Imagine that! Sam Zell--who's taken much heat from the journalism establishment--has gone and done something truly unique: he's "crowdsourcing" the Trib newsroom to get the best ideas for moving the Trib forward.
Who better to come up with suggestions than his own newsroom! Zell sez about "IdeaBank"--the place where he wants peeps to contribute:
Most importantly, I want to convey that this is not some lighthearted initiative. I expect you to participate. Make deposits. Make withdrawals. Review the ideas to determine how you might adapt them to your business unit. And, managers, by reviewing and analyzing these ideas, you dramatically increase the probability of their viability.
So, be prolific. The future of our company is literally in your hands.
As well it should be!
Zell's also done such revolutionary stuff such as get rid of net-nanny style filters on reporter's computers--"do not see how a member of the Fourth Estate, dedicated to protecting the First Amendment, can censor what its own employees and partners can see," said Zell on the matter--as well as desire to sell under performing properties like NY Newsday...
But The Valley Advocate which was held by Hartford Courant companies, a subsidiary of the Trib was sold to Newspapers of New England, Inc in Dec '07, in part (from what I understand) due to its under-performance...
So the sell-off of under-preforming Trib properties shouldn't be all that shocking (that is, unless you hadn't heard about the smaller ones like the V.A.)
Overall, Zell seems to really be shaking up the establishment. And I'm really glad to see it! Most of us know that the business model for journalism--and the way that the journalism business has been treating its newsroom--has been shot for awhile. With the "IdeaBank" Zell appears to actually want to know what his journalists are thinking and what they might want to do to keep the thing afloat. Who better to ask than the folks who are in the trenches daily? Certainly makes better sense to ask them than a bunch of disconnected business consultants....
Besides, we all knew you could conceivably crowdsource your newsroom for ideas, but who was going to be the one to *actually* do it first? Certainly wasn't going to be one of the entrenched. Can't wait to see what Zell does next....
Just my $.02
2 comments:
In reality, *reporters* never had "net-nanny style content filters", but rather the filters were implemented for the other thousand plus non-editorial support staff at the LA Times who while away there day with porn and gambling and other risky surfing.
Heard about LA Times spyware outbreaks since Zell put the kibosh on filters?
The way I hear it, desktop support staff are in a tizzy trying to stay on top of the compromised windows hosts all over the Times, especially given the language barrio with the help desk being outsouced to India and all...
Anon--having been that "non-editorial support staff" over the years, I find it massively insulting for you to say what you did. Whether it was non-support staff or the vaunted, priestly reporters, that sort of software has no business in a newsroom, no matter who's using the computers. (perhaps newspapers, then, should be more vigilant about who they hire for support staff? if there even *are* huge numbers of support staff anyway...)
And if they're having a problem with spyware, it would seem to me that money wasn't put into adequate spyware protections in the first place. Protecting one's computer network from spyware attacks shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not all employees have full access to the web.
Heck, reporters can invite spyware in as well, depending on where they go, time spent various places, etc.. I don't frequent porn or gambling sites and my computer gets zapped occasionally too. So you're pretty out of touch as far as both people and spyware goes, Anonymous.
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