The 1 Percent Solution
by David M. Cole
Sometimes, even I can come up with a good idea.
Or apparently so. At the Founders Conference of the American Press Institute's Media Center, held Oct. 26-28 in Reston, Va., 40 or so industry technology leaders talked about the future of not only the Media Center, but also the industry.
Sometime on the second day, a series of discourses came on the lack of good job candidates and the insignificant amount of money spent on new-technology training. When the discussion turned to the dwindling number of newspaper-industry suppliers that are providing innovative technology, I piped up.
Because of the lack of industry support for research and development, the lack of adequate support for training and a general devil-may-care attitude about properly guaranteeing that secondary and post-secondary educational institutions produce the kinds of young people this business needs, I threw out the notion that the industry as a whole agree to tithe a small percentage of its profits to alleviate these problems.
The assembled crowd paused for a second, yawned and went on to another topic.
It turns out, though, that I had stumbled upon an economic principle that is gaining momentum in the business world--that technology is an important piece of the economic engine. Theorists say that without fostering technology--through R&D, training and education--an industry stagnates.
And we don't want newspapers to stagnate, do we?
In my OpTalk column in the December Presstime, I'll be discussing the economic issues behind the tithing idea. For now, suffice it to say I'm talking about 1 percent of net profit divided three ways: for R&D, training and education. But here, I thought I would give you some ideas about how to spend the tithing money:
Research and Development. It seems to me there are three ways to conduct R&D in the newspaper industry. Either you do it inside your business, or you pay suppliers to do it, or you develop consortia of suppliers and newspapers to do it. The last of these has historical and contemporary examples: the infamous Newspaper Systems Design Group of the '70s--which produced the Raycomp display-ad makeup terminal--and Partners Affiliated for Exploring Technology, which includes A.H. Belo Corp., Central Newspapers Inc., Cowles Media Co., Freedom Communications Inc., McClatchy Newspapers Inc. and Pulitzer Publishing Co.
The "do it inside" method was felt throughout the Gannett Co. Inc. when its Advanced Systems Lab was operational a few years back. The lab created or fostered a bunch of technologies, including sales-force automation, electronic libraries and newsroom automation.
A newspaper company that's famous for developing ideas and getting suppliers to implement them is Howard Publications of Oceanside, Calif. It commissioned ArborText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., to rewrite its text editor to accommodate Howard's newsroom needs; it had Vision Data Equipment Corp. of Rensselaer, N.Y., modify its classified system, and it has empowered NewsEngin Inc. of St. Louis, Mo., and DeskNet Inc. of New York to build a new editorial front-end based on Lotus Notes and QuarkXPress.
There are plenty of ways for newspapers to spend the one-third of 1 percent tithing money.
Training. In an industry that seems to believe that one copy of a software manual in the building is enough, the ways to spend training dollars are enormous.
At smaller newspapers, everyone should be trained on all the software it takes to get the paper out the door: Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress. Everyone should know how a raster-image processor works--and why. No one has to be an expert at everything, but everyone should know the basic fundamentals.
At medium-size and big papers, every department head should have this type of well-rounded training--in addition to basic computer usage and job-specific software instruction for the entire paper.
And remember: Training is a constant. When you're done with this round, go back and train everyone again. Turnover alone justifies this approach.
Secondary and post-secondary education. There are many ways to help our public and private schools. Grant money is a good start, but I have been quite impressed with mentoring programs.
The core activity would involve newspaper workers bonding one-on-one with young students. Ancillary to that would be newspapers and educators developing curricula that are relevant to the needs of the industry. Writing a clear and concise sentence would be a good start.
My idea of tithing--and I stress that this isn't an idea of the Newspaper Association of America--could make newspapers more efficient, more profitable and better read.
One percent is all I'm asking.
Cole is a San Francisco-based newspaper consultant and editor of The Cole Papers, a monthly newsletter on technology, journalism and publishing. E-mail, dmc@colegroup.com; phone, (650) 994-2100; fax, (650) 994-2108. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily TechNews or NAA.