Changing culture from the top down

If you were a fly on the wall inside any North American j-school, I think you would conclude that some faculty members are very forward-looking, some others have chained themselves to the barricades of old, outdated techniques, and a lot more are caught in the middle. There’s a lesson in this for newsrooms.

Vin Crosbie observed this during a one-year teaching assignment at a large private j-school in the northeastern U.S. About the school’s faculty, he wrote:

Perhaps a quarter of them are ardently trying to update media curricula to the 21st century.

But another quarter of the faculty is just as ardently trying to prevent any change. They’re obstructionists because they either deny things are changing (for example, one still thinks the Internet is a fad that will disappear) or they’ve grown too comfortable teaching the same curricula year after year for 20 or more years. They are tenured and so can’t be fired, and the doctrine of academic freedom allows them to teach whatever they see fit.

Meanwhile, the remaining half of the faculty would like to change and be up to date, but they resist taking steps to change, mainly because they don’t have the new skills and fear losing face before students or peers. Add those obstructionists to their number, and even basic changes can be voted down.

I was reminded of some newsrooms I have visited in the past year. I see a few people in almost every newsroom (usually less than one-quarter of the staff) embracing the new ways of communication and trying to spread their journalism and enhance their organization’s outputs via new channels and techniques. I see a lot more people who are worried, even frightened, that there will be no place for them in this new world.

The latter group interests me a lot more than the small number of chained-to-the-barricades dinosaurs (who also exist in every newsroom) — because they are very different from the dinosaurs. They are not resistant because they think the Internet is a short-lived fad, or because they fail to see its potential, or because they are in love with the smell of ink on paper. Rather, they are resistant because they don’t know how to train themselves — they are waiting for someone to hand them a tool and show them how to use it.

One approach to this is to say, well, those dummies should just get up off their lazy rear-ends and learn some new stuff.

But the one-quarter (or fewer) who have already embraced the new ways are the ones who can do that — who have the capacity, the personality, the self-confidence, to do it. The half in the middle (again, ignoring the dinosaurs; someday they will die) are not going to change just because someone says it’s good for them, or even necessary.

In newsrooms, the gang at the top often mouths words about the Web site and online to the effect that “We know that is where the future lies,” etc., etc. Often the Internet director or Online M.E. or V.P. for Online is this person — moving his or her lips along with the music. But not really doing anything about it. Not really making it happen. Not paving a road that will lead there.

I think the majority of online news managers I have met fit this description.

There are a lot of print holdouts in top Web positions at news organizations around the country. I’d want at least a few Web natives at the top of my organization. I’ve seen newspapers try and purpose a lot of features and changes that make little sense, because I think the people at the top don’t really understand the Web and what users want. (Pat Thornton, May 5)

Vin was talking about j-schools in his post, and I think we see this same situation in many j-schools too. The dean, director or department chair says a lot about convergence and updating the curriculum, but then sits back and waits for the faculty to somehow magically transform themselves from worried, frightened people (or just plain overworked people with no spare time) into the innovators and early adopters who have already made the change. These are different types of people. The worried ones are not going to change into the other type.

However, the worried ones are not the same as those crouching behind the barricades with a barber’s basin on their head. The worried ones can and will learn, but they can’t do it without help. That’s the difference between them and the early adopters.

This is a key point, and I think it’s very often overlooked.