When I’m hiring, or dealing with people on how they do their job, I pay attention to mindset, not age, color, gender, religion, etc. etc. etc.

It’s all about getting it.

When I advertised a job opening for a recent college grad, it wasn’t about age, it was about flexibility in relocation and career risk.

As it turns out, I hired a veteran of the news game. Yes, a younger vet, but still somebody with some experience, with some “newsroom baggage” as I put it back in those comments, but as it turned out, he had the right mindset.

While it would be great to have wunderkinds or fearless leaders that know the online ropes and press the issue hard, that isn’t always the case. And there will always be push and pull. So pushing too hard may be detrimental.

Some managers (and subordinates) may be complacent or ignorant of the Web. Not that I’m saying they’re stupid, just that they weren’t brought up in the Web environment or haven’t bothered with it for various reasons. That also doesn’t mean they don’t have an interest. They might love the Web on personal time, but haven’t had a chance to do anything with it at work. They may not know where to start.

It all comes down to knowledge and application of that knowledge.

If you’re fresh out of college with a degree in writing, chances are you don’t give a crap about databases or you were never properly introduced to them. If that’s the case, you’re going to have a hard time pulling a small multimedia project out of your ass, let alone set off a revolution in your company.

The same can be said of managers. If they don’t know what to look for in Web-savvy people, they don’t know how to manage them by putting them in situations where they’ll shine. And if they try, they may be shooting blindly.

My style is to do things much smaller than top down. Identify small needs and show how technology can help. Then build on that base of knowledge. Eventually you’ll root out people that begin to put the pieces together for themselves. Work closely with these people as they’ll become your mouthpiece in the day to day operations.

Because of this knowledge gap, if you try to cause change in large swaths from the top, you’ll be met with swift animosity and blowback. It’ll set you back and make everyone miserable.

The truly great managers (and this is true of any business, really) find where the corporate goals intersect with staff ability and needs. Then they grow from there.

I think you are missing the point. There are plenty of people like yourself who know their shit. The point is that newspaper management needs a bit more diversity.

And I don’t think it’s really asking that much to at least consult people in their 20s and 30s on big Web decisions. That seems to be the least that could be done.

Yes, there are plenty of 25-year-olds who don’t know much about new media, but there are plenty of 40 somethings that don’t either. And how many of those 40 somethings do you really think know what 20 somethings want in a Web product? Part of the problem newspapers are facing is that they appeal to a very limited demographic — a demographic that seems to be well represented in management ranks.

But how many 25-year-olds have I met who think blogging is stupid, video a waste of time and if it isn’t in print, it doesn’t matter … the number is about equal to the national debt.

I don’t think any good can or will come of top-down change in this industry. It’s going to come from worker bees doing what they can to build something better. And I think that means keeping those of us with ideas, the will and the knowhow to make them happen in positions where we can see them through. If that’s management, great. But I think it’s often not.

I also don’t think it has anything to do with age. Some people just get it. Others don’t. There are enough head-in-the-sand kids in J-school right now to replace all the bad ideas and bad form that you’re attributing to old, white editors.

As for not needing to hack around: Should the news industry be in Google’s pocket? Or should we aim to be better than/different from Google?

Generally, I think you’ve got good ideas. I just disagree here.

Enjoy the conversation. I won’t be back.

First, I think we should note our different backgrounds. You work for the NY Times and the Washington Post before that. Most of my posts deal with my experiences around smaller papers. Much of what is said here may not apply to your experiences.

I will stand by my statement there is less reason to hack around these days. Now, I don’t mean people like you. I mean everyday people. It’s so easy to do things on the Web today. And my comment is really about how people assume people my age are all Web All-Americans, but just because someone is on Facebook, doesn’t mean he knows how to build anything on the Web.

Plenty of people are building Web pages today. That’s not the point. The point is that Web technology is so advanced that people don’t have to hack around to get things to work. That’s a good thing, but it can be a crutch.

It’s hard to say that I even grew up with the Web. I was born in 1984. I, like everyone else, was never on the Web in the 1980s. Today, many kids start using computers and the Web at a very young age. I had a computer when I was very young, but I did not have the Web until around 1994. But my point had nothing to do with age. My point again had to do with people assuming that people in their 20s and 30s were Web All-Americans. That’s simply not true. To be good at the Web, you have to want to be good at it.

With my posts I try to start a conversation. I sometimes contradict myself. I don’t always agree with what I write. I often play devil’s advocate.

I want to start a conversation. Judging by the long and thoughtful responses you leave, I think I am accomplishing my mission.

And since this blog doesn’t monetize, I’d say talk is priceless.

Allow me to take issue with two sweeping statements you make without much evidence to support them. First, that “today there is so much technology around us that there is less reasoning to try to hack around.” If this were the case, why then have technology companies increasingly released APIs for information, or provide services like Amazon’s S3 and EC2, which are dependent on people just hacking around. Or how do you explain the rise of XML, JSON and other formats to transfer data between applications and servers, thus freeing people to access information they otherwise might never have gotten. Or the plugins written and used for blogging apps – these are not signs of a slackening interest in DIY. Quite the opposite. I’d be curious to see any evidence you have for your assertion that fewer people are making their own Web page. Whether you come to HTML via Notepad, Dreamweaver or Blogger, you’re still building.

Second, the “People his age, and a little older, didn’t grow up with the Web.” I don’t know about you, but “grow up” is a relative term to me. I’ve been on the Internet since 1993, and that’s a good long time. Plenty of other folks my age have been online for that span, too. Growing up with the Web doesn’t have to happen when you’re a teenager or younger. You might want to give other folks just a bit less of a backhand. Sweeping statements may sound great when you say them to yourself just before writing, but sometimes you should resist the urge to enlighten us older, less native folks.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you wanna have some influence? Then build something. Talk — particularly when it involves sweeping statements – is cheap.

Derek

I get what you’re saying about the whole do-it-yourself vibe. That is becoming less and less true with younger generations. A lot of people my age have Facebook profiles and MySpace pages, but how many ever built their own Web page? I was toying around with those as as kid. Today there is so much technology around us that there is less reason to try to hack around.

There are older people who are digital natives (or enthusiastic adopters or whatever). And it’s those people I want helping to create great content. Now, I don’t work for a major publication, so I don’t know how internal generational politics work at one, but it sounds like you are in a pickle. You might want to find a new venue for yourself. Mark Potts is an excellent example of someone who is older that understands how to make cool Web content.

I’d be very vary of Blackberry-toting 30-year-olds too (I’m not a fan of Blackberries). It sounds like your publication might have a problem understanding who actually has the talent and the ideas. A bunch of slick people with fancy devices can fool a lot of people, but it doesn’t fool me. And it doesn’t fool you.

My brother who is only five years older than me isn’t anything close to a Web native (and I wouldn’t trust him with Web decisions, no matter how many Blackberries he owns). People his age, and a little older, didn’t grow up with the Web.

It would be a mistake by people in upper management to assume that people in their upper 20s and 30s know about the Web. Many do, but the ones who do are like you: they learned with that do-it-yourself hacker ethos.

But this is what I’m talking about with management. A good manager would recognize who had the actual talent. A bad manager would be fooled by slick-talking, device-wielding snake-oil salesmen.

I’m an older (over the hill, you might say) 40 plus early adopter (web native? who knows and who really cares) that’s full of ideas on how to make her little universe at a major online company better. There’s a bunch of us toiling away here for at least ten years. Working in not the top jobs – but the jobs that are tops in terms of getting the work actually done, if you know what I mean.

But I’m regularily beaten down by the younger, blackberry flicking, let’s have a million meetings and then decide to do something that takes loads of time and cost a bizillion dollars. I think us – older – new media pioneers came from an age of do-it-yourself experimenting that’s currently not in the vogue. At least when you’re working in the majors.

We were never appreciated by the old guard because they just didn’t get what we were sayin. And the younger thans, don’t really care to hear what we’re saying, because well, we’re in a different generation, so what do we know.