Leadership Report 2011
“The toughest choices are about resources today, and you have to pick the things that go to your core mission. Part of the answer is as much what you don’t do as what you do.”
Sherry Chisenhall, The Wichita Eagle
“You have to constantly reiterate what the key practices and thinking are about the new world.”
Michael Skoler, Public Radio International
“Tactics change constantly as the industry changes. As long as you have a good strategy, the tactics can change day to day.”
Carlos Sanchez, formerly Waco Tribune-Herald
“Using an iPad, using an iPhone, using apps, location-based tools, mapping, etc., if you’re not using these things, you can’t understand the readers’ expectations.”
Carolyn Washburn, The Cincinnati Enquirer
The traditional local news organizations of today are unrecognizable in many ways from the ones that existed just five years ago. Visibly smaller in size and ambition, many have embraced digital and social media platforms. But they struggle to break with tradition and to find a mission and a revenue model that will assure their future beyond print.
Leadership has never mattered more for these organizations. For most leaders in today’s newsroom, the challenge is actually three challenges: Transform yourself, transform your bosses and transform your organization.
Dramatic shifts in the news landscape call for different ways of approaching news leadership. The top-down, perfectionist newsrooms of the past seem ill fitted to a digital paradigm, which favors collaboration, experimentation and a willingness to make mistakes in the open and learn from them.
This report highlights best practices that top leaders of news organizations who participated in Knight Digital Media Center leadership programs say have made them more effective as they seek to move their organizations forward.
Contents
- Knight-McCormick leadership programs
Best practices: Insights from the field
- Conclusion
Appendixes
- Links to KDMC resources
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