The Pew Research Center's new Project for Excellence in Journalism study shines a spotlight on the cultural divide between print and digital employees -- one I think is illustrated by last week's sudden power shift within the USA Today Sports Media Group.
The Poynter Institute's Rick Edmonds highlights this section of the 28-page report, which was published today:
“Newspaper executives described an industry still caught between the gravitational pull of the legacy tradition and the need to chart a faster digital course. A number of them worried that their companies simply had too many people -- whether it be in the newsroom, the boardroom or on the sales staff -- who were too attached to the old way of doing things.”
The report also notes the growing centralization of decision-making, as power shifts from individual worksites to corporate headquarters.
"For a striking example of that tension," Edmonds writes, "check Gannett’s upbeat corporate announcements against the mutinous comments from the trenches in Jim Hopkins’s Gannett Blog. One of the steady complaints from the troops is that initiatives that were doing well locally -- like many of the Moms Like Me websites, now shut down -- got ruined by cookie-cutter standardization from Corporate."
The Poynter Institute's Rick Edmonds highlights this section of the 28-page report, which was published today:
“Newspaper executives described an industry still caught between the gravitational pull of the legacy tradition and the need to chart a faster digital course. A number of them worried that their companies simply had too many people -- whether it be in the newsroom, the boardroom or on the sales staff -- who were too attached to the old way of doing things.”
"For a striking example of that tension," Edmonds writes, "check Gannett’s upbeat corporate announcements against the mutinous comments from the trenches in Jim Hopkins’s Gannett Blog. One of the steady complaints from the troops is that initiatives that were doing well locally -- like many of the Moms Like Me websites, now shut down -- got ruined by cookie-cutter standardization from Corporate."
Wow Jim. You continue to be a real source for mainstream news and even Pew Research.
ReplyDeleteCorporate and the corporate interlopers on this blog cannot deny that. As we say in journalism, those are the facts.
Thank you for providing an important voice these last few years.
6:04 Thank you.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, however, the Pew study was completed before last week's USA Today Sports Media Group shake-up.
It's my opinion that the trends noted by Pew are seen in what's happening within that USAT digital affiliate.
Jim, thanks for giving the rank and file the ability to make our voices heard. We're the ones who don't get golden parachutes.
ReplyDeleteIts not about being mutinous. You know the bulk of whom don't get it? Entrenched managers. They'll do as much as covering as they can, throwing as many people as they have to under the bus, to hang on. This is how we get the likes of Rudd Davis, Heather Frank, John Hillkirk, Maryam Banikarim and all the others of their ilk. Proven leadership my ass.
ReplyDeleteHunke should have been tossed a year ago. He doesn't even bullshit well any more.
I'll live to see you - all of you - hanging from the highest yardarm in the British fleet!
ReplyDelete