Ken Winter retired as editor and publisher of the Petoskey (Mich.) News-Review after working at the newspaper for more than 34 years. He is a Michigan State University School of Journalism graduate and University of Michigan NEH Journalism Fellow, who recently earned a master’s degree in education with secondary journalism teaching certification from Ferris State University. Winter is an adjunct journalism and political science instructor at North Central Michigan College. He is a retired member of the ASNE. Ken can be reached at kwint@freeway.net.
LIKE ITS TOWNSPEOPLE WHO KEPT 1880S OUTLAW JESSE JAMES from robbing their bank, the Northfield (Minn.) News and its affiliated newspapers aren’t about to lose their readers.
They’re doing it the old-fashioned way — lots of hard work, training and making sure their cluster of 11 daily, twice-weekly and weekly newspapers, located south of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, grow local news content, while strengthening their Internet presence.
The family-owned Huckle Publishing group, led by company president Jim Huckle, engaged me to help carry out their strategy to grow readership and maintain long-term profitability.
They’re defying community newspaper industry trends by investing more, not less, in newsroom training and paying above-industry compensation to develop a more experienced newsroom to implement their strategy.
“Now more than ever we need to focus on the development of the people that create our editorial content in terms of establishing new expectations for excellence and supporting that with better newsroom leadership and training,” Huckle says.
Beyond taking advantage of trade industry workshops, the Huckles asked me to partner with their operations team for nearly 18 months, focusing on local news content and staff development.
Like their larger newspaper counterparts, community newspaper publishers and editors find themselves being pulled in every direction during a very challenging time.
The Huckles used me as an additional member of their team to focus solely on news content and training without getting distracted with everyday management challenges. It also helped that I’ve held similar management jobs and could put myself in their publishers’ shoes.
Here’s what was accomplished during the last 18 months:
- Established appropriate newsroom management expectations through ongoing consultation with publishers, incorporating measurements and accountability with rewards and celebration for success.
- A monthly self-scorecard system completed by publishers and managing editors with staff to monitor key areas — page one, sports, opinion, features and business. Results shared between group newspapers on Excel spreadsheets.
- On-site newsroom operation evaluations with mutually agreed upon measurable improvement targets.
- A staff performance evaluation system for the newsroom to identify current performance and pinpoint key professional development areas with standards and accountability.
- Implementation of a “maestro” team package story-planning process for print and Web that emphasizes non-narrative devices to attract higher regional readership and viewership.
- Monthly training workshops, including the entire newsroom — reporters, photographers, page editors, news editors and publishers. Topics have ranged from lead writing and story organization to beat coverage, interviewing, page design, photography, Web writing and ethics.
- Formation of a five-newspaper monthly managing editor’s lunch to exchange ideas and experiences.
- Monthly on-site newspaper consultations with publisher and managing editors to review past month’s newspaper content, individual issues and projects.
- Establishment of minimum monthly newsroom goals as part of the general management performance review process.
- In-depth team reporting projects, utilizing nine newspaper staffs on topics ranging from population diversity, environment and the arts to high school sports injuries and ethanol use.
- Creation of news-oriented, stand-by house ads.
- Monthly certificate and cash prize editorial contest with award categories that included breaking news, feature story, enterprise story, enterprise series, photo, page-one layout and best of show.
- Daily outside monitoring and mark-up of newspapers with follow-up written reports. Established improvement targets for publishers and managing editors.
While none of these individual strategies are unique, the Huckles have made a commitment to sustained longer term investment in newsroom development and have avoided the Band-Aid solution that so many in the industry apply. Taken together, these strategies have been part of an overall effort that has seen an increase in circulation during the last 18 months.*