Ahhh. And there was me feeling left out

You crack me up.

So why didn’t you cover those “important stories?” Are you one of those people who need to be guided by management, and then you can blame management for your own faults?

There’s a word for people who toss out blanket statements like the one you’ve concocted here. And that word is idiot.

I don’t want to turn this into the Andy and Pat show, but maybe you are right about an environment to innovate than about management. I think that’s the kind of good management newspapers need more of.

Digital native, enthusiastic adopter, whatever. I don’t care about the term, but there needs to be someone who is a big digital person helping to make decisions at a newspaper.

Maybe the difference here is an environment to innovate rather than an enironment that manages. The Bezos and Brin/Pages of this world didn’t create their web brands as managers. They had an idea and it grew. You cant plant a young person in a newsroom/boadroom and see innovation grow in the same way.

Would any manager in a newspaper know what to do with a young young Brin or Zuckerberg working for them? I hope a good one (young or old) would know not to promote them to a management role.

The issue of diversity in the newsroom is a very important one but I think its not the core of the problem you talk about in your post. The issue as you raise it is more about the way it is managed not the who.

Also you seem to be confusing young and digtal native. That’s a problem when there is no such thing as a digital native.

First, I didn’t say that there aren’t talented old white guys. The world is filled with them. I’m arguing that at least SOME of management should not fit in that demographic.

Rob Curley was a Vice President at The Washington Post at age 35, and a manager many years prior to that at other papers. Most newspaper management are overwhelming in the 40-70 crowd. The Post, especially WPNI, is a great example of having younger people make decisions. They have a lot of people making decisions with digital products who are actually big consumers of digital products.

When I say young, I don’t really mean my age group. Although, I do think it makes sense to actively consult people in my age group on decisions that involve digital products. That doesn’t happen at many newspapers.

I’ve been to a lot of smaller publications, and often the people in charge are older. Ironically, many of the larger publications include younger people in the decision making process.

The point is not that older people can’t be great managers, they can (many of the top CEOs are above 40, but these people know how to surround themselves with great talent). The point is that if they were really great managers they would include younger people in their discussions.

I think it’s no mistake, however, that most of the Web titans are younger. Brin and Page are 34 and 35, respectively, and they founded Google in their mid-20s. Zuckerberg is 23. Bezos founded Amazon.com at 30. The list could go on and on.

But many newspapers wouldn’t know what to do if they had a young Brin or Zuckerberg working for them. They most likely wouldn’t allow either to be included in important Web decisions. That’s a catastrophic mistake.

Let’s say you have 10 top editors. At least one should be a digital native. How many newspapers can honestly say that?

I appreciate that ‘young’ people (whatever that means) can bring a useful perspective just as any other constituency can and talent should always be recognized and consulted. But the idea that there aren’t talented ‘old white guys’ seems a bit of a sweeping statement and the idea that putting young people in the line of fire somehow brings that is just as sweeping.