WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

From “common sense” Jim Moroney III, the Dallas Morning News publisher, in a letter to staff on the paper’s 125th anniversary:

“And what is newspapers’ sustainable competitive advantage?

Fortunately for our democracy, it’s the scale of their newsrooms.

It is important to recognize that digital technology has already leveled the technological playing field for local media. In the internet environment, the means of transmission and the devices used to access news and information are identical for all media.

The sustainable competitive advantage newspaper companies have is the scale of their newsrooms and the quality and quantity of important and relevant local news and information it permits them to originate as compared to all other local media.

If newspaper companies continue to reduce the scale of the reporting resources in their newsrooms, they will level the reporting playing field with local TV stations and give up their competitive advantage.”

Amen.

INNOVATION’s Director Marta Bitero writes about one of the most radical and successful editorial and management multimedia integrations in the newspaper industry: the case of El Tiempo in Bogota, Colombia.

Get the full report here.

INNOVATION’s partner Juan Señor writes in this chapter about how to fo from “paper centric” newsrooms to real integrated ones.

The chapter includes the last version of our most popular graphic about this transition from “print and online centric newsroom” to the “content and audiences” one.

Get the full report here.

Sad words from the late Norman Mailer:

“Newsrooms these days all sound like you’re in a monastery.

All the computers are so silent.

I miss the old days.

Lots of journalism writing is bad because the pressure of being a good writer is not the first talent you need to be a good journalist.

The first talent you need is the emotional readiness to introduce yourself to strangers and pick their brains.”

And he didn’t know that now in many newsrooms journalists don’t even speak to each other, they e-mail instead!

You will not change newspapers if you don’t change newsrooms.

You will not improve newspapers if you don’t change the workflow.

You will not have better newspapers if you don’t have better newsrooms.