SeoulBrother

Riffing off the postings of people smarter than I and making an ass of myself is something which I take great pride.

Good friend, scholar and journalist Carrie Brown asks a good question here.
Changing Newsrooms – Why should I care about “managing change?”

Warning: My ass-talkings below.

Websites and features that are popular one day are dropped the next as people move on to the next new thing.

Give me an example. I agree with to a point. Example Geocities,begets Friendster which begets MySpace/Facebook/Web 2. Geocities made it possible to easily establish and express your own identity online. Friendster enabled connection of individuals. The sites may change but human expression and identity don’t.

Technology continues to change astronomically…but human beings are slower to change.

But it’s the humans that drive the change because other humans demand features and fixes. Humans just want life to be easier, safer and generally better. Humans change things in order to stay the same.

And most importantly, it means a focus on finding ways to manage change to our product and our processes without changing those core values of journalism

Word. (psst, you’re missing a ‘.’ at the end of that sentence.)

It just means that we also have to put some time and attention in learning about change itself, and how to manage it.

Double Word. Ways to mitigate dramatic changes are to adopt standards for technology and processes.

Example: From an IT perspective newspapers (NPs) will spend a considerable amount of time evaluating several publishing systems. Each one is completely proprietary and requires a great deal of customization in order to implement and integrate. Finally, a committee makes a decision and the company is stuck with it for YEARS. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The last rinse cycle occurred between 5-8 years ago when many NPs moved to full pagination and implemented or upgraded publishing systems. Now their data is stuck in a proprietary system and will be painful and costly to migrate. Unless they upgrade to the new versions of the software which will be painful or costly or mildly both.

Repeat in 5-8 years.

Meanwhile NP’s biggest competition comes from the web with it’s damn flexibility, speed and adaptability. Why are the intarwebs so awesome? Because it’s designed that way. Everything is based on a standard. Each of these standards together provide a stable platform.

Many NPs are bleeding money right into these old, closed systems and processes. Those that converted early, eight or so years ago, can afford to be brave. Those that converted late will run a lot of wire.

Developers, like reporters and editors, use these standards and then look for new angles and sources to come up with something new, useful, timely, etc.

If NP’s adopted and built their infrastructure on defined technical standards they could and would be dynamic for a much lower TCO.

This is and should be a WHOLE COMPANY MISSION. It seems that the burden to save the industry falls on the Newsroom. Guess what? If the NP management, outside the newsroom, continues to manage change by attrition then NPs will fail. Fail.

Scary, but journalists shouldn’t worry too much. The new News world still needs reporters, editors and designers. I mean, have you see the crap out there on the internet?