If I were in charge of my paper (or yours) this is how I would staff it.
Don’t worry, this will never happen. At 22-years old, I have about as much say as the cleaning staff.
I am going to stay out of staffing for editors and publishers and just concentrate on building a quality Web staff.
This is how I would transform my newspaper (and these are recommendations for your staff):
1) Invest more in staff resources
You can’t run a race without horses. We need more horses. All papers need more horses.
Isn’t it remarkable that most papers are cutting staff (mine is growing, but that’s not the point), and yet think they can somehow transition to a modern newsroom? Let me get this straight. You think by NOT investing in your future, you’ll have a future?
Get real.
My paper has been adding more Web staff, without cutting from other staffs. That’s all good. Our circulation is growing, but our online readership is stagnating. This is largely because we need a complete paradigm shift and infusion of young talent to make big strides.
We need more online staff members, but more importantly we need a rethinking of allocation.
2) Allocating resources properly
My paper has two Web staffs: the editorial staff and the business/advertorial staff. Since I’m not 100% sure of what the new business/advertorial Web staff’s mission is (I think it’s being formulated), I’ll decline to comment on that.
I’m a Web content editor on the editorial Web staff. Which means that I am responsible for more menial duties like posting stories and photos to the site and editing the homepage, in addition to building special sections and features for the site.
My talented partner Melanie Bender and myself, should be on a new staff dedicated to research and development for the editorial staff. That means hiring other people to take over our day-to-day duties.
The day-to-day editorial staff should make sure all stories are on the site (our back-end system is terrible), complete with lots of photos, videos, slide shows and anything else the content needs.
That staff could use a few more staff members. This way they could run more slide shows, more audio slide shows, link stories together better, do more audio interviews, shoot more video and in general make sure the day-to-day Web product shined as much as possible.
The new R&D staff would assist them by building slide show engines, helping to package bigger stories together and making sure the content gets displayed properly. But our main job should be editorial innovation.
Mel is the better graphic designer (also does the Flash), while I am better at programming, especially CSS. I’d add at least two more people to the mix. I’d add a Web developer who knows a lot of programming languages and was especially good at database programming (this person doesn’t need to be the caliber of journalist that Mel and I are).
I’d then add an audio/video engineer who also knew Web programming. This person would help out greatly on our special features, and could train the editorial staff. Right now I do most of the audio editing, and I am fine at it, but having someone who knew the ins and outs of a audio/video editing would make our special features go faster.
Everyone on this staff would need to know how to shoot video and capture audio for any events that arise and special features that require it. We would often work closely with the main editorial staff on a lot of projects and in general there would be a high degree of fluidity between the R&D and Web editorial staffs.
If you’ll notice, every person I have suggested has more than one skill. Some projects may require no video or audio editing, and just programming and content development. Others may require little programming and a lot of content development.
Special sections and features are where news Web sites can make new and exciting products. Editorial innovation is the key to getting younger audiences.
You can’t just stick a bunch of written content on a Web site with few photos, an occasional video and no interactivity and expect to get a generation of people raised on the Web to come to your site.
But that’s exactly what most news organizations do, and of course look at how old your audiences are.
3) Transform the non-Web people
This is probably the trickiest part of becoming a modern newsroom, but at some point this has to be done.
Are you really going to need an army of writers in 10 years? No.
The first thing any news organization needs to do is to get its staff members excited about new media. It just has to be done, otherwise they won’t even try to learn new skills.
Print journalists are especially hard to get to change their ways. Have someone at your organization give a dynamic presentation showcasing great Web products from other companies, showing off technologies and in general showing your staff members why this is important for the future.
Show them Chicago Crime or Not Just Another Number. Show them one of many things at www.washingtonpost.com. Get them excited for a new and bright future.
It is a bright future for journalism, but only for those who believe.
After you get them believing, they need training. An excellent place to start is my Summer reading list.
After that, start bringing in people to provide training, send your most eager journalists to conferences and seminars and send people to classes.
But you can’t force this on people. Some people will refuse to learn. So, they won’t.
If they don’t want to learn new media or think it’s beneath them, don’t provide those people with training. Either they’ll get with the program in time (this often happens at papers that dedicate a lot of time to transitioning their staffs) or you’ll have to decide in a few years whether or not to keep them.
But you can’t force enthusiasm on people. If someone is a great writer or copy editor, they will always have a job. But if they are just average and don’t want to get with the program, it’s probably best to cut them lose or they might become a cancer on your staff.
One day the need for a “Web” staff may disappear. Until that happens, you’ll need Web people, but don’t forget to transition the rest of your staff.
4) Continual R&D
A Web site needs to continually add more and better features, be easier and more enjoyable to use and in general not be stagnant.
There is no such thing as good enough on the Web. Too often companies build a site that is pretty modern, let it sit around and fall behind for five years and then are forced to spend a ton of money getting another modern site.
I’m not sure if my paper’s Web site was ever considered modern, but we are building a new one right now that is modern. Hopefully, we’ll embrace continual R&D, instead of the total-redesign model.
A Web site is not static. Stop with these ridiculous redesigns that are so print focused. Always, always, always be innovating.
This also means the staff.
5) Continual education
The Web and new media has ushered in an era of ever-changing technology. Journalists can’t just rely on the skills they learned in college to carry them through a career, and news organizations shouldn’t let journalists do that. The Web is less than 20 years old and look at how fast it has changed.
Ajax, deep database content, Flash frameworks, social networking, etc are all the rage now. But times are a changing. Who knows what five years from now holds?
To succeed in this new media era, everyone has to be willing to learn new skills — year around.
This means news outlets have to be willing to pay to send staff members to classes and seminars and bring in training. Of course, this doesn’t happen often because many companies are cutting costs. Training is one of the first things to go.
It should be the last. You don’t always need to hire someone new to do something new. You might just need to give a talented and hungry journalist the skills he or she needs to excel.
Who knows maybe that talented new media journalist is currently on your print staff, just waiting for someone to give him or her the opportunity to succeed.
6) Support from the top
No amount of money or staff resources will make a difference if editors and publishers aren’t forward thinking.
My paper is in between publishers and executive editors right now (the next publisher gets to name the editor). Obviously, we’re not going to be doing anything crazy, new or exciting on the Web until we straighten that out.
But, even when we do straighten that out, the top people need to be willing to take risks, try new things and let their horses run free. The companies that succeed the most are the ones that take the biggest risks.
Failure will undoubtedly happen, but being afraid of failure is the same as being afraid of success.
Look at The Washington Post. Unlike The New York Times, they are willing to take risks and be innovators on the Web. Until the Times stops being arrogant and conservative, it will never build a quality Web product.
With great risk come great rewards.
Never forget that.
