tribune production deadlines for its 24-hour publishing/printing cycle. Some of the stories were on paper and some via an early computer [PPS] system.
“Technology” Items
Technology Leadership at The Arizona Republic
One of my roles at The Arizona Republic was to run the information technology department. One of my important responsibilities was to make the case internally and externally for investment in equipment and services.
In April 1997, I did a “Technology Leadership” presentation. I’m not sure who was in the audience. I laid out our plans for the future on two information pillars:
Two types of information technology support our organization
1. Business and financial applications
* Advertising, finance, circulation support systems
2. News and information applications
* Editorial and other content, regardless of delivery method
I concluded with the idea that all of this spending is needed to build “strong technology foundations for the future.”
Techno-Evangelism: Thoughts for Newsroom Leaders
Dealing with technology at The Arizona Republic, especially the introduction of new computer systems, led to a number of presentations about what I called “techno-evangelism.” I wanted newspaper managers to pay more attention to technology and its impact upon their staff members and workflow.
Some of my key ideas, from a talk given at the Society of Newspaper Design’s 1993 convention in Dallas, were these five points:
1. Technology is an ecological issue. By itself, technology adds nothing. Its introduction changes everything.
2. A newsroom learns by example. If a newsroom manager isn’t willing to invest time or energy in understanding technology, don’t expect the staff to care.
3. The key issue about technology isn’t hardware or even software. It’s workflow. Understand the how work moves (or how you want it to move) through the newspaper and you’ll understand what technological solutions you’ll need.
4. Techno-evangelism means finding a leader who will take risks, become a teacher, shoulder responsibilities and be willing to go wandering in the “desert.”
5. Looking at history can help prepare you for the future. Understanding when there is a “paradigm” shift is important; knowing when there isn’t is even more important. Going from hot type to cold type is evolutionary; going digital is revolutionary.
I also handed out a technology adoption quiz. Taking the quiz would identify whether you are a techno-phobe, a techno-boomer, a techno-to-go or a techno-wizard.
The slides from the presentation are here.
Poynter NewsU Technology Scope, Version One
With this memo, Robin Sloan and I outlined the technology that would power The Poynter Institute’s ‘s e-learning platform, News University. NewsU needed to “have a database at its core.” That was true then; it is still true.
NewsU.org will be the Web portal to journalism training resources and programs. It will have a database at its core—one that will include both static web resources (resources for trainers, self-teaching tools) and date-sensitive seminars, and be able to sort both by category, organization, geographic location, date, and more.
Our second requirement involve search, ideally searching for other e-learning training journalists could take. Our goal was to build a portal of training. As NewsU grew, I realized that there was little need for a portal as there were few other e-learning resources available to journalists.
Early Online Experience: JForum on CompuServe
In the mid-1980s, I joined one of the first online services, CompuServe. [Previously, I had been a member of The Source, but that’s a different post.] One of the reasons I liked CompuServe was its journalism area, called JForum. Jim Cameron was truly an online pioneer and created a place for journalists to virtually meet and share experiences and questions.
Jim and I started chatting online and eventually I helped bring the Society of Newspaper Design into the JForum fold as special interest group. Jim also made me a “sysop” which meant I had special online privileges, most of which I have forgotten. One of the things I did to help JForum was to make slides of various screens. I used a newly purchased MacPlus to capture the screens.
It is interesting to note that Sam Donaldson, an ABC TV correspondent, was an early adopter of online services.
The State of Newspaper Design
Design magazine, the publication of The Society of Newspaper Designers [SND] asked a number of editors to write about various aspects of the state of newspaper design. I used my article talk about three key things:
- Training [aka development]
- Technology
- Organizational structure
I like what I wrote about technology.
Technology: I’m not sure computers have been a blessing for journalists. I’m not interested in what kinds of tricks we can do with them but the facility with which we can do our jobs.
This edition‘s cover listed so many friends and industry colleagues.
The New Newsroom
One of the challenges for newsrooms in the 1990s was the introduction of pagination technology. While it was clear that pagination equipment would change how the newspaper would be produced, many managers failed to recognized that installing the new software (and the computers to run it) was an opportunity to rethink the workflow of how a newspaper is produced.
At 1993 Seybold* conference in San Francisco, I gave a talk titled “The New Newsroom.” The subtitles on the PowerPoint reflected my focus:
- How technologies are changing organizations.
- How organizations are changing technologies.
I argued there was a need for a new type of worker and that managers should worry more than print — audio, fax and video. Remember, online services were just starting.
My last slide called for “techno-evangelism” and finding the leadership within the newsroom to make the changes needed. And is a foreshadowing of my future, the slide had these bullet points:
- Teaching yourself.
- Teaching your staff.
- Teaching your boss.
*Seybold Seminars was a leading seminar and “the premier trade show for the desktop publishing and pre-press industry.
First Personal Computer, Sort of…
My first computer was an Atari 800, with 8k of memory. Yes, that’s 8 kilobytes of memory. Not megabytes. It cost, after Illinois taxes, $1,149. In 2013 dollars that would be $3,256.
It connected to a television set, as that was the monitor. It used cartridges for some of the programs, including the Star Raiders game. It also had a tape disk drive and some programming capability using the Basic language.
I tried to create a “Wine Cellar” database program.