Kristen Hare of Poynter profiles the digital transformation of the Dallas Morning News.
"The Dallas Morning News faces the same forces confronting the rest of the newspaper industry: the painstaking and painful process of re-imagining and remaking something that worked very well for a long time that now has a crumbling business model, an audience that’s moved on, technology that is constantly shifting and a culture largely entrenched in the way things used to work."
Last summer, editor Mike Wilson brought in a consulting firm, Empirical Media, to work with the newsroom in identifying what needed to change in terms of content, operations and skills.
"From June through August, 23 journalists at the newspaper divided into three teams. The content team asked if the Morning News was creating what the audience wanted, especially on the Web. The organization team looked at day-to-day operations and asked if they were still working. And the skills team asked, simply, are we ready? What skills aren’t here that must be?
They interviewed more than a dozen news organizations and circulated anonymous in-house surveys. Each team shared their findings with Empirical, which worked with the Morning News’ data team to analyze 65,000 posts from a 10-month-period. The teams presented the newsroom with a 159-page report."
The final report, which was not made public, outlined a vision for a digital future and initiated a difficult process of change.
Everyone had to apply for a new job:
"Staffers weren’t reapplying for their current jobs, because those would soon no longer exist.Using an in-house app, everyone still at The Dallas Morning News had to choose and rank their top three job choices. Not everyone got where they wanted to be. Some people stayed where they were. But the process, which was long and led to lots of uncertainty and anxiety, also gave editors the chance to see where people would like to be in the future. Now, more than half of the newsroom is in new jobs."
The business and digital editors left the paper returning later as "vertical editors". The paper offered 167 people buyouts of which 34 were accepted.
No more desks and beats:
"Teams now organize into hubs oriented around topics such as breaking news, justice and high school sports. As part of their coverage, each reporter is expected to develop an obsession to follow, inspired by the way Quartz organizes coverage around changing phenomena instead of fixed institutions. As at Quartz, they’ll refrain from covering institutions just because they’ve always covered them. And unlike beats, obsessions aren’t expected to live forever. To start, reporters are expected to pitch an obsession that they can report on regularly for six months."
They let go of routines:
"The business desk wrote about earnings reports as a matter of routine, regardless of whether or not any real news was in those reports. Letting go of some of those habits has been hard for some reporters, especially veterans"
They’re learning from their own startup:
"One year ago, the Morning News officially launched a site that would serve as both an experiment and, hopefully, an example. It was inspired by a question: What would happen if they created a startup."
It’s acting like a website instead of a newspaper:
"Morning news meetings used to start at 10:30 a.m.. A group of editors took turns sharing budget lines from their departments. They slotted the stories for the next day into a spreadsheet. Now, their morning meeting is a headline rodeo. ... For the first few minutes of the 9 a.m. meeting, editors grab dry erase markers and scribble headlines across a white board wall. Then, they vote. They move on to analytics and see what worked and what didn’t on social media from the day before."
If journalists don’t have the digital skills needed, they’re going to get them:
"Included in the introduction to the report and among a detailed list of goals is to get everyone at the Morning News more training. Editors are planning to analyze where the newsroom’s greatest needs are so they can conduct training to satisfy them."
With support from the Knight Foundation, the paper is re-examining its business plan which also means assessing the future of the print edition and the small team left working on it while the rest of the staff have moved to the web.
The tensions between print and digital highlight the "juggling act" required of legacy media.
"Legacy news organizations like the Morning News face at least two big hurdles, said Raju Narisetti, senior vice president for strategy at News Corp.
Narisetti spoke about legacy news organizations in general and not the Morning News specifically, but newspapers, broadcasters and magazines share this problem. Significant portions of their revenue come from legacy offerings — such as print editions — so significant money has to be spent to keep those wheels turning, Narisetti said.
“So the juggling act is very, very hard to do in reality while those that have started out in the digital era don’t have the same challenges.”
The second challenge has to do with who’s in charge. Many of the people running legacy organizations have spent most of their careers inside them. They may not have much time in their careers left. And they’re probably surrounded by people in similar circumstances. So they’re often unwilling or unable to make riskier moves, and that leaves them doing a lot of patchwork, Narisetti said."
Read the full article.
