Libby Averyt is editor/vice president at the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times
LIKE ANY GOOD JOURNALIST, my editors taught me to avoid clichés. But sometimes, they just fit.
So, allow me to say: Times are tough. Really tough.
Little hiring is happening. Training budgets are being cut. The lucky papers are those reducing news departments through attrition rather than layoffs.
Preventing morale from going down the toilet is a daily challenge. Sometimes, it feels like editors are just one flush away from total mutiny.
Things aren’t perfect in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times newsroom, but they’re certainly better than they could be. Our saving grace has been a philosophical change in the way we do business. We were a pilot participant in the Learning Newsroom, a joint venture of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Funded by a $1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, 928 journalists in 10 newsrooms embarked on what became leadership training for everyone.
We’ve worked on practices such as communicating more honestly and directly with each other, inviting more voices into conversations about our future and taking more risks in trying to remain relevant to readers.
The Learning Newsroom gave us the tools we needed to change the culture in our newsroom from perfectionist and defensive to one that is more cooperative and team-oriented. The training included a session on business literacy, which involved the publisher and senior managers giving details on the business side of newspapering — something newsrooms have ignored for too long. Discussions about whether we’re reaching our financial goals are now common in the newsroom, and I don’t hide from my staff the cold, hard facts about running a newsroom today.
When two resignations recently left us with reporter vacancies we couldn’t fill, I asked the staff for input on how to reorganize so we could cover what we needed to with fewer people. As an outgrowth of our training, we had established a Learning Newsroom Steering Committee, made up of front-line staffers. Those folks submitted their own reorganization plan, as well. We took bits and pieces of various suggestions and came up with a beat restructuring that rolled out smoothly with few complaints.
The Steering Committee also has been vital in ensuring that we continue to grow and train our journalists. The committee organizes regular brown-bag meetings that address both skills training and community awareness. We look for ways to bring in outside trainers inexpensively, such as asking journalists from other Texas newspapers to come in and lead sessions for us. The committee has set a minimum 15 hours a year of mandatory training for every newsroom employee, up from 12 hours a year ago.
Many employees have described a new energy in the newsroom, knowing that we have clear expectations that we treat each other professionally and be open to others’ opinions. The days of growing successful businesses by simply hiring good journalists are over. We have to be good, yes, but organizations that will successfully survive our profession’s transition will be those whose staffs are the most innovative, best able to unleash the full potential of every person on staff and most bonded to each other and their communities.
Anyone interested in improving the atmosphere in your newsroom should consider attending one of the upcoming one-day Learning Newsroom workshops. Vickey Williams, who directed the Learning Newsroom project, will be the faculty chair of the series, which will draw from hard research data and the real-life experiences of newsrooms undergoing change.
The workshop series promises absolute candor about this hard, and sometimes painful, work. Information and registration for upcoming workshops in several locations, including Denver, Atlanta and Houston, can be found on the American Press Institute's Web site.
You can learn more, too, by reading All Eyes Forward, Williams’ detailed account of the Learning Newsroom project and lessons learned in the 10 pilot newsrooms. The Learning Newsroom Web site also provides good details about the work.
The Caller-Times newsroom staff has shrunk 11 percent since Jan. 1. Tough? You bet. But what inspires me is the dedicated men and women in our newsroom who are committed to improving their own skills, to solving problems instead of complaining about them and to serving our readers every day. With a culture like that, most days are a piece of cake. *
A PDF version of All Eyes Forward is available free online. Print copies can be ordered for $10 each, plus a $5 handling fee, through ASNE.