• Technology. Look no further than your photo department. The introduction of the AP Leafdesk just a few years ago radically changed job descriptions, functions and work flow. Leadership anticipates those changes. Management merely accommodates them.

• Business Environment. This may include changes in the industry or changes in the community. In our case, a changing business environment means changing demographics, readership patterns and lifestyles. It also means changes in culture. For instance, we’re a text medium in a visual universe, competing to win readers reared in the television age.

• Values. While the first three factors generally force change because of a negative turn of events, changes brought about by a values-based discussion are usually regarded as positive. A recent example is the Journalism Values Institute experience, driven by journalists within ASNE, funded by a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation. Our basic values were examined, redefined in ways that address modern situations, but the core elements were retained and strengthened.

"There is a large fundamental movement that editors are generating to review the processes that exist in newsrooms," he says. "That review requires leadership. It suggests we need to include staff more in decision-making, that creativity cannot be commanded to exist from on high, that we’re interested in the best ideas wherever they may come from."

The movement is reflected in the growth of leadership curricula at the traditional industry continuing education venues: API, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and the Newspaper Management Center.

Cowart reports a surge of interest in leadership as a study topic, produced partly by editors who ask for it and partly by publishers who push for it. API is emphasizing leadership in virtually all its programs, he says. Poynter has developed a new program in leadership development, which mixes television, new media and newspaper executives in a curriculum that lasts about half a year and includes on-campus and at-work study modules. The Newspaper Management Center has developed the Editorial Leadership Initiative, directed by Mike Smith.

"Clearly the role of newsroom leader has changed," says Ed Miller, an associate at Poynter. "We used to be responsible just for putting out the newspaper. Now the competitive and legal implications of everything we do have become much more challenging and dangerous.

"In the untrained editor, the natural response is to become more conservative, to rely on what worked in the past. What we really need are people who are more confident and aggressive within the limits of their capacity. The task is really how to succeed in the competitive environment and still be as vigorous as we can be in our journalism."

Leadership, says Miller, really consists of four elements:

• Vision. It’s called by various names, but it boils down to the answer to the questions: What do you want? Where do you want to go? Miller says he is surprised by how many editors haven’t answered those questions for themselves or their organizations.

• Environment. Once you know where you want to go, you have to get all those other folks in the newsroom to want to go along. (Miller’s favorite definition of leadership: getting other people to do what you want them to do — and like it.) To lead you must share your vision and get common understanding and agreement on what it means, and what each person’s role is in achieving the vision. "KITA (kick in the ass) is the oldest management style around. ‘I need the copy now.’ ‘Get me art.’ ‘Cut the story in half.’ KITA might work for dogs and cats, but you’d be surprised by how many people try and use it in newsrooms."

• Empowerment. You can’t do everything yourself, so you’ll have to rely on others. But being empowered to make many decisions doesn’t mean being entitled to make them all. First, empowering subordinates means training and coaching them, as well as giving them the resources they need to deal with issues you delegate to them. Second, the subordinate has a responsibility as well. He or she must take responsibility for the decision, for the position of stakeholders inside and outside the newsroom, for taking the heat afterward. "It’s a cooperative relationship of skills and responsibilities," Miller says. "George Patton used to say, ‘Don’t tell the GI how to do it, tell him what you want done.’ Leave room for creativity."

• Designing the organization. Is the organization cooperative, trusting and enabling? Do the right people sit next to the right people? Everything from table of organization to desk placement to office culture comes into play. "It’s the leader’s responsibility to create and maintain a culture and an organization that gets the job done well and leaves the people feeling included as contributors."

Some fear the change involved in a promotion, and the demands of leadership. "What we’re finding at Poynter is that we’re seeing more and more gifted people who say, ‘No, I don’t want to move up,’ " says Miller. "The new job will take more time, involve more struggle, with insufficient preparation. It’s just not worth it. People see themselves stuck in management, and away from the craft. They are good at one thing, but fear being thrust into another thing. They are not prepared for leadership."

Another is the broad comfort zone found in managing. An oft-told story makes the point: It has to do with workers, managers and leaders. They’re hacking their way through a jungle. The workers are bent to their task, plodding and hacking, sweat dripping from their brows. The managers are busy, giving water to the weary, sharpening the machetes, checking on the rate of progress. The leader climbs a tree and scans the horizon. "Wrong jungle!" he shouts down. "Shut up," comes the call from below, in a chorus. "We’re making progress!"

And then there is plain backlash.

Pete Meyer’s company advises leaders in many industries: retailers and manufacturers, businesses involved in food production, health care and high technology. He also does a lot of work with newspapers and occasionally with broadcasters.

"The principal difference we see is that there is a higher number of people in newspapering who say they won’t change," Meyer says. "There is a higher number who say they’ve always done it this way. There are more people at the top who believe that readers will always come back, no matter what else occurs. I would call that a foolish optimism.

"From an industry perspective I would say that newspapering needs more leadership than ever. And we need to try a whole bunch of different things to see if we can find something that works. There is a strong conservative element that attacks every new approach, but we must do something. Because, clearly, what we’ve always done isn’t working nearly as well as it used to."

Zeeck, executive editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., is co-chair of The American Editor Committee.