Last Updated: December 0, 0
Printer-friendly version
Newspaper culture
Newsroom culture under the microscope
Aggressive/Defensive attitudes prevail in the majority
of surveyed newspapers, leading to confrontation, competitiveness and jockeying
for power
By Linda Grist Cunningham
The temptation to dig in our heels on our ways to harrumphing denials
will be almost irresistible to many newspaper editors. We’ve rarely
met an idea we couldn’t argue against. But, the fundamental mantra of our
newsrooms – stay detached and perfectly objective – which we consider imperative,
could be our single biggest undoing.
Northwestern University’s Readership Institute’s “Impact Study” paints
a less-than-upbeat picture of the internal culture of newspapers and warns
that without significant changes, none of us should anticipate good times
ahead.
This summer the institute released the results of its baseline people
management surveys, which measured newspaper workplace cultures at the
100 newspapers participating in the multi-year research project sponsored
by the NAA, ASNE and Northwestern’s Readership Institute. Through its in-depth
analysis of newspaper cultures and work forces, and through substantive
content and market research, the Impact Study hopes to determine the key
components and strategies that drive increased readership. Results of the
content and market research are expected later this year and early next
year.
Prove it or stop talking about it
The people portion of the research was divided into three segments designed
to explore a central premise: “Our employees are our most valuable resource
… and therefore, the management of people makes a significant difference
to company performance.” The challenge, not unexpectedly, was “prove it,
or else stop talking about it.”
Using consultants who had conducted similar extensive research for other
industries, the Readership Institute launched a three-segment analysis
of the newspaper industry, focusing on the four major departments that
drive readership: advertising, circulation, marketing and news-editorial.
The three segments included (1) a statistical review of the work force,
including such information as hours worked, ethnic and gender diversity,
evaluation and hiring, education and background; (2) an analysis of the
work place cultures most common in newspapers; and (3) a management practices
survey, which measured how employee selection, development, performance
management and compensation affected performance.
Because many newspapers have long tracked their staff demographics,
the statistical review offered few unexpected observations. And, as any
newsroom city editor would confirm, there’s no argument with the finding
that the 27 percent of newsroom staffers who are supervisors work 35 percent
of the hours each week.
The real harrumphing will come with the reports on culture and people
management practices. We’re not going to “like” the results of either study.
We prefer to think we’re doing a good job managing and leading employees
and that we’ve created environments that foster and reward talent. The
results leave little doubt: What we think we are bears little resemblance
to what we really are.
Four cultures and what they mean
Newspaper cultures come in four broadly-defined categories: (1) Constructive,
which is what few of us have and all of us wish we had; (2) Aggressive/Defensive,
which is what most of us have and shouldn’t; (3) Passive/Defensive, which
is what some of us have and shouldn’t; and, (4) Passive/Aggressive, which
mixes the worst of numbers two and three.
Let’s take a look at each of the four cultures, their characteristics
and the effects they have on the newspaper.
Constructive: Seventeen of the 90 responding newspapers can lay
claim, however tenuously, to constructive cultures. Across all circulation
sizes, departments and hierarchies, newspaper employees say they
want to work in a “constructive” culture.
The constructive culture helps “people meet satisfaction needs ... People
balance expectations for thinking independently and taking initiative with
expectations to work consensually and share power. They regularly voice
unique perspectives and concerns while working toward agreement.”
Among the hallmarks of a constructive culture: people are expected to
encourage others, be good listeners and help others develop. People enjoy
their work, think in unique and independent ways and maintain personal
integrity.
Those are great places to work, but even among the 17 constructive culture
newspapers in the study, it’s easy to lapse into the less effective cultures.
Aggressive/Defensive: Like it or not, this describes most of
our newspaper cultures. Of the 90 newspapers responding to the survey,
27 displayed this culture. These newspapers are task-oriented. Staffers,
said the research, “approach tasks forcefully, not to further the overall
goals of the newspaper as much to protect their status, security and turf.”
In the aggressive/defensive culture, people are expected to persist
and endure, to appear competent and independent, to keep on top of everything.
They are expected to look for mistakes, stay detached and perfectly objective,
and to point out flaws. Aggressive/ defensive newspapers tend toward confrontation,
competitiveness and jockeying for power.
In short, our national newspaper culture reflects all the “mean” things
readers have said about newspapers for years: We find fault with everything;
we never get involved; we are aloof; arrogant and absolutely sure we are
right.
Passive/Defensive: Twenty-one newspaper cultures were described
as passive/defensive. These can be pleasant places to work if only because
folks do whatever it takes to please others and to avoid interpersonal
conflict. It’s a culture of low risk and security. Jobs are narrowly defined
and there’s lots of supervision.
Hallmarks of the passive/defensive newspaper culture: Staffers push
decisions upward, take few chances and make “popular” decisions.
Passive/Aggressive: Twenty-five newspaper cultures took the best
– and worst – aspects of the previous two cultures and mixed them together
for a potent and potentially volatile environment. This is a work place
in which some folks aggressively push all the buttons and give all the
orders, while the other half of the staff keeps its head down. It’s an
environment in which risk-taking and innovation simply cannot thrive.
Maybe it helps to think of the four culture styles in terms of an historic
event. Almost 20 years ago, when USA TODAY first hit the newsstands, the
newspaper industry divided itself into an almost quintessentially “passive/aggressive”
culture. Here was an innovative, highly risky venture never before tried
in the newspaper industry. While there were a handful of newspaper folks
(the constructives) who actually liked, understood and supported the concept,
unusual though it was for the time, the rest of the industry did one of
two things.
The passive/defensives tried to ignore USA TODAY, hoping that someone
somewhere would make the decision that it would go away.
The aggressive/defensives went for the throat. Hate it, the downfall
of American journalism, the end of credibility, MacPaper and similar epithets.
The theory here was confrontation that kills. We’ve never done such a thing
before, and by heaven above, we ought not do so now.
Some good news, too
Is there any “good news” from the cultural research? The research clearly
shows that newspapers have a long way to go to become the nimble, responsive,
innovative businesses we must be to compete successfully in today’s world.
But, it can be done, say the researchers, if we are committed to change.
In our favor are four major strengths. Most newspaper staffers intend
to stay on the job. Most of them are highly motivated and believe they
have job security. And, then there’s the fourth and perhaps most important:
Across the board, newspaper employees agree the hallmarks of a constructive
culture would best motivate them.
Newspaper executives, managers and top leaders tend to perceive their
own newspaper cultures as constructive, even at newspapers that overall
are not. Top management may have achieved for itself the constructive culture
the entire newspaper needs to foster. It would be easy to assume that what’s
true for top execs is true for the rest of the building. With rare exceptions,
it is not. It can be.
People management
The extensive, 65-page summary of newspaper people management practices
may be boiled down to this: We hired you; here’s the job and what you have
to do; sink or swim; you’re on your own.
Newspapers across the board lag far behind other industries in adopting
the people management practices associated with top-performing companies.
We’ve paid lip service to the best practices and continued our historic
– and often effective in the past – management styles.
It is no surprise to the journeymen of the newspaper business that “there
may be implied and/or accepted standards about the way people are managed
in the newspaper industry that have grown up over a long period of time,”
as the research states.
Indeed, journalists who have traded newspapers multiple times recognize
this. What and how one newsroom does things is much the same as another,
differing only in extent of resources and occasional shifts in priorities.
But what surprised the researchers most was the astounding 80 percent
of all respondents who said their newspapers did not have in place the
best people management practices. “It is highly unlikely,” wrote the researchers,
“that there are many other industries in the U.S. today where, as a whole,
they have a similarly low self-report in this area.”
The areas in which we are “relatively” strong include: clarity of objectives
and direction (we can and do tell employees what to do and why); communication
with managers (our supervisors usually know what’s going on, but probably
not the rest of the staff); customer focus (we do understand that readers
and advertisers are our customers); individual responsibility (we respect
the individual); and latitude and authority (individuals have a lot of
room to work and make decisions).
But, we are buildings of “silos.” Get used to that word, because we’re
going to hear it a lot these days. The walls among our departments – and
often within our departments – are so high and so often impenetrable –
that we hamper our future business success.
If the newspaper industry is to negotiate successfully the highly competitive
communications and information worlds, we must overhaul our people management
practices. And, it will take far more than writing job descriptions and
conducting on-time performance appraisals, which perhaps surprisingly,
we already do fairly well.
This research offers an extensive, almost overwhelming, array of interwoven
possibilities. First and foremost must come an acceptance of the underlying
research. We are not in good shape and we are in even less condition to
compete in the future. If we give into our historic “culture” of aggressively
denying there’s a problem, attacking the messenger, or simply ignoring
the information, we will not survive.
We must improve our selection of staffers with innovative recruiting
and hiring practices. We must vastly improve our development of those staffers
through upgraded, ongoing commitments to training, to promoting from within,
to personal and professional opportunities to grow and succeed, to be a
leading part of the process. We must improve compensation and work at every
level to empower employees so that they will choose to remain with the
newspaper.
For decades, newspapers have said that people were their most valuable
asset. As the Impact Study overwhelmingly shows: We’ve just been talking.
It’s time to “prove it or else stop talking about it.”
Cunningham is executive editor of the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star,
one of the Impact Study newspapers.
