How Digital First Media hopes to transform workflow, culture of ‘newspaper facto

Wait until deadlines are blown for the paper repeatedly and DFM sees the overtime bill for the pressroom.

That'll be interesting.

 

What's being run worse: DFM or Gannett?

 

It's not that any of these ideas he presented are wrong, necessarily, but I agree with the comment above about the martyr act.

To believe, in 2014, that any single person has all the brilliant ideas to save our industry, one must be naive or narcissistic.

 

Our DFM shop had its big "Unbolt" presentation yesterday - here are the million and one things we should be doing (Dipity!, Scribble Live!, Rebel Mouse!, etc.).

The bottom line is this: Don't wait for the print product (we're a twice-weekly) to put your stories online. Well, we've already been doing that.

What we haven't been doing in working with the young reporters to develop their writing skills. Our shop has a strong track record of taking young reporters, molding them and watching them take the next step to bigger publications. That hasn't been happening lately because they've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Some of the writing I've seen lately is atrocious.

One reporter took great pride in live-tweeting her mayor's state of the city speech. Because she wasn't taking notes, her story was based on the live tweets. Really. When I'm covering my mayor's state of the city, I'll be writing like mad and taking pictures (we don't have full-time photographers anymore). After, I'll likely do a short stand-up video teasing the story. How much more can we be expected to do, while also churning out quality copy for the Web and print product? (You remember the print product - the one that's still bringing in some cash.)

DFM wants us to post now, edit later. If we make mistakes, oh well.

Uh, ever hear of quality control? Oh yeah - it doesn't exist anymore. Then again, I'm preaching to the choir here.

 

Put down for overtime. Then when your bosses complain, tell them that bolting is taking the extra time.

Watch their heads explode when you tell them that.

 

There are people here defending that, and defending it strongly, on another thread.

 

I was in the company when they decided to do the whole "Digital First" thing. That was in '08.

Six years later they're still struggling to deliver. "Post now, edit later"? We were doing that in '09. What's so innovative about it in 2014? No shit "post now, edit later."

Not that they aren't improving here and there. There's a guy in Trenton who's tweeting after he swore to his mother's grave he'd never tweet. It was beneath him, he said. He puts boots on the ground, he said. Building an audience through Facebook and Twitter (and other digitalia) isn't what real journalists do, he said. That being said, he needs to learn to engage with other tweeters -- he has yet to have a single chat with someone else -- but for a 60-year-old he's taking decent baby steps with the whole unbolt thing. So that's one example of a DFM'er heeding the threat -- although as I type this I've been alerted that he just tweeted: "Let's have a race war. Blacks vs. Latinos. Kill or be killed. This rally is an embarrassment.It will stir hatred. Other issues not addressed" ... that may be him being facetious, although with him you never know.


And yes, I think Project Unbolt is a veiled threat after 6 years of Digital First. As in, it's been long enough and you either become digital or you're fucking out the door, tomorrow. At a regional training session a few years ago, where they wanted to train the next generation of DFM managers, we did a role-playing exercise and I kind of lost my shit and delivered a torrent of expletives trying to explain how difficult it was to get the many -- MANY -- old-school reporters to cross over to digital reporting. On one hand, they had been print journalists for 25, 30, 35, 40 years and that's all they would ever be and it's really unfair to ask these "dinosaurs" (as I called them) to adapt to live-reporting with Twitter and Facebook and G+ and YouTube and oh, by the way, blog if you can and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! On the other hand, I was the one who had to hold their hands and coddle and cajole them as they kicked and screamed to the other side. It drove me fucking nuts. Not throw-me-in-Bellevue nuts, just FUCKING ANGRY nuts and I wanted them out of the newsroom. Quit, please! Not because they weren't quality newsies -- I loved them, loved their presence and respected their brand of institutional knowledge that you NEED in a newsroom -- but because they dragged the entire ship down every day by not adapting to Journalism 2.0. That role-playing rant got me in big trouble even though we were told that everything we said and did during that training stayed right there. In retrospect, it was probably good that I lost my shit. I think some of the highest levels of DFM management got word of the problems in my newsroom and began to realize the biggest hurdle of "Digital First" -- age.

But anyway, DFM has been involved in the "Post Now, Edit Later War" for a long time and the spoils are not panning out financially or they wouldn't have to come up with another cheesy initiative like Project Unbolt. Project Fucking Unbolt. Are you serious? Hell, it's been less than a year since their all-important Tout contest, another one of their digital initiatives. I saw Tout tweets galore from several properties across the country for months and months and now I hardly see any. Seems like DFM'ers just get burnt out on these chintzy initiatives after a few weeks or months.

More than anything, I think that Unbolt is the final step toward eradicating entire print productions of several properties -- and the dinosaurs will go down with them.

 

Baron - Last summer, when I was covering for a co-worker on vacation and doing my job, there was a double murder on my beat. I worked massive overtime to get the job done, then when I asked to be paid for said overtime (we have to turn in our time sheets mid-week), I was written up for it.

Songbird - I definitely see where you're coming from. My point is that in the rush to digital, we can't sacrifice quality or the print product. We as an industry need to embrace print AND digital, and be the best we can be doing both, even under the financial constraints.

 

Can you really embrace both in 2014?

 

Re: How Digital First Media hopes to transform workflow, culture of ‘newspaper facto

I can't believe I'm defending JRC's Corpse here, but that is far from a problem with just that company. That is a problem all across our industry, because people are too damn burned out.

Bossman/woman gets a hair up his/her behind to get people to, say, Vine. It lasts six weeks, and then it's onto the next shiny object.

 

I probably wasn't very clear on what I meant by "putting down overtime". For some places, they want advance warning if you are going to go over on your hours. Likely, when you started going over to cover the double-murder, you should have told your bosses, "Hey, this big thing happened, but I'm at 40 hours. Do you want me to still cover it, and pay me the overtime or have someone else do it?"

I'm guessing your write-up happened because the bosses either didn't know, or didn't care until you actually put it down and were actually expecting to get paid that you were working that time.

To which I'll modify my OT for the bolting comment. When you're reaching 40 hours, tell your boss that you're going over on your time because "bolting" is taking up extra time and ask them if they want you to work the overtime and get paid for it, to stop "bolting" or to stop something else.

 

Welcome to the world of Gannett, which specializes in chintzy initiatives.

It got to the point that, at the Gannett place I worked at, we'd have a meeting on a new initiative, and our editor would say, "I know you're all rolling your eyes in your head ..."