"Our goal is not to have a 'digital first' enterprise. That phrase is as exhausted as it is trite. Our goal is to be great on all platforms, and to not trip over one platform to get to another."
On Monday The Boston Globe published a memo from editor Brian McGrory listing the steps they are taking to restructure its newsroom in this digital-first—ahem, strike that—in this evolving journalistic landscape.
Many of the changes hit our B2B homes—and will be further addressed at the SIPA Annual 2017 Conference, June 5-7, here in Washington, D.C. For instance, he writes that, "We'll work double-time with other departments around the building to seek a more coherent video strategy." Nikesh Desai, one of our keynotes, told me the same thing for InvestingChannel a couple weeks ago, adding "There's a huge demand for video inventory from sponsors."
Here are 8 more thoughts from the memo, and SIPA 2017 sessions that can help. Remember, early-bird deadline is this Friday!
1. An express desk for breaking and trending news. "The common thread in all these stories is an urgency to get them published," wrote McGrory. "Through this desk, we will produce the in-the-moment important, quirky and just plain fascinating stories that metrics show our readership craves..."
Attend the session, Attracting and Incentivizing Content Creators.
2. An audience engagement team to get "the right journalism in front of the right audience at, again, the right time. They will oversee our alerts and newsletters, be the rigorous stewards of provocative and delightful headlines, push training opportunities... and know the social platforms where huge readership—and revenue opportunities—await." McGrory appointed a person to oversee this and then joked that that person will also "run the lobby juice bar at 53 State, be the Globe CFO, and manage the company softball team."
Attend the session, Editorial 'Secret Sauce' Success Formula.
3. No more silos. "We'll continue to have small teams from the newsroom working with other departments in the organization, specifically advertising, circulation and events, so that we do a far better job keeping in touch, sharing what we can share, and collaborating on projects."
Matthew Cibellis of Education Week will lead the session, Editorial-Driven Events.
4. They will add a traffic cop to make the room smoothly run through the day and across the week... constantly weighing the balance of enterprise work with quicker hits, giving voice to the audience engagement team, and assuring that our most important stories are rigorously edited earlier in the day..."
Attend the session Inspiring Trust with Lisa Harrington of IRMI.
5. A newsroom Innovations Editor. "We too often have creative ideas, but no place to take them." The person he appointed is "someone who can assess the value, then reach across departments, to advertising, circulation, and events, in order to get them into the mix."
Attend the sessions, Unearthing New Market Segments and Creating Products that Sell and Best Practices Panel: Building a Company-Wide Culture of Innovation.
6. A digital Storytelling Team, comprised of staff from product development, and design. "This is utterly central to what we do, how we attract digital subscribers, and how we keep them... we need to devote ever more of our design and graphics firepower to the digital side."
Attend Aligning Editorial Strategy with Sales and Marketing.
7. Figuring out video. "Right now, there's a disconnect between what our advertisers want and what our readers are clicking, and a stark, perhaps unchangeable disparity between the huge success of our videos on social channels and the far more modest viewership on site." That sounds very familiar.
Key sessions at SIPA Annual will be Branded Video: How to Repurpose Content and Engage Audience and Video Tutorial Workshop: From Setup to Editing.
8. An earlier day. McGrory wants people working earlier. "A good part of the Express Desk will certainly launch between 6 and 8 a.m. The morning news meeting will be moved soon to 9:15. The entire room has to default to a 9 rather than a 10 a.m. start. For anyone with a daily, this may become expected. Although McGrory does say that means getting off earlier. "There's a big, happy, fulfilling life to be lived at 4, 5 or 6 in the evening, at home and in the throes of the city, and we'll all be better journalists for living it."
Ryan Dohrn of Brain Swell Media will lead the session, Boosting Productivity for Maximizing Sales.
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Nevena Jovanovic.
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…