Economic Crisis Batters Newspaper Industry R&D, Executive Training Center

By: Mark Fitzgerald With U.S. newspapers zero-ing out budgets for management training -- and never all that generous funding research even in good times - one of the industry's leading research and development operations, the Media Management Center (MMC) at Northwestern University, is struggling to stay afloat through the recession by postponing programs for domestic papers and laying off staff. .

The center is a partnership between Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and its Kellogg School of Management. It conducts executive training and conducts newspaper industry research, most notably through the Readership Institute.

"The same thing that happening to everybody in the media is happening to us," MMC Executive Director Michael P. Smith said Friday. "A lot of programs we had are being postponed until a year down the road, and we're using this opportunity to restructure."

For now, Smith said, the center is focusing its attention on newspapers in Latin America and other regions outside the United States, who are still willing to pay for training and strategic advice culled from research.

Smith confirmed the staff has been downsized, though said he could not comment on numbers or personnel. Clicking on the "Faculty and Staff" button of the center's Web site gets this message:

"The Media Management Center is currently going through some changes during these tough financial times. We are still open and operational and you can still visit our Web sites for a host of valuable information and reports"

Among those leaving MMC is Vivian Vahlberg, the former Society of Professional Journalists executive director who was the center's managing director.

"I'm sorry to see the center downsize, but it's very much like the industry that we serve," Vahlberg said. "I'm hopeful after a period of time it will be able to grow again. I really feels like we've done a lot of good in the time we've been here, particularly in the research on young people and reaching them."

In fact, Vahlberg notified colleagues of her departure the same day the MMC and Newspaper Association of America jointly presented a Webinar on the results of study on what teenagers want to see in online news sites.

The MMC is also gearing up for a new master's degree track it is offering in conjunction with Medill that would allow experienced media professions to choose courses from Medill's graduate j-school and the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and the media management majors at the Kellogg business school.