Thinking Strategically

Howard Owens has an excellent post about how journalists need to learn to think strategically. It's an excellent example of what I mean by the phrase "recovering journalist"—there's now a lot more to being a journalist than ink-stained wretchery. Howard's money quote:

In the olden days, when newspapers were essentially monopolies, competition was scarce and the profits were rolling in unabated, publishers could afford to employ journalists who pontificated in smokey, after-work barrooms about the purity of their craft. No strategic business discussions allowed.

Those days are buried under a pile of rusting manual typewriters.

Nowadays, especially when you’re working online, you must think about more than the journalistic value of the story, but also ask questions like — where does this fit into our overall online strategy (do we even have a strategy)?, and how will this help grow and retain audience?

At Philly.com this week, I shared the digital division's 2008 high-level strategy document with all our producers, so they could understand where our leadership is trying to take the business. That may have been a first. In the next few days, we'll be discussing a detailed 2008 editorial strategy for the Web site. It's important for everyone in the operation to understand the big picture and where they fit into it. I'm afraid that in today's fear-and-loathing-filled newsroom environment, with so many closed-door meetings at newspapers about budget cuts and the future, there's less and less transparency about what's going on and what's being planned. That's not good. (Notable exception: The San Jose Mercury News' very public internal conversation about change. Bravo.) Worse, too often the newsroom staff isn't involved in the thinking about the future.

It's an axiom of good business management that the people on the front lines understand more about how to improve the business than the people in the executive offices. Far too often, however, none of the bosses think to ask the rank-and-file for suggestions, or what they think, or even to share the operation's overall vision—even after the strategy is set.

Everybody, at all levels, needs to be thinking strategically and fully understanding where things are headed. You know the cliches: We're all in this together. Divided we fall. In unity there is strength. There are reasons those are cliches: They're true! So news managements: Involve your staff and share your vision. And news staffers: Learn to think strategically and understand how what you're doing can drive the product and business forward into the future.

Comments

[Yoni Greenbaum]

Mark - Kudos to you for being so open with your staff. Sadly, I think too many newsrooms are still led by insecure managers who are willing to put their own fears and insecurity before the success of their business. These editors and publishers don't motivate their staff members, don't engage them in the process and comfort themselves at night with the false belief that they still are the only ones who know what is best for their newspaper and website. Those newspapers that will survive and thrive will need leaders willing to work as members of a team, leaders who will listen and learn from all team members, leaders who don't believe they know it all.

[Howard Owens]

Thanks for the link ...

One of the things I do is travel around to newsrooms giving a presentation on our content strategy -- it gets into media history and how and why media has changed and what we're doing about it and why we believe it is a successful strategy.

Also, we have an internal e-mail discussion list where we discuss these topics.

We try to get as many people involved in possible.

Unlike some newspaper companies -- where the top-down management is to say, "not only is this our strategy, this is EXACTLY how you will implement it," our approach is to say, "here's the strategy, now go out and figure out how to make it happen." We hope this will encourage innovation along the lines where we think we should be going.