A 21st Century Newspaper Editor
Excerpts from Jane Hirt's speech delivered at AWJ's annual meeting at ABC 7 Studios on January 28, 2009.In the newspaper industry, we talk so much doom and gloom. We really dwell on it. Some in our profession have even made a lucrative side business of predicting certain defeat. And, on the flipside, putting down anybody who tries something new. And I've certainly been on the receiving end of those diatribes over the last few years.
… Yes, what we are witnessing may be the end of something, but it's the beginning of something else. We don't even know what the next great invention will be. How do we know that we can’t be a part of it?
… I believe that what we as journalists do is needed — we gather and disseminate information. People want information like never before. And they want to be able to trust it. Platforms and business models are shifting, but what we do is still desirable. Let's seize on that.
… At the risk of sounding like a certain impeached governor, I'd like to share with you a quote that's been floating around Tribune Tower recently. It's by Gen. Eric Shinseki: "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."
I do believe we wasted time by resisting change for so long. I do believe we are paying for that now. We dug in our heels, we wouldn't admit that maybe we needed to become more consumer focused, or change what we'd been doing or how we’d looked for decades. I think we mistook financial success for readership success. And we were caught resting on our laurels.
Let’s stop doing that.
… Anybody who's reinvented herself or his or her company has realized it’s not easy, it takes guts, you endure criticism, people don’t like change — and culture change, especially, is tough to effect.
The good news is that I've seen some real change starting to take hold in my newsroom and in others.
>> I think we’re seeing more risk-takers in the business.
>> People have a more competitive fire in the belly — that hunger to win is crucial.
>> I see that more decisions are based on readers and advertisers than ever before. And fewer decisions are made "because that's how we've always done it" or because of how other journalists are going to judge us.
>> I feel like we're trying to talk to our readers as peers instead of talking down to them with the Institutional Voice of God.
>> I’m seeing that change isn’t automatically labeled “dumbing down.” That phrase really bugs me because change for good reason is actually quite smart, and finding new ways to tell stories is not dumb. It’s essential.
>>There's more of a spirit of collaboration because we all feel like we're in the trenches together fighting for our survival
— which we are.
>> More ideas are welcome and come from all sides. We aren’t as afraid to openly disagree and challenge convention.
… But to survive, I think we need to get a lot more accustomed to a few things. We need to:
>> Try radical things, and not be so afraid to fail occasionally.
>> Start supporting each other through change instead of carping from the sidelines.
>> Get a lot more comfortable inviting readers to interact with us, contribute and participate.
>> Harness the power of citizen journalism rather than fearing and looking down on it.
>> Embrace things that may look like competition. My colleagues at the Tribune have done a wonderful job mining social networking sites and pushing things like Digg and Twitter to drive traffic and audience and increase the Tribune’s profile.
>> Differentiate. Find the things that make us valuable and unique and emphasize and prioritize to deliver more of THAT.
>> Stop fearing the unknown — and in fact seek it out, think of things that don’t yet exist, demand new ways of doing things.
>> Stop talking and start doing more.
>> Become more platform agnostic and view journalism as the gathering and analysis of information, no matter how it is ultimately distributed.
>> Spend less time dwelling on Romenesko and more time actually doing something to move us forward positively.
… In my own career, I've seen firsthand how this can work. When myself and a group of about 15 journalists started RedEye in 2002, all we heard was how it wouldn't last six months because
— get this
— "Young people don't read." It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard in my life, yet it was said over and over by the journalism establishment. Well, they were wrong. In just over six years, RedEye has gone from zero readers to 850,000 unique readers per week, about half of them in the target 18- to 34-year-old group. It’s profitable and revenue is up every year. That's a huge success story.
… We still have the chance to change. We still have the chance to innovate and breathe life into our industry. So go out there and make a difference. Be bold, take chances, fail, get back up, and reinvent journalism for the 21st century.