(Steve Duke)

Veränderung als Chance - Stillstand als Bedrohung. Change as an opportunity - Stagnancy as a risk.

That world view has driven Eugen Russ in creating the 2006 worldwide Newspaper of the Year, Vorarlberger Nachrichten, and a robust multimedia company, Vorarlberger Medienhaus, headquartered in western Austria.

How Russ applies this worldview day-to-day offers some lessons for media leaders.

My colleague Mike Smith writes about the Newspaper of the Year honor in his report from the recently concluded World Association of Newspapers conference in Moscow. There, Mike explains how we came to know Russ (rhymes with loose) only after he had successfully implemented most of the recommendations from the Impact study he found on the RI Web site.

That’s typical of Russ. He is a voracious consumer of information, devouring new ideas the way a hungry child vacuums food from a buffet line. Russ told me in January when I did some training at his headquarters in Schwarzach, Austria, that he and his staff can’t possibly create all the good ideas, so he hunts globally for best practices and new ideas, looking at all companies and all industries, not just media companies – and copying the best.

Then he moves quickly to implement what he has learned. He doesn’t study things endlessly, nor talk them to death in committee meetings. He moves. He takes smart risks. Ideas that fail are dropped and new ones tried. No hand-wringing over failures.

He is unabashed about stealing good ideas. For example, Vorarlberger Nachrichten looks very like USAToday. Russ thought USAToday’s look, layout, color, photos and graphics, navigability, short stories and consistency from section to section were reader-oriented ideas worth copying, so he did.

You can’t imagine copying another paper’s look? Russ doesn’t care what you think, if it’s good for his readers. Russ looks to his readers for validation of his practices, not to other journalists or leaders of media companies.

Mike says in his report that Russ "had created the best application of the 'ordinary people' imperative that I have ever seen." How good? There are about 350,000 residents of the state of Vorarlberg. Russ said more than 100,000 of those will have their name or picture on one of his media platforms in the course of a year. Do you get nearly one-third of your area’s residents into your paper or onto your Web site annually? For that matter, do 70 percent of your residents access your Web site at least several times a year? Russ says his do, giving him better Internet penetration in western Austria than Google has.

Russ is a high-energy, demanding leader. During the January seminar, he stopped me mid-sentence when I outlined an online content idea that intrigued him and machine-gunned questions at his managers: Were they doing this? On which Web sites? Weekly? Daily? What kind of traffic were they getting? Who did it better? What could they do to improve it?

At the same time he is compassionate, generous, and runs a meritocracy, rewarding performance and ideas and severing those who can’t keep up. Most of his senior managers are quite young, and many told me they couldn’t have risen so high so early in their careers anywhere else.

When these managers need advice or a decision, Russ is the most accessible media company leader I’ve met. Many talk about having an "open door" policy. Russ has no door. In fact, he has no office, nor does anyone else at the company. Russ conducts business sitting with his key managers at a large circular workstation in a glass-walled room in a glass-walled building. If you need a decision about making changes, you can see him, get to him and get a decision.

Because change is an opportunity. Stagnancy is a risk.


By Steve Duke (s-duke@northwestern.edu)
Steve Duke is managing director for training at the Media Management Center and Readership Institute and a lecturer at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.