With rampant budget cuts, newspapers have taken the exact opposite approach.

That’s exactly why newspapers are struggling so much. You cannot innovate when everyone has a bunker mentality, grasping desperately to the faint echoes of a dying industry. But newspapers don’t have to die.

They can rise like the Phoenix, but only with an innovation first attitude.

Yoni Greenbaum has a must read post about how “Experimentation is the path to online success.” He argues that newspapers need to more nimble and ready to try new things, instead of trying to pass every single little decision to a committee for a formal decision. Most of the text below is a comment I left on his blog:

There is a fundamental lack of innovation at newspapers. It’s a huge reason why they are dying right now.

The problem is simple: there is no culture of innovation. Innovation isn’t rewarded, because most editors and publishers don’t want to deal with an inevitable side-effect of an innovative culture — failure.

Most newspapers are horribly risk averse. Top managers are hanging on until retirement. They want to do just enough to keep their jobs, so they can ride into the sunset while the industry dies. If they risk too much, they risk getting fired and losing that golden parachute. In a culture of fear, which newspapers are firmly in, innovation can never be fomented.

But innovation is the only path to salvation. That’s the fundamental paradox of newspapers. They’re in a death spiral, and because of this spiral they cannot innovate, but it is their lack of innovation that is causing this death spiral.

Most writers and editors are just barely getting by each day, producing that daily miracle. The only “innovation” most of them have ever known is marginally redesigning the print product every 5-10 years.

But the Web demands real innovation and a fundamental paradigm shift. It demands rapid and swift action, not the glacial change that newspapers are accustomed to. It requires people who are willing to let go of everything they have ever held on to.

Do we really think all those newspaper employees who started before the Web was born really get that culture? Do we honestly expect them — most of today’s managers — to take risks on a medium that many of them barely understand? Of course not.

It is up to owners to get the right managers and employees in place to take the necessary risks. And owners must empower publishers to spend money on new ventures. Innovation can never happen in a culture of cost cutting. At some point, newspapers will have to spend money to make money.

And they’ll have to do something that most old-school journalists are loathe to admit — print resources will have to be drastically cut back to beef up new, innovative Web and mobile initiatives.

Most newspapers won’t heed this advice or change their culture. The slow (or fast in some cases) death will continue at most newspapers. But if we don’t change — and fast — many, many journalists will lose their jobs and many newspapers will close down.

Greenbaum says going online is the only way to save our industry, and he’s right:

We need to be more nimble, more aggressive; we need to be quicker to act and even quicker to react. We need to stop being afraid of new technologies and start embracing them. We need to trust our employees and give them the room to work. Success for us online, would not be a bad thing — it is likely the only way to save our industry.

You know why papers like the Lawrence Journal World are thought so highly of and are doing so well? They have a culture of innovation. Top newspaper managers from all over the country go to that tiny paper in Lawrence, Kansas to see how they are so innovative on the Web.

You can only be innovative when their is a culture that foments innovation.

But hey, why do newspapers need to innovate anyway? People have really responded positively to our current products.

Right?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 10:07 pm and is filed under State of journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.