Small Should Be 'The New Big' for Newspapers and the Web

By: Steve Outing I've been reading Seth Godin's new book, "Small Is the New Big," which is a collection of the author and marketing guru's thoughts as expressed in his blog, magazine articles and speeches. There's a lot in there that is super-relevant to the newspaper industry.

But it's the title essay that really hits home for me as I think about what newspaper companies need to do to get through this digital transition period and come out the other side as modern, profitable media enterprises.

You see, newspapers are big. Sometimes they're truly big -- as in a New York Times or Washington Post. Sometimes they're not physically big but are institutionally big within their communities -- the small paper that's truly a small business but looms large in its hometown. In both those cases, they ACT big.

Acting big means, for example, that if you, as a reader, have a complaint (or a kudo), you'll have trouble getting access to the editor or the publisher. "Big" newspapers (and companies) don't make it easy to contact the top people in the organization. Rather, those people are protected from readers having easy access to them. Their names are listed on the masthead of the print edition and on the Staff page of the website, but there are no phone numbers or e-mail addresses published.

Receptionists and executive assistants keep the public at long arm's length. In this respect, newspapers act much like big corporations, where top executives don't make much if any direct contact with their customers. (I've found the magazine world to be even worse in this regard than newspapers. I've had reason lately to be contacting lots of magazine editors within the sports sector, and it's the rule not the exception that on a magazine's website there's no way to find an e-mail address for editors. More often than not, the staff list -- if there is one -- includes no contact information.)

Acting big also means spreading that shielding behavior well below the top ranks of a company. It means for readers that they can't count on getting an e-mail answered when sent to a reporter or photographer or editor. While they may know who took a news photo from the photo credit, they can't use the newspaper's website to send that person a congratulatory note, because the photojournalist's e-mail is hidden. Or if there is an e-mail, the corporate culture at the newspaper may not require that the photographer respond to all e-mail.

But small organizations don't have that issue. Everyone's accessible, all the way to the top. As Godin writes, "Small means that the founder is involved in a far greater percentage of customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them quickly." Craigslist is the poster child for that. Founder Craig Newmark prides himself on supervising customer service and interacting with his users. And Craigslist is among the top 30 traffic sites on the Web -- bigger than either the New York Times' or Washington Post's websites.

Why should big institutions like newspapers think small?

As Godin says, "Recent changes in the way that things are made and talked about mean that big is no longer an advantage. In fact, it's the opposite. If you want to be big, act small."

Newspapers should think small because of the nature of the Internet, and because the Internet is critical to the future of newspapers -- as in, they still need to better adapt to doing business in an environment where the next generation of readers/customers chooses to interact with them in the online medium.

"Interact" is the key word, of course. I've been writing about the Internet and media since the mid 1990s, and many times I've harped on the idea that the Internet is foremost about people interacting, not just people consuming information that's put out for them. It's about enabling conversations. Sure, it's an information delivery vehicle, too, but I'm convinced that it's the two-way component that's most powerful and holds the most potential.

So, for a newspaper company to take full advantage of the Internet's power, it needs to be interactive. Its people -- and especially its managers -- need to get down and dirty with their readers. Newspapers need to act smaller than they are.

Thinking small for a newspaper, then, means what? Here are some of the sorts of things that newspaper companies should be doing:

* Changing the corporate brand from being a monologue with readers and allowing limited feedback loops, to a dialog. That means making all content interactive and offering readers a way to talk back or start a conversation, with journalists, sources and/or with other readers.

(I can hear the objections: "Who has time for that? Professional journalists have jobs to do!" ... My answer is that in a future media environment where your main connection to your audience is in a medium that supports and promotes two-way communication, you better figure out how to make time for that. As workload from interacting with the audience increases for journalists, their job responsibilities should shift to include time for that part of the job. Perhaps the duties of support personnel can be tweaked to provide support to those professionals on the front lines of audience interaction.)

I believe that the news companies that succeed in the future -- the ones that reverse the current newspaper industry malaise -- will be the ones that adopt audience interaction as a mantra.

"Big" companies don't interact much with actual customers, certainly not one-on-one. That's why newspapers should learn to do it.

* Blogging from the top. The editor and/or publisher should have a blog, and use it to engage with and communicate with readers and advertisers. I don't mean fluffy blogs, either. If the top editor's blog reads like a press release, there's little point in having the blog.

Godin suggest these characteristics as vital for an effective CEO blog (and they apply perfectly to editor/publisher blogs): Candor. Urgency. Timeliness. Pithiness. Controversy.

Big companies don't let their chief executives communicate with the customers in direct, honest ways. They communicate through their PR departments. They don't tell the real inside story publicly. They respond to controversy only when forced. This is "big" behavior. ... A newspaper company leader in the Internet era should do just the opposite, and act small.

(While editors' blogs are not a new idea, there are still many newspaper top editors who don't blog; they don't believe that it should be part of their jobs, or they're just too busy for it. Some top editors -- including the one at my hometown newspaper -- have blogged in the past but stopped, or they blog so infrequently that you probably can't call it blogging.)

* Newspapers should enter seemingly small, unusual new businesses. Many newspapers have taken a narrow approach when considering what new businesses to enter. A "big" business might not consider opportunities that appear too small, or too far removed from their core competencies. But thinking "small" might mean making bets on smaller things -- maybe putting only a single employee on assignment to try out something that seems risky and a bit "out there" for a news company. It means thinking outside the box, and not finding reasons not to try something new when an employee or manager comes up with a crazy idea.

Why push out of the traditional news box? Because, of course, newspapers are in a challenging time when the audience increasingly is moving online and away from print -- and in the near to medium term, doing business online is not going to make up for the dollars that are draining from the core print business. Newspaper executives need to think more like entrepreneurs and less like CEOs of big companies.

* Stop being afraid to innovate. Godin writes in his book, "Why did all of the retail giants fall to Wal-Mart? Why is Kraft so far behind in organic, nonengineered foods? Why did CBS wait years to launch much of anything on cable or the Internet? Because market leaders are afraid."

We can add to his list something along the lines of, "Why did newspapers let the opportunities afforded by the Internet largely skip them by while new companies reaped the riches?" Because they were afraid to innovate too much.

As the author points out, this is human (or company) nature. But it's only natural behavior for "big" companies. So think small, again. Allow your people to innovate, and figure out how to curb the criticism of innovative ideas that will come from the less innovative people within the company who remain tied to the status quo.

* Don't hire people just to complete tasks; hire innovators. I thought this Godin quote was particularly important for newspaper executives to hear: "As companies mature and grow, they are far more likely to hire people to perform tasks, as opposed to hiring people who figure out how to change their jobs for the better."

Hiring someone strictly to do a task is definitely "big" thinking. Small companies don't do that; they must hire people that they think can solve the myriad problems that come up during a company's early growth phase. But why should that have to stop when a company gets big? When hiring for new positions or replacing employees who have left, look for the appropriate skills, sure, but also look for -- and hire -- people who exhibit the ability to think through problems and innovate. Make sure they "think small."

It's not easy to think of the New York Times, say, as a "small" company. But perhaps it really does need to get smaller.