(Steve Duke)

There has been a lot of talk about journalists' curmudgeon class on the Web the last couple weeks. Jay Rosen posited the "twilight of the curmudgeon class" a year ago, but it got a lot of renewed attention recently by Jeff Jarvis and others because of a couple incidents recently.

Most of the arrows have been aimed at change-resistant newsroom staffers. We've been bedeviled by our share of newsroom curmudgeons at the seminars we conduct in conjunction with ASNE. They were a serious roadblock in the beginning, but have been in decline, or fallen into silence, in the six years we've been on the road with our workshops. We still see a few, but most of the seminar participants now are more interested in learning about how to change rather than bemoaning change.

Some of the charges of curmudgeonly change-resistance in recent Web discussions have been leveled at bosses, and our recent seminar participants share that view. The journalists and web producers are ready to experiment, take risks, use new tools to connect people with news and with each other, but say they can't get traction with supervisors who can say "yes" or "no."

"My bosses pay lip service to new ideas, then block them," one participant said recently.

Steve Yelvington, commenting on one of Jarvis' curmudgeon posts said:

From what I'm seeing, most newspapers today are not curmudgeon-run organizations. There's a lot of bewilderment (and in many cases despair) but that's not the same thing.

I agree that curmudgeonliness is not the big issue at the boss level. Confusion and caution are more the case, coupled with the very real and distracting struggle to keep the mothership righted and facing into the wind while the financial storms rage.

Journalists are aware of the limitations. In a discussion about implementing innovation, one seminar participant acknowledged "new ideas take resources from existing projects. We've got a limited number of code monkeys and can't do everything."

Still for the knowledgeable, ambitious, even entrepreneurial journalists who are trying to lead the way, "frustration is at a high level," another participant said. Among the frustration drivers:

• A lack of reader-orientation: "We're always trying to balance the interests of the people who produce the paper with the interests of the audience." (Emphasis added.)


• A lack of information: "We don't have access to anything beyond the hits trail of yesterday."


• A lack of business-side support: "When we propose new initiatives, the response is 'You haven't sold your ad inventory yet, so why are you planning more content and new sites?' "

That last bullet is one that needs the most immediate attention, I think. As advertising and readers slip away from newspapers, and viewers decline for TV news, the concentration has been on journalists and the imperative to change editorial content. The Readership Institute has emphasized from its very first published reports in 2000 that reaching audience requires improving editorial and advertising content, culture (breaking down the tendency to curmudgeonhood), management practices, brand perceptions, and service.

Still, all eyes have remained on journalists and content. Most of the journalists I now encounter embrace the need for change and innovation, and many are eager to engage with their counterparts in other departments.

But the interest often isn't returned. In an example we've heard echoed multiple times at our seminars, the Chicago Reader reported last month that Eileen Brown, innovation director at the Daily Herald in Chicago's suburbs, said she gets her best ideas from journalists, and that she has "to beg and plead the business side" to try new things. The newsroom is "passionate. They won't want the Titanic to sink."

One of the few places consistently focusing on the curmudgeon class on the business side is Kubas Consultants, which points out that "newspaper advertising is still being sold in much the same way as 10 years ago, and even 50 years ago," and notes that the explanation by the ad folks is "we've always done it this way." Sounds like what we used to hear from the newsroom curmudgeons, but only occasionally do now.

In a blistering indictment of the way newspaper advertising departments operate, Ed Strapagiel, executive vice president at Kubas, writes "The epitaph for the industry may well read 'Death by Conventional Wisdom.'" His primer on what's wrong with newspaper ad departments and prescription for change should be mandatory reading in every publisher's office.

While there is no denying pockets of curmudgeons remain in newsrooms, perhaps it's time to shine a light on the need for swift change in other departments, as well.


By Steve Duke (s-duke@northwestern.edu)
Steve Duke is managing director for training at the Media Management Center and Readership Institute, and an associate professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.