Motivating and leading for innovation
Posted 9/16/2008 6:33:00 PM

Innovation can come from anywhere, how do you nurture it and get buy-in? How do you rally people behind a change when the idea comes from the top editors or your corporate parent? Conversely, what do you do with renegades? How do you let just one or two staffers that are not newsroom leaders make drastic change in the newsroom?

• Case Study: A look at how the Detroit Free Press handled the corporate mandate of a new entertainment web site, Metromix.com. Launched in late March, Detroit Metromix.com is well ahead of all audience projections and is now the second largest site in the Metromix network.
  • Panelist: Managing Editor Digital Media Nancy Andrews with Metromix Editor BJ Hammerstein and Metromix Web Producer Ese Esan.
  • Brand: Our brand is everything to us, but should it be? What does your brand mean in your market to different audiences and advertisers? How do you get the newsroom to embrace another brand?
  • Different Content Type: Rich in data and utility, this is not your regular 15-inch story or 10-picture photo gallery. What are the different ways to evaluate the quality and value of your staff’s work? How do you motivate staff to do different work than they are accustomed to producing?
    Making someone else’s idea your own: How do you motivate the historically newspaper newsroom to see the connection to their core values in something like an Entertainment Web site.
• Case Study: Can’t we just do it? We all want change fast but we sometimes operate at a snail’s pace. We’ll look at the San Jose Mercury News and what happened when some photography staffers took matters in their own hands and created a multimedia Web site, mercurynewsphoto.com. This is actually somewhat typical of how many news organizations started online. How do we tap into that innovation again some 10 years later?
  • Panelist: Director of Photography Geri Migielicz and staff at the San Jose Mercury News.
  • How to handle great ideas and doers in the newsroom: How do you tap into the doers in your newsroom and let them run with it? What are the benefits and pitfalls? We walk through this case study. How do you reward breaking the rules?
  • Bringing innovation into the fold: In 2008, the main Mercury News Web site started housing multimedia. What has that change done for the site and the audience? How is innovation still working?

Members can watch this recorded Webinar for free. Just go to http://www.asne.org/members/webinars