E-Media Tidbits

John Means Whatever, via Flickr (CC license) Curmudgeons can be found anywhere, but especially in newsrooms.

Forty years ago, no one needed "a weatherman to see which the wind blows" as change transformed America's social and political culture. Today, as change transforms workplace and business culture, it might be the newsman we don't need.

But more precisely, it is the "aggressive-defensive" culture of many contemporary news organizations -- newspapers especially -- that no one needs, or reads. This month, a Readership Institute research study concluded, "Newspapers with constructive cultures tend also to have higher readership."

Recently Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen have been talking about curmudgeons and the "curmudgeon factor" in the decline of the modern newspaper.

Mark Glaser's July 23 MediaShift post and interview with long-time researcher Vickey Williams, director of the Digital Workforce Initiative at Northwestern University's Media Management Center brings this into sharper focus.

Glaser documents the continuing curmudgeon problem, and refines our understanding of this problem by putting the "aggressive-defensive" newsroom into a research context. The news business is not the first mature industry to face structural, technological, and economic changes.

Williams characterizes the current workplace situation in newspapers as "...oppositional, perfectionist, and conventional... Younger voices get shut down by veterans who fall back on ingrained behaviors."

Her work and research by the Readership Institute presents a profile of Newspaper Industry Culture -- and it isn't constructive.

Williams gets down to specifics: "Certain people in an organization are going to play it safe and conventional... Certain other people are going to argue down everything. Certain people will look for this to pass, because 'gosh we've been through so many other things...' but they're all equally effective at standing still and doing nothing."

Journalism education is suffering from the same culture clash and crash. According to Williams, j-school cuts down millenials so they fit into an old-fashioned and outmoded workplace.

Robert Niles of Online Journalism Review echoed that complaint when he told MediaShift about the demise of his pioneering online publication: "Even the Annenberg School at USC, with its $100 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation in 2002, suffers from the same problems as the media institutions it's training students to join: resistance to change." Similarly, veteran news biz consultant Vin Crosbie reported with dismay that at j-schools he found "faculties resistant to change and students whose insights and mastery of new media were being eroded by the authoritative resistance to change of so many professors."

Is there a remedy for toxic workplace culture and for newsrooms that operate like silos; lack coordination among departments; and discourage collaboration, teamwork, and cooperation? Williams suggests moving toward a "constructive culture" in the workplace. This could include:

• Positive rewards for motivation, rather than negative sanctions.
• Encouraging individuals by providing opportunities for development and learning that lead to enjoyment of the work
• Providing space for employees to think in unique and independent ways and to build personal integrity.

Sure, some of this conflict is generational. Millenials want to be positive and balance life and work. Boomers are perfectionists who will work 70 hours a week.

Like any good story, this one involves money, jobs, people's futures, Truth, Freedom, democracy, and that "get off the stage" phenomena playing out between leaders of a certain age and youth in several cultural contexts.

Back in April, Tidbits editor Amy Gahran decried the toxic culture of journalism. She wrote: "Journalists ... are supposed to be fundamentally curious and profoundly interested in what's happening around them. Right now is no time for despair. It's time to stop discouraging each other and start applying our innately enterprising abilities to our own field." I think this is even more true today.

Finally, although he isn't here to comment on the situation, Marshall McLuhan advised in Media is the Message: "It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame." So if the culture of the newsroom workplace is our framework, maybe it is time to step out of the frame and take a new look at journalism, news, and the media.