Comments on: Newsroom leaders, change or step aside

By: Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:25:36 +0000

Another cultural change has got to be leadership for change as opposed to a focus on ownership of change. I have seen too many organisations paralysed because the focus is not on achieving change but on who owns the change, which manager or department or division will own the future. That mindset ensures paralysis and failure.

By: Wenalway

Wenalway — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:00:05 +0000

We have to cast aside the design-based approach. It’s been a colossal failure in too many ways.

The pseudoeditors of presentation and the design dolts need to be fired. Today. Then they should be replaced with real editors who understand content.

Only then can newspapers move forward, if it isn’t already too late. The visual vermin already have left a wake of destruction.

By: Tahoe Journalism » J-School angst

Tahoe Journalism » J-School angst — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:12:34 +0000

[...] edit questions from editor on the verge, Yoni Greenbaum: Can we afford senior editors [professors] who are still questioning the need to provide content [...]

By: Ryan Mercer

Ryan Mercer — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:47:51 +0000

Hi all,
Yoni, fantastic post. But I think there is also a huge responsibility for middle managers, reporters and photographers to do whatever they can (Something I think you’ve raised in previous posts), especially if their top managers won’t. In the end, it is our newsroom they are screwing up by not aggressively moving forward and it is our jobs they will loose. So, I highly suggest not going quietly. Start your own YouTube or Facebook or Myspace sites and start sharing links of your online content to anyone who will look at them. Maybe ask for permission, but maybe not, especially if no one upstairs seems to care. DO WHAT EVER YOU CAN to start breaking out with whatever resources you can find. But I think placing sole responsibility on your senior management to find a way and save everyone is asking for a slow death march. Especially if your newsroom is like many; not cooperative. I agree that senior managers who aren’t towing the line need to be cut loose, absolutely. But what then…if the newsroom left behind is chronically out of shape and flailing, no talented editor in their right mind will take it on, big money or not.
And there is a selfish reason as well, if you need one. How will you ever get a better job by not developing these skills if things go south?

By: Mel Taylor

Mel Taylor — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:13:46 +0000

yoni,

i have been reading with great interest about the topic of culture change. (outing, mc adams, etc.)
i thought you did a great job summing up the issues as well.

my 2 cents ?

as you know…i try to look at all interactive initiatives thru the filter of ROI and revenue.

the time is quickly approaching when culture change will mandated, and will be strictly adhered to due to unavoidable finanacial considerations. meaning: all job descriptions and compensation will increasingly be tied to web.

publishers and top execs/owners will no longer ‘ask’ their middle managers to change the culture.

instead, these middle managers will have strict guidelines to follow, or they will be terminated.

in order to keep their jobs, some middle managers will finally get religion…..others would rather take a buy out.

Q: what will cause this dramatic shift in top down pressure on middle managers?
A: when a critical tipping point is reached: a mix of print rev loss, circ decline, and online share loss to outsiders.

while the play book of how to change culture is still being written, it is, without a doubt, being written.

soon, it will become much clearer of who is doing it right….from wrong.

just watch. in 2008, we will see even more resources ($$ and human) be re-deployed toward web.

Mel Taylor
267-625-5313
Online Revenue Strategy for Local Media
http://www.MelTaylorMedia.com

By: Show your editor some love and win free coffee | editor on the verge

Show your editor some love and win free coffee | editor on the verge — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:01:13 +0000

[...] some of the feedback that I received to my “Newsroom leaders, change or step aside” post, readers noted that surely there must be senior editors who could be role models for [...]

By: Yoni Greenbaum

Yoni Greenbaum — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:11:42 +0000

@John – No problem on the link. We all need a little recognition some times. You raise a great point, too many newspapers still act like they’re the only game in town and that they have a monopoly on the news and control of the readers. “Listening to the audience and going where they are,” amen to that!

By: Craig McGill

Craig McGill — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:24:45 +0000

Yoni, I understand your frustrations, but from your point seems to be that editors need to be experts in all areas to be editors (AKA It takes a thief to catch a thief or a criminal to be a crime reporter) and I slightly disagree. Perhaps we’re more enlightened here in the UK but up to Ruby On Rails and blogging (as in writing one) I would say most of the editors here use these materials – personally even though their papers may not have facilities involving them.

What a good editor should do is what a good editor always does: hire people who can do this stuff and let them get on with it.

The real danger is that editors don’t have the budgets to let them do this.

I remember five years ago working at one of the UK’s largest – 3 million plus sales a day – newspapers and I couldn’t convince the powers that be of what they should be doing (and I was willing to do the extra work for nothing) and now you have more people frustrated like that.

But if we have people doing all this stuff, when will the reporters/editors find time for the old-fashioned work of going out and meeting people and representing the paper publicly?