Today’s Thought: Institutional memory holds newspapers back

Posted by on . 4 comments.

In the face of a rapidly changing landscape institutional memory is a roadblock to success.

I’m not convinced that newspapers don’t have the talented and dedicated employees to make products that matter. I’m rather convinced, in fact, that many newspapers are loaded with talent, waiting to be unleashed.

The problem, however, is an institutional memory that is too inward looking and not outwardly enough focused.

In short, newspapers think too much about what they were and not enough about what they should be.

  • http://wmhartnett.com/ William M. Hartnett

    It’s important to differentiate between the inward-focused notion of institutional memory that you describe and the other sense in which the term is often used: The accumulated knowledge of, experience in and connection to a given community. The “that’s the way we do things here” variety does indeed hold us back. But the intimate knowledge of one’s community and the people who live there that comes only with many years of experience is priceless in an ever more locally focused future, and probably calls for a more fitting term. “Community memory,” perhaps?

  • http://www.thescoop.org/ Derek Willis

    Your last two sentences don’t quite agree with each other; they state similar but not equal ideas. I agree with Hartnett: it’s not that I want newspapers to discard their institutional memories when planning for the future. Rather, I think it’s best if they retain their institutional memories and figure out how best to apply ithem to the challenges we all face. Thinking about what we were should be a part of figuring out where we go.

  • Aron Pilhofer

    I agree with both comments, and *largely* agree with your original post. Though, I take issue with one thing: If you’re suggesting that there’s some sort of wistful, wishful thinking going on in most newsrooms that ends up holding the industry back, you’re wrong. That ain’t it at all.

    Sure, there are lots of reporters and editors who wish we could go back to the days of teletypes and copy boys, but even they for the most part know that ain’t happening. The people charged with actually making decisions about the business, though, sure understand where the future lies. Trust me. Whether we can retool the infrastructure, change a way of doing business this entrenched in time is an open question. I think if you’re paying attention, though, you’ll see there are glimmers of hope.

  • http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker Brian Cubbison

    I have some thoughts along these lines that I’ve been trying to get a handle on. Based on your post and this one by John Robinson,

    http://blog.news-record.com/staff/jrblog/2008/03/we_had_press_pr.shtml

    I’ll try to pull them together soon. Basically, I’m thinking … When we talk about the newspaper are we talking about what should happen to the thing on paper, or the historically print newsroom that almost certainly does online news now?

    Specifically about the paper. What would make you buy one? Should the paper chase the Web or should it go in the other direction? How long should a paper with 500,000 paying customers expect to put out a paper? How long should a paper with 20,000 circulation still put out a paper? What if the 20,000 paper was 180,000 about 20 years ago? Should a newsroom meet the needs of people who want their news from the Web, meet the needs of people who want news from mobile, and meet the needs of people who still want paper? And the next thing that comes along?

    Are we trying to transition from one size fits all to one other size fits all, with similar results? I don’t think any of us would say, “We have to move from paper to Twitter. No, no, we have to move from paper to Facebook.”

    What if paper is the new Twitter? That is… one way to reach a small but devoted following. (Although an expensive and time-consuming way.)

    I’d like to get some of these thoughts sorted out for my own sake, then get to work on building the historically print multimedia newsroom.