Are most journalists intellectually curious enough?

If they were they wouldn’t be asking for someone to give them training in new skills. Rather they would have already discovered new — in demand — skills, and they wouldn’t be afraid to seek out help to learn new skills on their own.

And isn’t an intellectually curious person willing to learn new things just for the sake of learning or out of sheer curiosity, instead of just want to learn new skills to save his job?

“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.”

We’re not going to change journalism by accepting the status quo or by making incremental change. We need to radically re-envision what journalism is, what it means to people and how it can change the world.

The world needs journalism. People need to be informed. It’s time for us to rise to the challenges of 21st century, and produce content that people want — need — in the formats that work for them.

It’s time for journalists to think different.

“Before the public can learn to trust the powerful, the powerful must learn to trust the public.” - Jeff Jarvis

Too many journalists don’t trust the public — AKA their audience. Many believe that journalists are the arbiters of information and truth. This is why so many journalism companies have been slow to adopt blogs, allow comments on stories, accept user-created content like photos, etc.

That sort of hubris worked when journalism outlets like newspapers had monopolies, but it’s a terrible mindset to have in the era of choice. People have a voice now, and that voice allows them to choose a myriad of other sources for news and information. People overwhelmingly want to apart of the conversation, not just a third-party sitting on the sidelines.

People have left traditional journalism outlets in droves, often because new media outlets provide a conversation and openly ask for user feedback. In fact, many blogs and other new media companies were founded by non-journalists who felt left out of the conversation by traditional media companies.

Embracing users is a great way for journalism companies to connect with users. Users that feel a connection are more likely to come back to a site and spend more time on it. Many news organizations have embraced their users, and those are the companies best positioned to not only survive but also thrive in 21st-century journalism.

When we fight our users and try to keep them at arms-length, we’ll never fully understand what they want. Ultimately, we cannot survive without making products that people care about.

We must trust our audience before they can trust us.

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” - Wayne Gretzky.

So where are you looking?

Life is too short to spend your days toiling away at a job you don’t like.

With an imminent recession facing this country that will surely rock the journalism industry further to the core, it’s a good time to reevaluate what each of us is doing.

A lot of journalism companies aren’t worth working for anymore. If you’re going to get laid off anyway, you might as well enjoy the ride.

Journalists have long believed their only concern was content.

Business concerns, metrics, marketing, etc aren’t important to those journalists. Business staffers conversely have cared little about the content side of the business and the effects their practices have had on the content side.

The definition of a dysfunctional company is one where content producers don’t care about business, while business staffers don’t care about content. That modus operandi may have worked when journalism companies had monopolies, but it makes little sense in the hyper-competitive online landscape. Now content producers need to make compelling content that can stand the scrutiny that comes with hyper competition.

Business staffers now must consider the impact their practices have on the content side of the business. Is trying to stick too many — often loud — ads on a Web page bad for content? Yes!

Do design and user interfaces matter greatly on the Web? Yes! Do pay walls hurt content and content producers? Yes!

Journalists need to be concerned with making sure they are producing content that matters to users, while business staffers need to make sure their decisions don’t detract, but rather enhance content offerings. This in no way, shape or form means that content producers should be trading coverage for ads or violating any journalistic ethics, but it does mean that people producing content have to care about producing content that people want in the forms they want them in.

Without a monopoly to prop up legacy journalism practices, journalists must find new ways to operate.

“Our question is always, ‘How do we grow in a way that is leveraged?’ We always lead with the user experience and think about the money secondarily.” - John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla.

That leads us to Today’s Thought: Companies that are only concerned about making money will make little, while companies focused on creating memorable experiences will make a lot.

Too many news organizations are only focused on making money. They’ve lost sight of what they originally set out to do: Tell memorable stories, inform the public, serve the community — serve their users. Instead they’ve morphed into some perverted mission of only caring about quarterly balance sheets and profit margins.

In short, making money has become the primary aim for many news organizations, which is they are losing money, readers and impact.

Only news organizations focused on creating memorable experiences for users will see growth and have a bright future ahead of them.

The Web moves very fast.

Each day you’re not improving, you’re getting worse.

Standing still is a death sentence.

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.

Failure can happen whether we try or not.

Success only happens when we try.

Failure, however, is not the enemy. Complacency is.