For the Media the Future is Digital, Internal Memos Show

Internal memos from two major North American media outlets have put a spotlight on how journalists are viewing the future.

The first, from the Boston Globe, shows how newspapers are trying to leave the world of print behind.

In the memo, editor Brian McGrory tells staff that it is time for the Globe to “once and for all break the stubborn rhythms of a print operation, allowing us to unabashedly pursue digital subscriptions.”

As reported by Joseph Lichterman for Nieman Lab, McGrory goes on to say that the Globe needs to publish stories earlier in the day, restructure beats, create new audience engagement no longer see print as the dominant driver of workflows.

“None of the changes detailed here will come as any surprise, though in total, they represent significant change,” McGrory wrote.

The Globe is not alone; over the past two years, newspapers such as The Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have all enacted similar initiatives.

The other major media outlet to share its vision of the future in a memo to staff was the CBC in Canada.

Although the CBC is not beholden to print timelines, it has been bound to the idea of supper hour and 10 p.m. newscasts in the past.

No more. In a memo to staff, General Manager and Editor in Chief Jennifer McGuire wrote that, in the future, the CBC will be driven by digital.

Digital news, she said, “needs to be a part of everything we do, not a stand-alone pillar of our news service.”

To make this possible, the CBC needs to make sure that all its journalists have more opportunities to be connected to its digital news operations.

The CBC also needs to “redirect resources to create more original and investigative journalism and to better serve audiences on emerging platforms” and The National, its flagship news program, needs to “inextricably linked to the reinvention of our news service. “

One of the key figures in the changes is Brodie Fenlon, senior director of digital at the CBC. I posted about his vision for the future earlier on my blog.

For both media outlets, the story is still the most important thing, regardless of what platform it is on. And they want to honour those who still value print and traditional TV viewing.

But increasingly, the most important platform is digital. 

At one time, the way we interacted with the media was through “appointment journalism.” That is, we got the news when the media was ready to deliver it.

Those days are gone. They have been completely disrupted and disintermediated by the Internet and the Smartphone.

The media has also been impacted by unbundling. For newspapers and magazines, the only economical way to share news in the past was to package it into daily, weekly or monthly issues.

But people don’t want to wait until the media have enough articles so it makes financial sense to release it; they want it now.

Or, as someone put it, don’t wait until tomorrow to tell me what happened yesterday.

Today we want the news when we want it; we won’t wait until the media says it is ready.

For the media, breaking away from these rhythms is hard. If you spent your career working towards deadlines like the afternoon paper or the supper hour news, these changes are tough.

But media consumers won’t have it any other way. For the media, it is adapt or die.

As McGory of the Globe put it, the goal is to be “more nimble, more innovative, and more inclined to take worthwhile risk” in order to be a leader in sharing news.

Or just to stay alive.