(May 2, 2006; Mary Nesbitt)

I'm an incendiary. I incite newsroom people to revolt. The only proviso is that revolution is for the benefit of readers, citizens, consumers, customers, audiences – however you want to characterize the people on whose behalf we ostensibly commit journalism.

Revolutions are best led by leaders with a strong, clearly-articulated vision of the goal. But the "how-tos" are the purview of the people who have to implement. This approach has at least three major benefits:

• The implementers, if they're smart, will force the leaders to clarify their thinking and the goals
• The leaders, if they're smart, will trust to the wisdom of crowds and then let the implementers get on with it, with minimal intervention
• The results will exceed expectations

A report at last week's American Society of Newspaper Editors convention fueled my revolutionary ardor. Michele McLellan and Vickey Williams, directors of two Knight Foundation-funded projects, and their 24 newspaper partners are starting to show what the power of the people can accomplish.

(At this point, you're probably thinking – “oh no, another earnest piece on training and development. I've got a newspaper to put out!” Well, sorry, but if you're not prepared to commit the time to learn and act in an audience-centric way, then maybe you should consider an alternative career. Because news media need to develop their employees into expansive and adventuresome thinkers and doers, or suffer the fate that their upstart competitors dearly wish.)

Both projects are focused on newsroom employee development (that's employees at all levels) but in different ways. McLellan's project, Tomorrow's Workforce, has been working with 10 newspapers on developing specific training programs that fit with newsroom goals. Williams' project, The Learning Newsroom, helps newsrooms figure out how to improve their culture and performance.

A list of the participating newsrooms is here.

Both projects advocate bottom-up approaches: top executives make the commitment and set the over-arching goals, then turn the creative work over to staff committees who come up with plans and recommendations.

McLellan says most editors have far too many goals – better to have just a handful. “Having more than three to five goals is as bad as having none. They should be actionable and clearly understood.”

For instance, Julia Wallace, editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, thinned an armload of goals to just three, all with a strong readership connection:

• develop and use more alternative story forms;
• produce more short-term enterprise and watchdog journalism in the suburban operations;
• increase community connectedness.

With this clear direction, the training and development team – composed of staff, not managers -- was able to focus and move. The AJC more than tripled training hours to 25 per employee, while increasing training expenditures by only one-third. “The training has to be good,” Wallace emphasized. “Time has to go into developing a good curriculum.”

The AJC also audited content to see if the training was having visible results. They found significant improvements in alternative story forms on the front page, a doubling of record-driven stories, fewer stories about institutions and more stories about people and trends.
Both projects are nearing completion and will report full results next year. Don't look for training alone to suddenly boost circulation or improve readership, or to turn an entrenched passive defensive culture into an innovative, constructive one. But expect some important insights and gains in these newspapers' efforts to build their human capacity.


By Mary Nesbitt (m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu)
Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute.