Comments on: News organizations need to rethink staff resources in order to promote innovation

By: Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Time travel

Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Time travel — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:39:51 +0000

[...] I don’t like the premise of the question. I prefer the positive. Other media bloggers such as Pat Thornton or Gary Andrews are better at explaining what we should do than I am. Instead I’ll return to [...]

By: lectroid.net » Blog Archive » Web staffers: stop taking the print edition

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:22:18 +0000

[...] (long) while back I spouted off in a comment on a post about newspaper staffing on JI: In the same vein that there are requirements w/in [...]

By: » Record month for the JI with some surprises | The Journalism Iconoclast

Sat, 31 May 2008 17:57:48 +0000

[...] News organizations need to rethink staff resources in order to promote innovation: It’s a simple question: What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make [...]

By: » Should Web employees not subscribe to the print edition? | The Journalism Iconoclast

Sun, 25 May 2008 21:58:39 +0000

[...] Marc Matteo proposed the radical idea on a comment earlier today: In the same vein that there are requirements w/in newsrooms to subscribe to the paper, I’d like to see the “online desk” staffers barred from taking the print edition. [...]

By: Marc Matteo

Marc Matteo — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:41:16 +0000

In the same vein that there are requirements w/in newsrooms to subscribe to the paper, I’d like to see the “online desk” staffers barred from taking the print edition.

Why? Because it clouds online news judgement. When online staffers are still happily existing in a 24-hour news cycle of monologue presentation, they fail a lot of times to expand their thinking to a web-based, constant news stream, dialog model that will, it seems pretty clear to me, define the future of news online.

In short, they become liabilities.

I recognize the value both financially and functionally of a print product, I truly do. I don’t think such a restriction should be permanent by any means. It’s just that since many newspapers are not hiring “web natives” for their web positions — and therefor crippling themselves — a “print ban” on online staffers seems like a good way to whiplash them into starting to think like web natives.

Sort of a “total immersion” type of approach.

By: Brian Cubbison

Brian Cubbison — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:40:09 +0000

I’d take it a step further and say that the newspaper should be Sunday-only and the rest of the week’s news should be handled online.

By: pat

pat — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:09:09 +0000

@Patrick,

I agree on many counts. I wrote a post awhile ago that said print publications should concentrate on analysis pieces.

And I don’t think that post and this post are incompatible. In fact, I think they go hand in hand. By concentrating on Web first, it makes writing those in-depth, second-day analysis pieces so much easier. Web concentrates on getting news and information out, while print concentrates on looking at the bigger picture.

Different products, different content. If beat reporters use blogs and Twitter to get information out, it will make their analysis pieces a lot easier. They’ll have tons of notes and ideas already published. Now they just need to look at the bigger picture.

And so I’m not advocating a reverse-publishing model, but a Web-first model. A Web-first model makes it explicit that Web is for immediate news, while print is for analysis.

I’ll take a look at your post soon and comment on it at your blog.

By: Patrick Beeson

Patrick Beeson — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:53:30 +0000

> It’s easier to go from Web-first to print than the other way around. Why? Because the Web is incredibly flexible.

Reverse-publishing only lifts the financial burden of using two systems, and then only if that one system can do everything (not likely). I wrote about this, and how it’s important to produce content that works well for each medium — not content that only works half-ass on each medium — a while back in an entry titled “Newspapers’ reverse-publishing idea flawed.”

Give it a read, and post a comment if you have any thoughts.

By: scott lewis

scott lewis — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:48:54 +0000

If you look at the forecasts for future growth from organizations such as Outsell, it’s startling that both search engines and aggregators are set for good growth, and newspapers are predicted to decline. That would indicate that news organizations are not receiving a fair share of the revenue earned from their work. Is it possible that news organizations need to form their own aggregators and even search engines, collaboratively? If such measures were taken, then there would be a natural move to adopt some of the suggestions in th is piece.

By: Karim Amara

Karim Amara — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:13:51 +0000

Dammit man, you know how to nail a point.

By: pat

pat — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:22:27 +0000

@Greg,

Fantastic point. This can be a great way to harness the power of our audience. Journalists should never turn down an opportunity like that.

By: Greg Linch

Greg Linch — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:20:00 +0000

Another aspect is that, by posting updates to a blog or Twitter while working on a story, you can receive feedback regarding who to talk with, other angles to pursue and details that might have been missing. That’s not to say the journalist would do a bad job of reporting in the first place, just that the reporting process can be greatly improved before the “final” version.

By: May Carnival of Journalism » Invisible Inkling

May Carnival of Journalism » Invisible Inkling — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:04:43 +0000

[...] Thornton, Journalism Iconoclast, says the problem is a staffing issue first and foremost: “Why have two staffs to produce editorial content, when most employees could be creating [...]