Apparently I am not the only one feeling that way. Dmitry Shishkin (@dmitryshishkin), Digital Development Editor at BBC World Service Group, seems to agree and says it is important to recognize that everyone is a digital journalist now and that data must form the basis for all decisions, with innovation as the underlying principle.
Dmitry recently gave a talk in South Africa and I like a lot of what he had to say about newsrooms that are doing it right. In a summary:
Media companies, publishers, content providers need to change. The leaders of the industry need to simultaneously change faster to be effective in showing the way.
Dmitry mentioned three concepts for running digital news operations successfully:
—"We are all digital journalists now".
My take: Yes, we were all digital journalists two years ago, too, but many newsroom leaders never did much to advance this idea. I would dare say that a 60+ % of the newsrooms of the world operate without a mobile editor or its equivalent, and their reporters still file a story for print first. I am hoping we will improve on this record in 2016.
—"All decisions we make are based on data."
My take: Remember, also, that readers love data, especially those millennials whose affinity for number-related storytelling ranks high. Take a look at what The Marshall Project does for ideas of how the ultimate utilization of data reads and looks.
—Innovation is the underlying principle
Content matters, but interesting treatment and packaging of content matter too
My take: Perhaps one of the most important departments in any newspaper and/or magazine is that of Product Development. It is those new products in which we can operate freely, without the ghost of legacies (re: print) or the big elephant in the room. Content does matter, but it is the approach to such content and how it could play across platforms---and, especially, what time of the day----that will make a difference.