Two Meetings, One Strategy
Two meetings, held in succession in early March, provided vital information as NAA’s Technology Department sets its strategy and reorganizes for the future.
The first was NAA’s Technology and Telecommunications Committee meeting. The committee is composed of presidents, publishers and high-level operational executives at NAA-member newspapers. It meets twice a year to provide counsel and direction to the Technology Department. You could say the T&T Committee acts as the department’s “board of directors.”
Much like the board of directors of a Fortune 500 company, the T&T Committee is divided into subcommittees, which are listed on our masthead at left. The subcommittees met on March 6, and each was given a simple but demanding task: to develop a list of the top-three operational issues in its functional area. When NAA Senior Vice President of Technology Tom Croteau reviewed the issues generated by each subcommittee, he found one nearly universal concern: the industry’s critical need to attract, train and retain outstanding technical people.
The following day, the committee met in general session. At that meeting, Croteau asked the audience whether there were any other pressing issues the Technology Department should tackle going forward. In the lively discussion that followed, a second dominant issue emerged: Committee members feel they are not receiving adequate, ongoing communications on matters of importance.
On March 7 and 8, the Technology Department held an offsite strategic-planning meeting. The purpose was to revisit the department’s mission, vision and goals. After much brainstorming, debate and voting, the department settled on the following mission statement: “To help newspapers optimize operations and master changing technologies.”
The first part of the visioning discussions involved trying to predict what the industry will be like five years from now, while the second involved nailing down what role the Technology Department should ideally play in that future world. The dominant theme of that discussion was the continuing rise of the Internet, and the fact that newspaper content will be disseminated not only via newsprint and desktop computers, but also a variety of new Internet appliances (see p. 22).
The goals discussion focused on the question, “What concrete steps must we take to reach our vision and be true to our mission?” Of the 70 or so goals, one emerged as the most critical: the department’s need to reorganize and fill its open positions to meet future challenges.
At presstime, the Technology Department was still in the process of reorganizing to address the burning issues raised during those two fateful meetings. If it has not already done so, you can expect the department to issue an announcement soon. The department likely will be structured to address the industry’s personnel needs, communicate better with NAA members, and tackle new-media technology issues.
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The department’s new strategy will be presented to the Technology and Telecommunications Committee during its September meeting and will, of course, be reported in these pages.
If you have any comments on this very brief preview of the Technology Department’s new strategy and organization, we’d love to hear from you. Are you happy with the general direction? Let us know by sending an e-mail to technews@naa.org.
Clark Robinson
Editor