"What If We Try Arranging the Deck Chairs in a Circle?"

The much-awaited/reviled/commented-upon American Press Institute meeting of 50 newspaper executives to try to figure out how to save the business is going on today, and one of the participants has been liveblogging it. God bless him, though he's still not getting much information out from behind those closed doors (we don't even know who's in the room). 

What little we've seen isn't exactly grounds for hope–discussions of newspaper video, McKinsey reports, etc., don't really start to solve the enormous problems of newspaper companies' congenital failure to take significant steps to change the game they're in. 

The liveblog of the meeting has attracted a spirited discussion among true believers about what the 50 execs should be talking about, and while that's interesting, it's a little pointless–the true believers in what it takes to get to the future are on the outside, and the people on the inside aren't listening to them. The liveblogger did manage to get the discussion put on a screen at the meeting for a few minutes, but odds are few in the meeting had any idea what they were looking at--or dismissed it as the usual rantings of idealistic underlings they've ignored (at their peril) for years. 

The problem is, the wrong people are in the room. The smart folks in the liveblog discussion should leading the conversation among the execs, not following it. Industry firebrands and big thinkers like Jeff Jarvis, Alan Mutter, Steve Outing and Ken Doctor should be in the room challenging the execs and their assumptions, and goading them into more rapid change. Video guru Michael Rosenblum–whose recent much-e-mailed rant about what newspapers are doing wrong is essential viewing for everyone in the industry–should be a keynote speaker. The room should be abuzz with ideas about aggregation, new advertising forms,  hyperlocal and niche products, news feeds, online syndication and distribution models, contextual ads, social media, etc., etc., etc. Even turning off the printing presses.

What's happening instead behind those closed doors at API, I fear, is still more navel-gazing from the 50 newspaper execs. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're thinking Great Thoughts. Since we have almost no transparency into their process, we may never know. But sadly, I doubt it. 

Comments

[Chuck Peters]

Mark -

As I noted in Complete Community Connection, at http://cpetersia.wordpress.com ,I am going to try to put the Summit into context, but appreciate your frustration. We have to figure out how to have the right conversations with the right people so we can make progress without all trying to invent the wheel.

[Donna]

I suspect newspapers will fail because they are NOT in the news business. Not anymore.

You know how some Republicans say they did not leave the party, the party left them when they began courting the religious right? Perhaps something similar happened to newspapers.

Decades ago newspapers went corporate. What do corporations want? Blandness and consistency. No surprises, no controversy. In other words, the opposite of news.

[Rajiv Vindaloo]

Two thoughts...

1) One of the biggest problems with journalism is that almost nobody except the "big names" is allowed to be part of the conversation ... and that INCLUDES those precious few who get the titles of "firebrand" and "big thinkers" bestowed upon them, like Jarvis, Outing et al. I don't know who is eventually going to lead our industry out of this mess, but I do know one thing for certain: it won't end up being any of the "insiders" like them. And until the conversation and brainstorming is opened up to a far wider audience, the industry probably won't find a way out at all.

2) Tho quote is from Ronald Reagan, and it's about why he left the Democratic Party. Blind ignorance of how roughly 50% of the public thinks is, well, roughly 50% of the reason we're in this mess to begin with. We ostracized half our potential audience before technology mattered a whit.

[Donna]

Rajiv/Repub quote: Right you are! Thanks for the correction.

[edward]

Mark, I read the Peters Twitter reports, plus the API's own version:
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/pages/resources/2008/11/ceo_summit_on_saving_an_indust/

and I'll be damned if I can figure out either what was said or what was resolved. Seems there was agreement that it was a crisis, although someone felt it was just cylical not structural and everything will be rosy once the economy straightens out. I find this to be typical API.

[carl]

I watched Michael Rosenblum's video. It was excellent.

two big takeaways:

1. Newspaper companies think they are in the newspaper publishing business when, infact, they are in the news business. They should be looking for the richest and most efficient way to deliver news in a format that readers want. Until they "get it" they are doomed to fail.

2. His comments on giving each reporter a camcorder and going out in the field is right on. I have a reporter who's begun doing that and she now submits her articles with a video. Our readers love it.