Reporters to Editors: Let me in

By Deb Shaw
Editor, Suburban Publisher

Your staffs are streamlined; hiring freezes are in place; and, as multi-media leaps into more channels than ever, you are facing the reality of needing to do more with less. Are you afraid to tell your already overworked and underpaid staff members that they are about to get even more work heaped on them? Well, according to the editors who contributed to Leading An Online Newsroom: What You Need to Know* point out, you shouldn't be.

The additional duties of writing for, posting and engaging your audience digitally are — perhaps surprisingly — embraced by many reporters and editors. They know what you know: The Web and its long tail are the future. Not only do they want in on it, many want to help develop and lead the many new initiatives that are part and parcel of today’s journalism.

Sure, you might have to help some of them overcome the fear of change but it can be done, as the e-course contributors who are facing identical challenges, point out. And, you never know, you might even come up with some creative ways to get some new initiatives and training help underway.

For instance, Sound Publishing's (WA) new media department provides a Ning.com-powered site for discussion and training. "My team blogs regularly on that site," says Josh O'Connor, vice president of East Sound Newspaper Operations. This give and take among co-workers enables enlightenment and positive momentum to push ideas along. His team also trains small groups in-person and offers company-wide seminars. They also use Twitter to communicate to different newsrooms.

Josh O’Connor is video-interviewed by Whitney Mathews of the Lawrence Journal World (KS) at a recent SNA conference.

Kat Powers, editor of the Somerville Journal (MA), is living proof that quantity of staff, or lack thereof, is not a hindrance in multi-media news delivery. She is part of a 3-1/2 person newsroom, including herself, and has been ahead of the curve in using tools like Facebook and Twitter to help tell stories and engage audience. She and her staff are motivated by their competitive zeal and thirst to be first on breaking local news. The Web gives them the opportunity to jump ahead of their weekly printing cycle and then tell the story differently in the newspaper.

With very limited training resources, Powers says she and her staff are learning on the job. As they learn personally, they share with one another to help move the collective learning curve ahead. Training is often associated with equipment — photo and video gear — and getting used to a new writing schedule based on a Web-first mentality. "I truly think once you can tell a story in writing, you can tell a story in video — and photos," she said. "You may be a better writer than a photographer — I surely am — but you can still take a basic photo that speaks to the news."

Michael Romaner, of Morris Communications Company, sees shifting to a Web-first environment as easier than just a few years ago because reporters are just as eager to compete for readers online as they are in print. "Journalists finally see the Internet as their future," he said. "The trick is not to convince them to own it. The trick is to organize things so that it works."

Romaner puts breaking news on the top of the list of things that need to work in order to help a news paper website grow and the newsroom change, followed by non-breaking stories going online as quickly as possible. "We are trying to teach journalists to act like AP reporters: Give me what you got now and then go get some more," he said.

Point (or Follow) In The Right Direction

The economic landscape has forced creative solutions to many a newsroom challenge. For example, relying on existing staff to co-mentor and reverse-mentor one another is an excellent means of learning and sharing expertise. It is a skillful manager who fosters such an environment while pointing the collective direction yet, for many, the culture legacy often inhibits new approaches to leading the staff. As Mark Briggs** so aptly pointed out in a recent SNA Foundation webinar, "culture eats strategy for lunch."

Joe Grimm will lead the next SNA Foundation free webinar on Leading Multi-Media Teams: Taking Newsroom Staff Deeper Into The Digital World. CLICK HERE to reserve your spot at this April 15 webinar (3PM EST).

This is precisely the topic that will be explored on April 15 when Joe Grimm takes center stage at the next free SNA Foundation-sponsored webinar. Grimm is the visiting journalist at Michigan State University School of Journalism where he teaches reporting and writing. He’ll draw on his current work with burgeoning journalists and his experience as staff development editor at the Detroit Free Press to tackle Leading Multi Media Teams: Taking Newsroom Staff Deeper Into The Digital World.

His work at MSU gives him a first-hand view of the mindset and work processes of today’s j-school students and, according to Grimm, there is nothing conventional about them. In his webinar he’ll share many tips for staff development as well as anecdotes and expectations from his first hand work with the current crop of reporters hitting the industry.

Click here to attend this free webinar (April 15 at 3pm EST) to learn leadership skills that will help you guide your newsrooms to tackle their assignments in the not so new 'new media' landscape. In the one hour webinar, Grimm will speak to editors and other newsroom leaders about new management approaches to developing staffers to meet the demands of digital publishing.

He’ll address topics like:

• Listen and lead
• Free tools anyone can use
• Knowing what works
• Taking the real-time pulse of your community

You’ll come away with deeper insights about the way reporters want to tackle their assignments and you’ll learn why you can absolutely benefit by some unconventional expectations that many of them have.

* Leading An Online Newsroom: What You Need to Know is one in a series of e-courses sponsored by the SNA Foundation with funds from a Knight Foundation grant. The course is professionally produced by Poynter Institute’s NewsU. It’s free, interactive and self directed. Find it at www.newsu.org/LeadingOnlineNewsroom.

** Mark Briggs is the author of Journalism 2.0 and Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing, He recently led the discussion at a SNA Foundation sponsored webinar on Innovation at Work: Making New Ideas Succeed. View the archived session.