Is your newsroom attempting to build a product or intervention geared toward building connections with communities of color? Great! Are you building this product without seeking any input from the target community or assessing how you have covered that community in the past? Then, be prepared to deal with the fact that your effort may fail.  more

When our February cover story about anti-boycott laws was published, HD Media’s Lee Wolverton penned an op-ed in response to our story. It appeared in HD Media’s newspapers over Super Bowl weekend, and we share it here with his blessing. His column deserves your attention. more

If you’ve received any business advice in the past, say, 50 years, I’m willing to bet that it came with the assumption that you wanted to expand. We hear that advice all the time — make it bigger and better, scale this area, try these new strategies for growth and similar ideas. But should growing always be the ultimate goal of every business venture? more

As we approach the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death, we must still ask where we are headed with diversity efforts. Diversity takes work and commitment and must come from the top of an organization. Without that, your company will never have an effective long-term approach to recruiting and retention. more

As a sales leader, an important skill to develop is the ability to take complex logistics, behaviors and reporting and make them simple to predict and project the overall health of your organization. This proficiency typically starts with financial reporting as it tells the quickest and most direct story parallel to goal attainment and history. In addition, uncover any other initiative, dimension or activity-based reporting that eventually drives bottom-line revenue or impacts financial reporting to deduct supplementary connections. more

“Thank you for your service!”  I say that phrase so often now, especially at boarding gates, when I’m in the frequent flyer line and the agent announces that retired or active-duty military can board before the “road warriors.”  Now, as I watch war break out in Europe and — make no mistake, this is a war — that phrase means even more to me. Because I believe in my heart that these dedicated young men and women perhaps know more about who we are as a country than the average American. more

With several legislative proposals currently before Congress to address antitrust and other concerns, as well as an important initiative underway at the Copyright Office to strengthen publishers’ protections online, there is hope that the market imbalance can be restored. more

Here are a few ideas of ways you can work on yourself and, by extension, your organization in 2022. more

Effectively leading a multi-generation salesforce requires 1) identifying universal traits of proficient sales leaders, 2) coaching and guiding your appointed leadership team and 3) adapting your organizational strategy to accommodate ownership and growth. Your opportunity is in your ability to bridge and align this strategy across all generations. more

There is something to be said for one particular philosophy from 1991’s “City Slickers.” The grizzled old ranch hand, Curly, relays the secret to life — to focus on “one thing. Just one thing.” As you're starting 2022, pick one single thing to focus on. If you can't pick one big thing, try to find four things you can give your attention to in 2022. Then, rank them in order of when you think you could reasonably roll them out during the year. more

One of the biggest demands coming from inside newsrooms around diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is for leaders to take ownership of the harm they’ve committed or overseen. They also need to hold themselves accountable for future strategies and behaviors, and their newsrooms teams are asking them to. more

Despite so many tumultuous years and scrutiny, the great thing about news media is that it’s still relatively predictable, especially regarding sales planning and forecasting. Here are are a few suggestions for kickstarting your year. more

It’s tempting to look at a new year ahead as a clean slate, but in reality, we take a lot of what went before with us. Our prior year’s performance sets us up for the new year’s goals. Whether or not you make resolutions, you have measurements you’ll use throughout the year — budgets, headcount, revenue goals, calendars … and maybe a resolution or two. more

You have worked hard to build a large online audience for your publication. You have invested a lot of time and money in doing so. Why should a business or individual be able to have their non-news content presented to your audience for free? They shouldn't! more

Often media companies treat all social media channels the same. They post the same content the same way on each channel, often using a service that automatically makes the posts. The best strategy for social media for your business is one that is tailored to the platform you’re using. more

A new study — "Who’s At The PrimeTime Table" — reveals that Black women — especially older Black women — are sorely underrepresented as hosts, contributors and experts during the coveted primetime hours at the three major cable news networks. more

Your sales organization is about to embark on a brand-new year in 2022, full of opportunities and the promise of re-acclimation to normalcy, but perhaps with greater expectations. Your team needs to feel your gratitude for what they’ve endured before they can reengage with the sales strategy, goals and objectives to come. more

Creating diverse newsrooms requires more than recruitment. What’s the culture of the organization? What are the plans for retention? Are diverse journalists leading newsroom discussions? How will their unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives contribute to coverage? Are their opinions valued? The true test of a newsroom’s commitment to diversity is retention. more

I love the holiday season. For me, it’s a time of tradition, family fun, good food and next year lying before us — bright, shiny and new. It can also be a time of finalizing budgets and setting goals. But looking forward to 2022 should inspire us to look back at 2021 — what worked, what didn’t work and what didn’t happen at all. more

Managing is a constant juggling act, where you’re trying to get your organization, your team and yourself to the place you want them to be. And as you work on getting to that place, you’ll often find that that goal you’ve been working toward isn’t actually what you want. more