The Online Journalism Review's Robert Niles has an exhaustive list of advice for today's newsroom managers. It largely amounts to: Get with the program.
Niles continues to see a lag between the technology and the media leader. He believes it's only a matter of time before newspapers outside the U.S. suffer what they have inside the country, so he has delivered a speech in Singapore and delivered notes from it online.
Among his prescriptions:
1. Management should consume technology.
2. Require everyone to blog and have social media accounts.
3. Managers should Skype and chat instead of sending memos or talking on the phone.
4. Managers should build their communities by blogging.
Niles concludes: "Ultimately, however, the larger goal here is to get managers comfortable with, and conversant in, online communications technology.
"This comfort can't be outsourced or delegated. As news communication businesses shift from print to online, their managers must become as comfortable and conversant in online communication as they were with the printed word. Otherwise, their leaders are reduced to followers, and their businesses run adrift."
Jill Geisler, one of Poynter's prominent contributors, has weighed in at the 10-year mark at the institute with a thoughtful piece on five myths on managers.
The myths in shorthand: People will do what you want, you should keep your distance, you should arrive first and leave last, you should simply hire well and get out of the way, and you should be the smartest on the team.
What makes a good manager? Comments, even those a little close to the bone, welcome.
The annual Newsroom Barometer is out from the World Editors Forum and Reuters its results suggest greater comprehension of the quality and quantity of newsroom change necessary in the time ahead. The Zogby poll of more than 700 editors and news executives in 120 countries was conducted in March.
A year ago editors were assessing the landscape differently, with some hesitation or early judgment of the value of multi-platform journalism.
Now an overwhelming number see integrated newsrooms as the norm, see the multi-platform journalist as the basic model, and view outsourcing as a given on certain functions.
Certainly, more want to hire more journalists, but more view online as the most common means of consumption within five years, and more also see news as a free commodity in the future.
A big interest and concern: Training. Editors are a little anxious that, having understood the need, they may not have the means to carry out the transformation.
A big priority for their media: Analysis and commentary. Editors view the value of value-added information as increasing in an age of commoditized conent.
A big worry: The loss of young readers. This is viewed as their biggest issue, and no one seems to have the answer.
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