This memo didn´t get too much attention but in my opinion reflects how deep, smart, dramatic and fast must be the changes in our newsrooms.
The Miami Herald was a great paper. Today is in a big crisis.
They made several graphic redesigns but circulation was and is going down.
The paper is another example of the mistakes of the Tony Ridder´s era that ended with the sale of Knight Ridder.
“From Miami Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler, sent to
the Herald staff via e-mail on April 12, 2006:
To the staff,
All of you who have stepped off an elevator into the Miami newsroom
in recent days cannot have missed the wall-mounted flat-screen monitor
constantly displaying and refreshing the MiamiHerald.com site.
And if you’ve attended any of the morning or afternoon news meetings,
you will have heard an opening discussion about what’s on that site,
how many hits each article has received, and what’s coming to the
site later in the day.
These may seem like the incremental markings of evolutionary change,
mere head-nods toward on-line as we continue to think of ourselves
as newspaper people first, foremost and — perhaps for some — always.
But that cannot continue to be. Today we change. Today, as in NOW.
Three years ago, on one of the anniversaries of ou100thth year,
we focused time, thought and effort into remaking the newspaper
as part of the New Century Project. I have no doubt that it
produced a more successful newspaper, one that incorporates
all of the great journalism on which we’ve prided ourselves,
presented in a more visually exciting and easier-to-use
newspaper. Imitators are legion.
But time marches on and constantly improving the newspaper
isn’t going to guarantee success, either in journalism or
in the marketplace.
I have two messages to deliver today.
First, my goal is to remain as relevant, as important and
as influential to this community in the future as we have
been in the past — and to do it through world-class
journalism. It’s a goal we all share.
Second, we will make delivering that journalism on
MiamiHerald.com and our other media platforms just as high
a priority as delivering it in The Miami Herald. Let me
repeat that for emphasis: Just as high.
We are beyond being satisfied with incremental change and
giving polite head nods toward other media platforms. We
are going to execute fundamental restructuring to support
that pledge. Every job in the newsroom — EVERY JOB — is
going to be redefined to include a web responsibility and,
if appropriate, radio. For news gatherers, this means posting
everything we can as soon as we can. It means using the
web site to its fullest potential for text, audio and video.
We’ll come to appreciate that MiamiHerald.com is not an
appendage of the newsroom; it’s a fundamental product of
the newsroom.
No more will some people be strictly newspaper staff and
others will be strictly on-line or multi-media staff. If
you produce news, you’ll be expected to produce it as
effectively for the electronic reader or listener as you
would for the newspaper reader. If you edit or design for
the newspaper, you’ll learn to edit and design for the web
site.
We’ll be creating and posting several new jobs that will be
necessary to deliver on this mission. We don’t have the luxury
of waiting for new resources to do this, so we may need to
find the wherewithal by dropping some of the less-important
things we do now. Almost certainly we’ll be changing the typical
work schedule so we can deliver the news when our audience
wants to get it. Of course we’ll invest in training to help
everyone succeed in new responsibilities.
The details will be worked out over the next few weeks and I
invite everyone with ideas to be involved.
Let me stress that we aren’t going to milk The Miami Herald
to do this. This newspaper is what brought us here and it
will remain very successful for many years. There is something
special and unique about journalism on the printed page and
we won’t neglect that going forward. But we didn’t fall in
love with journalism because of ink and paper. We fell in love
with it because it had the power to change lives for the
better — and we can do that on paper, on the web and over
the airwaves with equal devotion.
The potential for having even greater impact than we have
now is enormous. Although all of us are aware of the challenges
we face in keeping newspaper readers, a few facts about
MiamiHerald.com:
*In January 2004, our web site captured 100,000 unique
local visitors. Last month, just 14 months later, it hosted
250,000 unique local visitors. In fact, between February
and March of this year, our on-line traffic grew by
22 percent. Remember, of course, that only on the web
site can we reach readers without regard to geographic
boundaries, something we do very well and can do
even better.
*Across the nation, newspaper web sites increased the
share of 18-24 year old readers by 9 percent, and 25-34
year olds by 14 percent.
*We’re making money. In the first quarter of this year,
our websites exceeded even optimistic revenue estimates
by $2.2 million.
When I entered this business 35 years ago, the way things
were done in the newsroom wouldn’t have been unfamiliar
to someone doing my job nearly 100 years before. I
scarcely can imagine what the newsroom will look like
35 years from now in terms of how we deliver our journalism.
What’s exciting is that we are in the position today
of shaping that future. What we do will largely determine
how successful The Miami Herald will be in serving
generations to come. As I said, that’s exciting — and
daunting.
This much is certain: We won’t be successful by standing
still and lamenting what used to be. Three years ago
this September we launched the New Century Project.
Now we need to begin work on the next century and I
need each of you to come along.
Tom.”