A media house needs to be continually assessing whether its output is meeting the needs of the audience and achieving business targets.
This starts in the newsroom and filters through to every area of the organisation.
News is a classic people business: one relatively small set of people passes on information to another larger set of people.
There is a lot of other stuff going on, of course: newsgathering, writing, photography, technology, distribution, business and so on. But in the end it’s one person telling stories to other people.
We know that every human being is different from every other human being and not surprisingly every news boss is different from every other news boss. They all have their own ways of doing things and there is no single formula for success. A lot depends on personality.
But there are some things that are common to every good newsroom and continuous, critical review of its own output is one of them.
In the absence of a formula for the news review process, here are some things a news boss should keep in mind.
- You have to care deeply and passionately about the output.
- This means reading, listening or watching everything that comes out of the newsroom and assessing whether it is up to standard.
- You have to convey your enthusiasm to your team.
- They have to know you are closely interested in all their work. Your enthusiasm will rub off on them, with positive results.
- You set the standards for all to follow.
- You should work out some simple messages that you keep repeating. For example:
- The most important quality of every story coming out of this newsroom is accuracy. We don’t accept ANY errors.
- We all have opinions but when you come to work here, you leave your personal opinions at home.
- We keep notes on EVERYTHING. We can’t defend a story if you can’t produce your notes.
- We always try to be fair and straight with everyone, from the subject of our stories to our readers and our colleagues.
- We don’t just report on a community, we are part of that community and we cannot serve the community unless we understand it intimately
- You should work out some simple messages that you keep repeating. For example:
- You never let an error pass unnoticed.
- This is the single most important element of quality control. If one of your team makes a mistake and nobody mentions it, it means either you didn’t see it or you don’t care. This is demotivating for staff. You must at least talk to them about it.
- Deliver your critical messages wisely.
- The old days of quality control by means of a fierce telling-off are over. You can be stern and disapproving without bullying. You can also understand that the best journalists are their own fiercest critics. They already feel bad about their error and you don’t need to rub their noses in it. Simply noticing that you are disappointed in them will be enough of a penalty.
- Praise and criticism should be dished out judiciously.
- We expect a consistently high level of competence so high praise should be reserved for work that is exceptional. Similarly, though, there will always be mistakes, they should be rare and criticism should be proportionate.
- Critical review needs to be systematic, not haphazard.
- There needs to be a structure, a regular routine of looking back and assessing what has gone right and what has gone wrong. The existence of the routine is a guarantee that important messages will not get overlooked in the pressure of the daily news cycle.
- There should be short-term review meetings.
- In day-to-day operations, my own preference was to start the morning news meeting with a brief review of what we had done the previous day, before continuing on to plan the day’s coverage. If there was something too sensitive or too important to be raised at that meeting, I would ask the relevant people to stay behind for further discussions.
- There should be long-term review meetings.
- You need to take a step back, every now and then to look, not just at individual stories, but also at how well you are covering issues. What important themes are you missing? Do you have the right staff to produce the coverage that circumstances require? Are you publishing in the right places and on the right platforms? And so on. I remember attending a meeting in 1975 and my editor suddenly saying: “I’ve realised we did not adequately cover the revolution in Portugal last year.” He explained that if we had thought more carefully about it at the time, we would have spotted the implications of Portugal abandoning its colonies, the result of which was to embolden revolutionary movements throughout Southern Africa.
- Include the competition in your reviews.
- You should not assess your organisation’s performance in isolation.It’s no good if you did a pretty good job but your competitors did a better one. Did they have stories you missed? Were they first with the news? Did they think more creatively about how to handle a particular story? Were their headlines better? Always tell your own staff that you will never accept being anything less than number one in your market.
- You need to identify and understand your audience.
- A great British newspaper editor in the middle of the 20th Century told his staff they were writing for “the man on the Clapham omnibus and the woman on Rhyl promenade.” He went on to say these imaginary folk represented ordinary people who were interested in improving their lives, owning their own homes and getting on in the world. This is similar to the modern technique of audience segmentation. It helps you to know what kind of stories your audience is interested in, and where they go to get their information. You cannot have too much information about your audience.
- A news organisation that goes broke is no use to anyone.
- The news media is frequently under financial pressure and many titles have disappeared in the past 20 years. The editorial output of the news must be consistent with a viable and sustainable business strategy. So there should be regular reviews, with the relevant business colleagues, about how the news operation can play a part, within its existing ethical and editorial standards, in ensuring the success of the business.
- Review your own performance.
- You expect your staff to be self-critical and you should do the same. At the end of every day, ask yourself: did I do everything I could to make today’s output as good as possible? If not, did I miss any obvious chances? Did I deal with everybody fairly and professionally? Did I inject a bit of fun into proceedings, to alleviate tension and make everybody feel better?
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