Small steps to innovation

By Bryan, on April 25th, 2007

I first noticed this item via Mindy McAdams, but it bears sharing with our audience. It’s a list of simple steps to help innovation happen. Since the name of this site is “Innovation in College Media,” it makes sense to share them. (note: longtime readers will recognize these themes as something we “harp” on constantly.) I’m adding college-specific comments below each bullet.

Think Small – Don’t try to add everything to your online arsenal at one time. Start with one thing. Find someone who’s interested in slideshows, or video, or audio, or blogging, or just engaging the online audience, and give them some “authoritah” to do it.
Think Storytelling – I’ve said again and again that not every story deserves a slideshow, or video, or audio. But a lot more stories do than are currently getting those “extras.” Find a way to figure out what’s best for the story, and then add those features. Train reporters to think about the Online story when they’re doing their reporting.
Think Experiments – I’ll fall back on words of wisdom from Rob Curley and Steve Yelvington, among others: be willing to fail. Try new things. Think of them as experiments. Most parts of the business world have Research and Development budgets. Does your college media outlet have that kind of commitment to trying new things online?
Think Collaboration – Reporters, editors, and visual journalists need to work with the web staff throughout the story development process. This will make things easier to accomplish. Online editors, this means you need to start demanding a seat at the table right near the EIC. Reporters, this means you need to start thinking about web writing as an integral part of your job.
Think Workflow – There’s a reason people use the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” One of the biggest obstacles to truly integrating the web more fully into your newsroom is the workflow. Too often, the web is an afterthought, as in “after the print paper is laid out, we’ll put things on the web. That’s old thinking and it needs to die. I think WriteWith is a good way for papers to move the web up the food chain. Get your reporters to put content into a web-based collaboration system (Even Google Docs or some similar online tool), or in the web CMS, at the beginning of the story editing process. That way, it’s already there. Print is a once-a-day or once-a-week phenomenon. The web is living all the time.