Mpi-actions

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"Ready, Fire, Aim:" Ideas from the Mid-America Press Institute

(this page is here: http://tinyurl.com/mpi-actions)

Here a set of questions and possible action items developed on Day One by 20 newspaper participants in a Feb. 13-14, 2010 journalism and newsroom management summit at a St. Louis hotel sponsored by the Mid-America Press Institute and the Illinois Press Foundation. These notes were taken by Bill Densmore of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, who participated. You can read the Twitter hashtag #mpichange to find other links to the program and discussion.


PDF DOWNLOADS:

SESSION NOTES AND REPORTS:



From gatekeeper to infovalet (Bill Densmore)

IDEAS WE HEARD THAT WE'RE GOING TO IMPLEMENT:

  • Through Twitter, individualize
  • How are we going to monetize it?
  • Sports premium content
  • What's your premium content for your market / how do you segment audience
  • Paid app for any city's passion (Miami git $1.99 for Dolphins app for a year)
  • Get in front of mobile; it will kill desktops
  • iPad -- problem of Apple as gatekeeper
  • Open Source app collaborative for news media

LEADING QUESTIONS:

  • Brainstorm the services you can deliver that people will find indispensible and worth paying for. Make them.
  • Why should your reader tell you about their interests?
  • What can you do for them as a result to help them get through the day better?
  • Why should you readers pay for news? How will you make the case to them?
  • How about creating a newshare commons in your community?
  • Have you named your mobile editor? (Clyde Bentley)



The newspaper is not dead, long live the newspaper (John Foreman)

IDEAS WE HEARD THAT WE'RE GOING TO IMPLEMENT:

  • Can't be cafeteria any more / prioritize; break news online; print more deliberate and context
  • Dispense with process stories
  • Use Associated Content? No consensus.
  • Port online to print

LEADING QUESTIONS:

  • How do we service non-newspaper readers and not abandon the core newspaper readers? Why should we?
  • What are the things newspapers do best? How do we dispense with the rest?
  • Can we focus on both preserving print and be first in web services?



Video innovation in a tought budget (Dave Morris)

IDEAS WE HEARD THAT WE'RE GOING TO IMPLEMENT:

  • All reporters will have Flip cameras
  • J-Lab/Knight Digital/NewsU is free; camera is $95
  • Annoint a champion on the staff
  • Get the public to tag their photos/video

LEADING QUESTIONS:

  • What will it take to equip all reporters with a videocamera?
  • How are you going to make that happen?
  • How are you going to get what they do edited and posted, at little cost?
  • How about an active outreach to the public to submit video?
  • Strategies for deciding how stories can best be told / multimedia bingo

Tweets and social networking (Steve Buttry)

IDEAS WE HEARD THAT WE'RE GOING TO IMPLEMENT:

  • Use Twitter regularly
  • SM curator/guide is an evangelist
  • Make SM part of competence
  • Get past the hate factor
  • Plan ahead for SM component of big stories
  • Implement hash tag taxonomy for your community
  • Develop industry-level hash-tag system?

LEADING QUESTIONS:

  • Name a reporter as your social-media curator / guide
  • Ask the public to hashtag onto Twitter feeds you create
  • Connect your newsroom with the public in physical/virtual venues



Managing newsroom change (Mizell Stewart)

IDEAS WE HEARD THAT WE'RE GOING TO IMPLEMENT:

  • What's the worst career thing to happen as comparison to reality
  • Be cognizant of managing change stages
  • Challenge senior editors with goals for continuous monthly incremental change
  • Cross-pollenate change mentality
  • Remember human element / be kind
  • Importance of training
  • Take care of yourself when everything around you is changing / better health makes it easier to deal with stress
  • Specific praise is essential

LEADING QUESTIONS:

  • When will you have a newsroom-change staff retreat?
  • How do you inject sense of urgency into a "we've always done it this way" environment?
  • Hold a community-information needs summit in your city -- get public help!