We now know who attended the API's seminar on the crisis in newspapers; we also know some of what they were told by corporate turnaround experts James Shein and Steve Miller. We even know a little bit about what the 50 newspaper executives in attendance talked about. (Some of it appears to have been insightful; some, well, not so much.)
But we don't know yet what, if anything, they're going to do with what they learned.
If you look at Professor Shein's "phases of crisis" chart, one thing seems very clear: Newspapers have ticked through the first four phases and now are way down toward the bottom of that scary ski slope of crisis.
The API site reports that Shein warned the assembled execs that "failure to take action at any point on the curve means the enterprise inexorably moves to the next point. As an organization moves down the crisis curve, it will find executing a recovery plan more difficult, and will have less time to do it."
It remains to be seen whether bold action or real innovation to find a recovery plan will–or even can–come out of API's confab. We're told they're going to meet again in six months–but one has to wonder how many of the 50 will still have jobs at that point. Their work is cut out for them.
Crisis. OMG, we are in a crisis? I thought those two years of declining revenues, declining advertising, and declining circulation were just a perverse blip. Well, things will go back to normal if we can only bridge this economic recession. After all, it was the economy that brought this on. So advertising will return, circulation will come back, and the revenues will be on the up-escalator once again. Let's have API call more of these closed-door, all-expenses paid conferences so we can discuss how really great the business used to be, and will be in the future.
Posted by: edward | November 16, 2008 at 11:10 AM