This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, April 4, when I will be reporting from Delhi, India.
What an enjoyable recap of Gabriel Dance’s talk at the Lippmann House recently. Gabriel is managing editor at the Marshall Project, but was at The Guardian and The New York Times before, a pioneer in the area of bringing people in the newsroom together for transitioning to digital. His work at Marshall is stellar, too, and I have brought him to speak to my Columbia class, where he always shares his innovative approach to storytelling.
In this piece, a transcript of his talk, Gabriel talks about the evolving relationship between media and technology and, particularly, about the people in the newsroom and the importance of collaborations. He divides the characters in the newsroom into four groups: The Natives, The Naturals, The Collaborators and The Fearful.
This is right on the money, Gabriel, but I think we could add one more group to your list, based on my experience: The Reluctant. More than fearful, these people will refuse to get on the bus, will not participate even reluctantly, and sometimes will drop poison in the fish tank with comments and negativism about moving forward.
I believe strongly that close to one third of the people in an average newsroom are in the Fearful and Reluctant group.
What to do about them?
My advice is to simply try persuasion for a while (tell them to just take a walk in the city and look around and see what platforms people are consuming information on), then put all your energy into those natives, naturals and collaborators who are chomping at the bit to be part of the transformation.
It works most of the time.
Columbia students' Midterm Project gets Poynter nod
The project for two of my Multiplatform Design & Storytelling class at Columbia University gets discussed in this Poynter piece:
http://www.poynter.org/2016/why-isnt-there-a-fitbit-for-news/403973/
