What's the Opposite of Innovation?
Yesterday, LAT Editor Jim O'Shea announced a broad new initiative to shift focus from the LAT print publication to its website. He's just created an "editor for innovation" position.
(Hell, every newsroom is bestowing that made-up title on one of its top suits these days. Why should a three-hour time difference delay what's now ubiquitous on the East Coast from taking a strong hold in Cali?)
Biz Editor Russ Stanton is the new digital guy in town. Here's part of a memo sent from the LAT top brass to its staff when Stanton was named to his most recent role as chief of the business desk:
To: The Staff
From: John Carroll and Dean BaquetWe are pleased to announce the appointment of Russ Stanton as business editor of The Times.
Russ has done a terrific job as deputy editor of the section and as Orange County business editor before that. He is respected by the staff - and by us -- for his deep knowledge of the business world, his commitment to quality journalism and his integrity in dealing with people.
Russ has been a business journalist from the start of his career at the Visalia Times-Delta. He has covered agriculture, aerospace, real estate and manufacturing. Before joining The Times as a reporter in 1997, he was business editor of the Orange County Register.
Russ has a vast knowledge of business and the region, and a clear sense of the stories this paper should dominate in the coming years. But what really drew us to Russ were some other attributes that emerged from conversations with The Times business staff over the last few weeks: He is a leader who commands trust, respect and affection from his colleagues...
Anyone else catch what's missing from this memo? Where's the section about how Russ innovated new, clean multimedia templates to help increase user stickiness? Or the part about how Russ developed relationships with outside bloggers so that he's engendered interest and trust in online communities? So much so that they'll create symbiotic information sharing projects?
From the Times' own story about the move:
O'Shea named Business Editor Russ Stanton to the innovation post and said the "Internet 101" course would teach reporters, editors and photographers to become "savvy multimedia journalists," able to enhance their writing with audio and video reports. He emphasized the need for speed in reforming an operation that he called "woefully behind" the competition.
The Times has just made the same mistake that Philadelphia Media Holdings, Inc., the company that now owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, has been making for the past two years. (I'd have linked the Inky and DN, but neither paper has its own website. Instead, philly.com houses content from both and remains a wholly separate entity. Want more? The PMH site isn't even updated and still lists ousted Inky editor Amanda Bennett as the person in charge. Innovative!)
The people leading the digital revolution aren't the business editors, the deputy managing editors for sports or the photogs with a bit of HTML training. They're not the yes men.
They're the code monkeys hacking away in their spare time. They're the true digital journalists, who maybe have less experience reporting the news but a deep knowledge about how and why our Internet works. They understand why you can't just offer an Internet 101 class, send reporters out into the street with a digicam and audio recorder, throw that content on the web and call it a night.
O'Shea has missed a great opportunity here. From what I'm observing, PMH doesn't seem to care about its future or about truly embracing digital journalism and adapting as the Internet continues to change. Why, oh why, are newspapers grasping at video straws? Video is what NBC does. Audio is what NPR does. Newspapers have, at least in theory, the capability of telling all area stories with lots of details and rich analysis. Why not take that concept and digitize it? Vast databases with sleek UIs. Rich historical timelines and an internally-linked bio file for people mentioned in stories. Inviting participation by users - uploading their video feed to accompany a thoughtful reporter's work.
You want innovation? And I mean real innovation -- not some cobbled-together photo slideshow? Visit the BBC site.
Have a look at BuzzTracker, a project developed by a student at Penn. Hell, even the guy behind gahooyoogle is changing the way I perceive and hunger for information.
It's those kinds of folks newspapers should be hiring. Why is this concept so alien to the editors & publishers?