Enough with the hand-wringing
The bad news continues to roll in for McClatchy and yet I see no signs of meaningful change from the Anchorage Daily News. Enough with the hand-wringing already!
Waiting out the economy is not a strategy.
Letting someone else figure out how to deliver the news and then copying them is not a solution (see: Craig’s List).
Editors, we know it’s bad. What are we going to do about it?
I’m on the new media ground floor, but here’s my list:
::Distribute the new media work load.
I’m not talking about multimedia but content management systems. Newsroom employees must be able to update and maintain the newspaper website 24/7. At the Daily News, we have four people (the online editor, the online producer, our programmer and me, a photographer) with enough training in the CMS to make substantive changes to the homepage. It’s not enough. We have no scheduled coverage on Sundays or after 8pm most days. Teaching key people the CMS is more important than learning to shoot well-produced video (everyone should be able to use a Flip).
::Reorganize the newsroom.
Create a proper online department in the newsroom, reporting to the online editor, complete with reporters and a copy editor. Get them out of the office and reporting live. Train them to update the website. Turn a picture editor into a multimedia editor and have them assign and edit (for quality, length and clarity) video and audio slide shows. Train them to update the website.
Examine the newsroom chain-of-command. Do the branches make sense?
::Provide us with the tools we need to do the job.
We have a good collection of relatively high-end equipment (wireless mics, Canon HV20s etc) but we need to be able to go mobile. In August we were forced to transfer our company cell phones to private accounts. The company pays us a $35/month stipend, which covers the voice plan, but we’re on our own if we want a smart phone, data plan or SMS plan. Needless to say, not many people are opting to spent an extra $30-35/month of their own money on a data plan (especially with our recently announced one year company-wide wage freeze). The Daily News should cover a data plan, at least for the online department.
And buy more Flip cameras so reporters can easily grab video while on assignment (if you think we need video on the site — and we do — the cops reporter at least should have one).
::Plan for the future, with a close eye on current content.
This is not a plea for micro management but for strategic planning.
In the fire service, the command officers manage the incident. They maintain a comprehensive view of the situation and tell their fire officers what they want done (but not how to do it!). The fire officers use their resources to execute the Incident Commander’s strategy.
The IC plans ahead while the officers and firefighters focus on the task at hand.
The same should be true of newspapers: Tell your section editors, reporters and photographers where you want us to go and we’ll figure out how to get there.
Trust us.