Apparently, the journalism industry cannot multitask

May 21, 2014 - cjr.org - For the Times’ innovation report to stick, its journalists need to be on board

Doing journalism and keeping up with what is happening within journalism and the wider digital ecosystem at the same time is impossible

?????? What ??????

Since when is this unique only to journalism? Many industries require or encourage employees to study new trends and technologies to stay relevant while, obviously, performing their current job duties.

I'm unsure if that opening line from the Columbia Journalism Review article is a joke. If the author intends that sentence to be true, then it's yet another excuse for the demise of many aspects of the newspaper industry. If that's accepted thinking, then journalists should not be surprised when they get left behind.

The author, however, provides a reason for the thinking behind that opening line.

The ability to move at the speed of change is limited in any organization. And in one that has the fixed daily requirements of a print deadline it is slowed to a crawl. It used to be a standard joke at Web conferences that the world of newspaper websites was the trailing edge of all digital publishing.

So the solution is to stop printing, or gradually phase out printing. It's 2014, and many newspaper orgs are still too hindered by printing the daily paper. They are at least five years behind phasing out printing. These orgs have handicapped themselves. This makes that opening line even more ridiculous.

Maybe it should read:

"Doing print journalism and trying to innovate for a digital ecosystem at the same time is difficult."

It's not impossible.

So here's background for the opening line.

Duke University’s “The Goat Must Be Fed” report from the reporter’s lab noted the same problems: Doing journalism and keeping up with what is happening within journalism and the wider digital ecosystem at the same time is impossible.

Ultimately it comes down to this: Journalists are excellent at story decision, things in front of them that are happening right now.

They are, however, often not very good at platform decisions, which need greater strategic thought, a lot more planning, and a clear vision of where they might end up. Increasingly, stories mimic platforms.

Swapping story thinking for platform thinking is a critical challenge for the best journalists, and those who can do both will be the sort Dean Baquet will want to lead his rapidly evolving newsroom.

Another solution: hire qualified journalists and purge those who refuse to adapt to the future.

When reading articles like this, it feels like the author wishes for a time pre-Web, so before 1990.

More disturbing words from the author:

This self-assessed need to improve is alarming for other legacy news organizations ...

Alarming? That's typical newspaper industry defeatist speak. It's a reason why the newspaper industry was slow to adapt to and innovate for the web 15 years ago.

Alarming? What about exciting? The self-assessed need to improve should be viewed as challenging, refreshing, and exciting.

More from the article:

News outlets across the globe have been grappling with similar issues since the late 1990s. Institutionally they have dragged their feet, largely because the apparent risks were too frightening and the advantages of first mover were unclear.

That explains a lot. With that kind of attitude or institutional mindset, then I'll shed no tears for the newspaper industry.

The author left out "arrogance" as a reason why the newspaper industry failed to act quick enough to the changing informational landscape 15-plus years ago. The newspaper industry assumed it was invulnerable to consumer and technological trends.

More whining and excuses from the article:

It is exhausting, demoralizing, often futile, and it takes up time that needs to be spent thinking about what’s really next, not what the newsroom is next prepared to engage with.

Yet the author highlights another solution:

In one of the most candid staff responses to the report, leading interactive developer Derek Willis listed his own frustrations with leading innovation, suggesting that journalists have an individual responsibility to sharpen their own skills, rather than wait for improvement to be institutionally conferred.

Why does that text appear at the bottom of the article? The editor for that article should have replaced the intro text with that sentence.

Instead of

Doing journalism and keeping up with what is happening within journalism and the wider digital ecosystem at the same time is impossible

The article's intro line should have read

Journalists have an individual responsibility to sharpen their own skills, rather than wait for improvement to be institutionally conferred

The first option is defeatist while the second option provides a solution.