Gut check time: Do you think that the folks running your shop can get it done?
As I wrote earlier this week, the biggest challenge facing the journalism industry today is increased competition, mostly from the Web. Do you believe that the individuals managing your news organization are up to that challenge? Can they keep your news organization alive, financially viable and socially influential for the next decade?
If you are a solo publisher or blogger, you should vote on whether you trust yourself to be able to meet this challenge. If you work for an independent newsroom, you are voting on your publisher and upper-level management. If you work for a corporation, you are voting on both your local management as well as corporate leadership. After all, if one succeeds and the other fails… you still fail.
We would love to read, in the comments, your specific reasons why you think your news organization’s management will succeed, or fail.
Remember, you can log out and post anonymously now on OJR, if that makes you more comfortable writing honestly about your bosses. (Anonymous comments will be reviewed before being published and the submitting IP address will be posted with each anonymous comment. Registered members get their posts published immediately.)
About Robert Niles
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No – our news organization Global Cultural Diversity Films, Inc. a boutique digital/HD production company is unable to succeed.
We produce entertaining print articles and film media to inform and educate mainstream America to think beyond the social norms of glamour, glitz, drugs, and violence … the utter superficial life styles of achieving the American dream -
When we completed “MISTAKEN IDENTITY – A 9/11 Story” which won 3 first prize awards at American Film Festivals, it was rejected by mainstream both print and TV media.
PBS producers requested broadcasting the film for “free,” after it cost us over $250,000 to complete a professional one hour TV program budget. It was produced by a diversified and professional group of filmmakers, Polish cameraman, Irish American 4-time Emmy award winner editor and producers from Taiwan, Pakistan and India.
HBO Documentary programming replied: “… it does not fit into the scope of programming we are currently producing…” on 9/11.
But the story is about how a young 21-year old American girl from Greenwich CT discovers her Sikh neighbors after 9/11 – never having had a Sikh friend in school or college. For the first time, after she hears the verbal profiling, racial attacks and killings of Sikhs, mistaken for Arab terrorists, simply because they wore
turbans and beards.
How can our news organization succeed when the news gateholders – the media barons do not uphold “freedom of speech” for all.
Therefore, I believe that the individuals managing the news media in America are not really up to the challenge for the new millennium, which is a sad state of global affairs.
no, they’re just too old. most of them don’t even know what RSS stands for and they’re unwilling to listen to the younger folks in the newsroom who actually do get it. part of what holds them back is the old newsroom idea that you have to have been in journalism for 20 years before someone in a glass office listens and respects your opinion. this new ‘challenge’ that faces our industry isn’t about journalism, it’s about surviving in a new medium, the web, and current management, better surround themselves with folks who ‘get it’ before they drive our industry into the ground. hopefully it’s not too late.
Whoa! As an “old one” when do you think newsrooms listened to someone who had been there 20 years? — not since I was a pup and they eased out everyone with experience during the early 1970s. Institutional memory at most news organizations is just a fading memory.
Back to the question at hand: at our public television system people over 50 know what RSS is and use it. We are constantly experimenting with ways to incorporate the Web in what we do and interweave e-mail and other technologies. We may not be forging ahead full-steam but we are moving forward as resources, time and energy allow. Nothing we do is “just television” anymore.
For a long time, I’ve been of the mind that the news and informational style of writing is lost on myself, and so-called Gen X.
It’s friggin boring. So, to counteract this, we need young editors who allow their reporters the freedom to be enterprising and engaging.
I’m not saying reinvent the wheel. But I am confident my managing editor (she’s 32) is hip enough, smart enough and savvy enough to steer us through the proverbial web competition storm.
Currently, we are mad to drive traffic to our site. However, there is traffic that goes for Brittney, Lindsay, Brangela etc. Then there are the local politicians, bureaucrats, business people who look for info for their own purposes.
I fear that by following the broad range traffic metrics, we may neglect a core of readers, surfers who consitute our real bread and butter.
Currently we are mad to drive traffic to our site. I think this is worthy in the short term, but I worry that by going for the bulk numbers with celeb or ghoul news, we may be neglecting the local markets that are the bread and butter of the print side, although they don’t get anywhere near the number of clicks that Brittney or the pregnant man generate.
What does it mean when a pregnant man story gets 2 million clicks and the local business roundup gets 800 in the same time period?
I also worry that the print side may be using the online stats to develop news judgment.
Does this mean we are following or leading the market?