A Morning Response: We Don’t Need Newsroom Leadership, We Need Individual Entrepreneurs

My new blogging buddy Yonigre Greenbaum highlighted a post to me and asked for my thoughts.

Perhaps it’s because I am still in that early morning groggy bitterness, perhaps it’s the rain outside – but my response is actually negative.

Not that I don’t agree with Yonigre  Steve Outing, Mindy McAdams, Alfred Hermida and others who have written about the need for change in newsrooms. I totally agree. But that’s why I don’t need to read any more blog posts about it.

(the following is not a potshot against any of the above, who I respect and admire. I think these people are not guilty of the following: But it’s something I think is becoming rampant in blogging about journalism: We have become a culture of bloggers whose aim is to critique without action).

I think the time for evangelizing is over.
At this point if you are in a mainstream news organization and you don’t see the need for change, the battle is lost and I’m not going to spend time trying to convince you to change the culture in your newsroom. I will simply shake your hand, wish you an honest good luck and move on.

I don’t use this blog to evangelize. I don’t seek newsroom converts to web 2.0 (not that anybody would listen to me anyways) and I don’t want to preach to the choir because that gets nothing done.

If you want to see real change – don’t tell news room editors what to do – DO IT YOURSELF.

Change doesn’t come from the top down on the internet it comes from the bottom up. Why?

A fundamental rule of the internet: "Trying
stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it
.
(Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to
do a few weeks of P* hacking to the full cost of the
meetings that went into a big company decision.)"

That’s what newsrooms don’t get and what web companies do. From
Craigslist and beyond – that’s been the fundamental error of newsrooms.
But it doesn’t have to be the fundamental error of journalists who act
as individuals.

As a culture on the web, as a group of people who know each other and
blog about the same thing – I have to wonder, with all the back and
forth blogging about how we need to enact change: Are we subjugating
ourselves to the same error? Are we having endless meetings about how
we need to change the corporate culture of newsrooms? Why not just do
it!

Journalism is happening all around us on the web – it’s just not being
organized by journalists. That’s not because individual journalists
aren’t thirsty for it – it’s because they are looking to corporate
leaders for opportunities. My plea isn’t to the leaders of newsrooms,
it’s to the individual journalists: Don’t give up on what journalism
is. Find your own path and make it happen – if the leaders in your
newsroom fail you – that’s their loss, it doesn’t have to be yours.

I know plenty of young entrepreneurial journalists. I know that
entrepreneurial journalism is what we lack. In essence that’s what
these blog posts are about: Asking our news leaders to become
entrepreneurs on the web. A great cause – again: I totally agree. But I’m not going to build my reputation as a person who constantly reminds them of that. 
Either they have it and they command my respect or they don’t and I’ll
go out on my own. Remember: It’s cheaper/easier to try something online
than it is to have endless meetings about whether or not to try it.

6 thoughts on “A Morning Response: We Don’t Need Newsroom Leadership, We Need Individual Entrepreneurs”

  1. But shouldn’t you be trying to become newsroom leadership in the meantime to change it from within?

  2. Something I learned about a year ago that’s become mantra for me now: Demos not memos. Memos create bureaucracy, lead to meetings, waste time to write a lead to time wasted talking about them. Demos cut through all that. If you can show an exec a working version of your idea so they can see it for themselves, it cuts through a lot of crap.

  3. Matt
    I like your mantra – demos not memos. Something to keep in mind.

    As for David Abrams: I suppose you are right – one could try to work within the structure of newsrooms to change it from the inside. Part of why I don’t right now is: 1. The things I work on are just outside what most newsrooms would be interested in and 2. I’m young enough that I don’t have to work in a corporate structure right now – and I want to continue that for as long as I can.

    I should say – some of yesterday’s post was just bitterness (bad weather here in SF), but some of it was just honesty – To me a lot of the blogging I see are memos. I’m tired of those – unless they give me a truly unique take, idea – they are all just echoes. If 2008 is really going to be the year that makes or breaks journalism – then we better have a lot more up our sleeve than blog memos to each other.

  4. Well said…

    I think thats the reason I started scribblesheet, theres no point sitting on the side complaining and not doing anything lets talk about what we have actually done to push the agenda forward…

  5. I agree that the talking needs to give way to action. I am just about resigned to the fact that people in my newsroom will never get it. I continually forward blog posts about how the newsroom culture needs to change, about how the newsroom must embrace new media and all I get are rolled eyes, whispered dimissals. Not once has a reporter come up to me and asked me for more info. At the very least if they don’t agree or think this whole “new media thing” is full of crap why don’t they voice it. I am the point where I am going to do what I can as a web editor/producer and not count on the rest of the newsroom to participate. It is a terribly unfortunate and frustrating thing. I will however take David Abrams’ mantra to heart.

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