newspapers

The Guardian examines the dilemma of the headline writer as newspapers "integrate their web and press productions:"

Headline writing, of the clever, punning variety that is their stock in trade, is fast becoming an anachronism. For the role of subeditors is changing as media organisations do as the Sun has done and establish integrated newsrooms; producing papers, website, blogs and broadcasts from one desk.

But there's an underlying false assumption: that newspapers can/should consider the Web to be an "edition" of a "newspaper."

I think newspapers should examine, exploit and even celebrate the unique characteristics of each medium, resulting in products that are complementary rather than competitive with one another.

Certainly print headlines and online headlines have to meet entirely different requirements. We've known that for years. Print is a serendipity medium where puns, clever language and cultural references can work really well. Online is an information-seeker's medium (and that was true long before Google) where a clear and straightforward phrase wins the game.

Print is not dead, and backing down on brilliant print headline-writing would be a terrible mistake.

Thanks to The Editors Weblog for the pointer.

MinnPost.com launched today with a roster of familiar writers (many ex-Star Tribune), a printable PDF edition, and a homepage ad for the St. Paul Pioneer Press "e-edition."

MinnPost.com undoubtedly will discover whether there's a significant market of news junkies eager to read "a thoughtful approach to news" presented in the tone and voice of the Star Tribune circa 1985. When I looked, the lead online story was a Doug Grow piece about how the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party is in debt, and the lead piece in the 8-page printable PDF companion had to do with restoring the graves of people who died in state hospitals.

Not exactly the Daily Mole. For that matter, it's not even Star Tribune Online circa 1994, which had a deep commitment to hosting and facilitating community conversations (and even offered publishing tools to community organizations). MinnPost is a mid-20th century product in a strange 21st century world, and I found it needlessly dull.

Between them, MinnPost.com and a blog like the Daily Mole illuminate some of the problems facing newspapers, particularly big papers like the Star Tribune. Some people really wish the Mary Tyler Moore show would come back to their television sets. Some care passionately about local politics. Some couldn't give a rip and some haven't pulled their noses out of MySpace in six or eight weeks. In the last century one "core product" could rule them all; in this century we are heading to a state of not having a core anything. But in a world where anyone can be a publisher, there's a place even for ex-Strib graybeards (although certainly not at union scale).

At the troubled Star Tribune, the Par Ridder soap opera is over but the bad news hasn't stopped; daily circ fell another 6.53 percent to 335,443 in the latest ABC report. I don't envy editor Nancy Barnes as she tries to fix that. Like it or not, the world has changed in ways that make a quality metropolitan daily newspaper less valuable.

How thin can a newspaper staff be? MediaNews is looking for an editor who may find out. Clyde Davis, who blogs about free newspapers, points to a job posting for Flash, a "daily commuter tabloid" planned for Salt Lake. The editor will supervise a staff of four.

I have some experience doing this, having edited a short-lived afternoon newspaper called the St. Louis Evening News in the mid-1980s. Even relying heavily on the resources of the morning Globe-Democrat, it required about a dozen people.

However, we were operating a full-scale broadsheet with a press run of 80,000, working with relatively primitive technology (pre-pagination), and actually editing the copy, a practice that newspapers seem to be abandoning these days.

We flirted with a free model during the final year of the Globe's existence, starting a free Sunday paper that primarily succeeded in sucking all the ads out of our morning daily. I wonder sometimes how that might have played out differently with a competent publisher with deeper pockets.

Alan "Newsosaur" Mutter is one of my faves, and his brain drain post was a classic even before the comments started rolling in.

But the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the stratgeic initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.

“In most organizations, the people with the most online experience have the least political capital,” said one mid-level online editor at a newspaper. “It seems like the pace of change inside media is slowing, tied up in politics and lack of expertise in managing technical projects – while the pace of change is continuing apace outside our windows.”

This political-capital issue has long been my greatest concern about the organization fusion that's happening at many newspapers. I've seen it happen many times already: Newsroom resents not being in control of website. Editor maneuvers to gain control. Smart, creative new-media director is thrown overboard (or jumps overboard). Website takes a great leap backward, and only three or so years later does it begin to do creative work again.

There are many editors from the print side who are smart, thoughtful, observant and well grounded in the principles of operating on the Internet. There are others like this one cited by an anonymous poster on Mutter's site:

There's a story circulating about how the AME of online didn't know you could type a URL directly into a web browser... and there was that discussion on whether to include a blurb above a story describing, "what the blue underlined words were for".

Apocryphal, perhaps. But chillingly believable.

In a recent speech to the Arizona Newspaper Association, Tim McGuire said:

One last comment about innovation. It ain’t coming from anybody in this room. The chances of one of us here at the Scottsdale Chaparral going out of here an inventing a Google or even a viable innovation for newspapers is the same chance as all of us flying out of here on brooms. –None. So where is that innovation going to come from? Young people who, if we are smart, work for us. We don’t get the digital age and they do. And, that’s why its stupid, yes stupid for you to try to make every decision in your shop and act as if all wisdom resides in your office. It does not. If you want to foster true innovation in your organization involve your staff. Show them you trust them and build an environment which allows them to innovate.

Note that McGuire did NOT say "let them do whatever they want."

The role of a senior leader and manager is to cherish, coach, teach and grow talent. We need everything we can get from smart young people in our organizations. And we need senior leaders who know how to support them, how to clear middle-management roadblocks, how to say yes and when to say no.

We are at a critical turning point for American newspapers. We can't afford to drive away our smartest and most creative voices. The Internet not a publishing system, a Web site is not just another channel, and digitizing the thing we've been doing for the last century is not going to work. We need to think new thoughts, and pushing new thinkers out the door is a fatal mistake.