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• Its hard to predict things,
• particularly things in the future-- Yogi Berra,
  former Yankee catcher and manager

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Whats the Problem?

• What Happened to Newspapers and What Can We Do
  About It?

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Well, Theres the

• TV problem (decades old)
• Now hundreds of TV channels
• News that fits your view of the world
• Reality unwrapped, not filtered by reporters
• TIVO
• (Photo U.S. family watching TV in the 1950s.
  Note newspaper)
• http//geekphilosopher.com/bkg/peopleTV50s.htm

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And the

• Internet problem
• Millions of web sites
• Plus Games and chat
• Plus Those darn bloggers like me
• Plus Ability to create and share media
• The virtual communities predicted in the 1990s
  have arrived

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And the

• Age problem
• Average newspaper reader is age 53
• Abandoning the News, http//www.carnegie.org/repor
  ter/10/news/index.html
• Even the 35-65/yr segment using less news 5-8
  less in a decade
• http//pewresearch.org/trends/trends2005-media.pdf
  
• Ever notice how the paid obituaries keep growing
  and growing?

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And the

• Youth problem
• 18-30/yr-olds using 18 less news in a decade
• http//pewresearch.org/trends/trends2005-media.pdf
  
• Theyre IMing
• Theyre I-Podding
• Theyre making their own media
• Theyre not reading newspapers

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And the Oh, Oh Pop Quiz!!!

• Who is this man?

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And the

• Utility problem
• Craigslist Ill sell my stuff there for free
• 7 cities in Canada (3,000 listings a week in
  Toronto)
• Movie listings? Online (and I can buy tickets.)
• Stocks? Online
• Newspaper? I read it online. Its free and I can
  email what I like

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And the

• Credibility problem
• 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing
  printed in newspapers (Pew Research Center)
• http//pewresearch.org/trends/trends2005-media.pdf
  

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And the Money Problem
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These Things Are All True

• So Maybe We Should

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Blame the Readers!!!

• Some journalists think so.
• Its not our fault, is it, that people prefer to
  read about Paris and Michael instead of the
  planning commission?
• Perhaps the old notions of an engaged and
  virtuous citizenry, upon which the founding
  fathers hopes for the republic were based, are
  archaic concepts
• http//www.cjr.org/issues/2005/1/cornog-readers.as
  p

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Or We Could

• Change !!!
• A popular concept
• Amazon search returns 357,344 results
• But newspapers are lousy at change, always have
  been

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Change 10 Years Ago

• Newspapers have made almost every kind of
  radical move except transforming themselves. It's
  as if they've considered every possible option
  but the most urgent change. That makes
  newspapers the biggest and saddest losers in the
  information revolution
• Jon Katz, Wired magazine, 09/1994
• http//www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/news.suck.
  html

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Change Today

• Despite the new demands, there is more evidence
  than ever that the mainstream media are investing
  only cautiously in building new audiences
• State of the News Media, 2005, Project for
  Excellence in Journalism
• http//www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/

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OK, Smart Guy

• Now What?

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Two Themes to Start With

• Intentional Journalism
• Explode the Newsroom

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No More Accidental Journalism

• An editor at a top 20 U.S. newspaper says Page 1
  is often a happy accident
• That means it is
• More haphazard than thoughtful
• More opportunistic than planned
• More luck of the daily draw than drawn from a
  long-term strategy

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Intentional Journalism

• Ask yourself this
• Someone gives you your current annual newsroom
  budget and says Make any kind of news operation
  you want. Would you make the same newspaper?
• Would you create the same beats, departments,
  production and decision-making processes?
• Would you hire the same people?
• Would you design the paper and its web site in
  the same formats?

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OF COURSE NOT!

• So how do we overcome the inertia, culture and
  tradition that keep us from changing?

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Intentional Journalism

• Six Things You Can Do

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Intentional Journalism

• Develop a strategic plan
• What are your readership goals for 5 years? 10
  years?
• What are your editorial goals?
• What are your human resource goals?
• Is there an editorial succession plan?
• Do a SWOT analysis for business, for editorial.
  Where do they overlap?

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Intentional Journalism

• Develop annual newsroom objectives
• Fewer institutional stories, more Latino faces,
  more community voices whatever
• Specific, strategic and unique to your community
• Measure progress regularly
• Adjust processes or staff as necessary
• Hold managers accountable

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Intentional Journalism

• Develop annual individual goals
• Not evaluations, but personal learning plans for
  every staffer from the admin to exec editor
• What you should be able to do a year from now
  that you cant do now.
• Edit tighter, coach better, speak Spanish (or
  French bien sur!), write more (or less), read
  five books on leadership
• Be creative, be specific, align with newsroom
  goals
• Reward successes
• The newsroom watchword Grow or go.

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Intentional Journalism

• Build learning time into the budget
• Newsroom training budgets are important, but even
  more critical is learning time. Allocate it on an
  FTE basis. Schedule it
• Make it as mandatory as meeting deadline
• Hold managers accountable
• Change, by definition, is new anything new
  requires training and learning

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Intentional Journalism

• Evaluate How are we doing?
• The No. 1 question of the day, every day. What is
  working? What is not? Are we making progress
  toward our larger goals?
• Encourage honest self-evaluation by supporting
  open discussions about quality and direction
• Discouraging defensive and competitive posturing
  by managers who feel threatened when their work
  is debated

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Intentional Journalism

• Challenge assumptions
• Why do we do things this way?
• Change cannot happen without questioning the
  status quo
• Use what if scenarios to zero-base newsroom
  systems -- production to beats
• Why do we cover education this way? Is this the
  right amount of police reporting? Do we have
  enough copy editors or too many?
• How will you know if you never ask?

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Intentional Journalism

• Plan, Teach, Measure, Adjust
• Develop a strategic plan
• Develop annual newsroom objectives
• Develop annual individual objectives
• Build learning time into the budget
• Evaluate How are we doing?
• Challenge assumptions Why are we doing?

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Explode the Newsroom

• Dont just reorganize
• It seemed every time we were beginning to form
  into teams we would be reorganized ... I was to
  learn later in life that we tend to meet any new
  situation by reorganizing and a wonderful method
  it can be for creating the illusion of progress
  while producing confusion, inefficiency and
  demoralization.
• Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

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Explode the Newsroom

• Re-think, Refocus, Re-invent
• Seven Ideas to Build On

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Explode the Newsroom

• Dont Tinker, Explode
• Big rewards come from big bets. The most
  innovative work today involves bold moves by
  newspapers into new territory tabloids,
  non-English spin-offs, citizen journalism, blogs
• Adding a columnist or rearranging type-faces
  isnt enough
• Papers that survive will have learned how to
  adapt and exploit current emerging markets.
• Risk-taking is a learnable skill. Teach it.
  Reward it.

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Explode the Newsroom

• The 10 Solution
• Devote 10 percent of the newsroom budget each
  year to product and staff development
• Goal Restructuring traditional, content silos
• Goal People who have the cross-disciplinary
  skills.
• You cant change your newspaper over night, but
  you can do it in a decade 10 percent at a time

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Explode the Newsroom

• Structure Horizontally, Not Vertically
• Tear down the Sports, News, Features and Business
  silos
• Reconstitute around virtual communities Moms,
  singles, Baseball fans, age, etc.
• Want younger readers? Devote a departments worth
  of editors, reporters, photographers, designers
  and online producers

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Explode the Newsroom

• Go Weekly -- Every Day
• Mass is dead class matters
• Old Something for all
• New A lot for fewer
• Old Mass media
• New A mass of niches

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Explode the Newsroom

• Be the Tip of the Information Iceberg
• Reverse the print-online priority equation
• Publish more online than in print
• Print cant match the
• Virtual newshole
• Endless conversation
• Power of relational advertising

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Explode the Newsroom

• Lead from the Middle, Not the Top
• You cannot lead from behind the desk
• Reporters and line editors want direction, want
  to learn
• Edit more, manage less
• Get the editors out of the offices and onto the
  newsroom floor

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Explode the Newsroom

• Dont Cover the Community, Be the Community
• Empower readers, enable citizen journalism
• Aggregate and celebrate their work and their
  voices
• Get engaged. Lead civic discourse. Be on the side
  of the people
• Dig, dig, dig into the public officials, civic
  and corporate institutions and the flow of money.
  This is a differentiating capability of
  newspapers.

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Explode the Newsroom

• Seven Ideas to Build On
• Dont Tinker, Explode
• The 10 Solution
• Structure by Horizontally, Not Vertically
• Go Weekly -- Every Day
• Be the Tip of the Information Iceberg
• Lead from the Middle, Not the Top
• Dont Cover the Community, Be the Community

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Questions?

• Tim Porter
• tim_at_timporter.com
• httpwww.timporter.com/firstdraft
• 415-381-9945