Failing to innovate

Taking advantage of innovation is nothing new to a successful business but is something newspapers are aggressively considering to stay alive and increase circulation. While journalism and editors merge with the Web, can technology embrace the needs of the newsroom?

In an article, “Five Steps to Foster Innovation in the Newsroom” by Chris O’Brien, he describes how newsroom managers can consider five innovative strategies for defeating defeat. O’Brien concedes that progressive newsrooms are also encountering the same problems that the media giants are currently facing – both are facing a decline in circulation because they are not considering all the emerging technologies available to them. While Weblogs seem to be the current craze, people will eventually move on to something newer, better or innovative. Michael Caldero writes about how the Washington Times will outsource printing to The Baltimore Sun.

In an e-mail to the staff, Washington Times General Manager Dick Amberg states, “There are many advantages of being printed by The Sun. Its big, modern presses allow us to print six sections instead of four, to print many more pages, to have more color, to print more quickly, to do more zoning, and to have better inserting.”

The idea is to have an agile process that incorporates emerging technologies, so that newspapers can keep pace with the changing face of their maturing audience. Clearly, some answers are in hardware upgrades and others answer lie in figuring out the next social networking tool. Strategically extracting the current trends takes carful eye and a finger on the pulse on the community. No newsroom can not afford to leave innovation in the hands of a hardware upgrade.