Training: Newspapers Do More With Less

By: Joe Strupp The large room located next to the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church in Sumter, S.C., is usually home to Sunday-school classes, church meetings, and pre-service preparations. But on this day the room's occupants temporarily replaced the usual Bible quotations and church-raffle talk with tips on headline writing, advertising-sales theories, and ideas for better home delivery.

Is this a new religious cult worshiping newsprint? No, just the arrival of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association (SNPA) Traveling Campus, a bare-bones training road show that has already reached more than 5,500 people in 21 Southern cities during the past year, with seven more stops to go. By avoiding local Holiday Inn or Radisson conference rooms in favor of cheaper quarters, SNPA cuts its costs to a fraction of what they would be -- and passes the savings on to attendees.

"We'd do it again in a heartbeat," says Jack Osteen, vice president and advertising director at The Item in Sumter, where it hosted the Traveling Campus July 23 in the neighboring church. "We didn't have the room, so we found something that made sense."

SNPA's mobile workshop is just one of the creative methods being used to provide training for an industry suffering one of its worst economic dives, but seeing a greater demand for work-based education. As publishers seek to offset sagging advertising and stagnant circulation revenue, budget cutbacks often begin with training programs. Yet recent surveys of newspaper staffers show that training, surprisingly, often tops their wish list -- even ahead of pay increases.

Amid the uncertainty, spending cuts are forcing newspapers, chains, and learning centers, such as the American Press Institute (API) in Reston, Va., and the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., to alter their styles and ways they recruit students. Several newspaper companies are now regionalizing their training programs instead of requiring workers to travel to distant sites. Two- and three-day workshops are being replaced with shorter ones that, in many cases, last but a few hours. Some "boot camp" programs are squeezing intensive training into a short period, and other courses are being shifted to the Net, allowing thousands of employees to log on and learn without leaving their desks.

"Those who can't afford to fly or pay high tuition can be reached," says Warren E. Watson, API vice president for communications and extended learning. API relaunched its online seminars program this year.

At the same time, the "boot camps" themselves are going beyond the usual newsroom-editing, circulation, and ad-sales services to include more Web-related skills, lessons in convergence, and leadership theories. And, post-Enron, there's a boom in business-reporting sessions, along with more focus on specific "hot" beats, such as bioterrorism.

"We are trying to develop programs that are more hands-on," says Mike Phillips, editorial-development director for the E.W. Scripps Co., which added seminars this year on such reporting subjects as land use and early child development. "They learn by doing."

But while it's true that, in the area of training, newspapers are doing more with less, are they doing enough?

Demanding a raise

Anyone needing proof that journalists want more training need only look at a handful of surveys released this year, which indicate more demand for it than ever.

One poll, a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-funded study of nearly 2,000 journalists from all media, lists the lack of training as the No. 1 newsroom complaint. Among the 1,948 reporters, editors, and other news professionals polled, 34% name training and staff development as the biggest source of job dissatisfaction, compared with 27% who cite salary and 24% who cite a lack of promotions. More than 80% of those polled agree more training is needed, with about half saying they get no formal training at all.

The same report indicates that eight out of 10 news executives blame budget cutbacks for limiting their training. Only 30% of respondents say their training budget has increased in the past 10 years, with 25% reporting it has decreased and 30% reporting it has stayed the same. More than one in three news executives say training has been cut since Sept. 11, 2001.

"The floor dropped out," Brant Houston, the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors told researchers. "We're still doing a lot of training, but often reporters are paying for it themselves."

Another study, released in March by the Pasadena, Calif.-based Foundation for American Communications (FACS), also shows a higher demand for training. The survey of 401 newspaper and broadcast reporters and editors indicates that 60% believe some beats need specialized training to be covered well -- and 69% say their organizations provide midcareer training, with 92% of programs funded by the company. That still leaves nearly a third without any formal training.

Half of those surveyed by FACS cite the cost of training as the key reason they do not do more, while 20% blame time constraints. "The economic picture has hit us on training," says Brenda Rotherham, training coordinator at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. "We are having to say 'No' to things we would not have before."

Training daze

Among those to first feel the training-budget pinch were the major media learning sites such as Poynter, FACS, and API. As the advertising recession began to batter newspapers last year -- worsening after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- training centers saw interest start to dwindle in their traditional courses.

"We got a big hit last year and the beginning of this year as budgets were down," says Randy Reddick, FACS senior vice president. "It became a little more difficult [to recruit students]."

To counter the decline, FACS changed its marketing approach to target alumni and potential students more directly. Courses in business-related issues as well as homeland-security and terrorism coverage have grown to entice more interest.

Poynter saw attendance decline beginning two years ago, and it responded by changing its tuition rate from a sliding scale -- ranging from no charge to as much as $950 a course -- to a flat $400 for all classes. It will raise the rate to $450 next year. The nonprofit center also threw in free hotel rooms with tuition. "We had to help a lot of organizations that would not have gotten training at all," says Karen Dunlap, the institute's dean of faculty.

However, Dunlap adds, despite Poynter's rate change, training is still at the bottom of the priority list for many papers in these tough times. "It is discouraging," she says. "The industry has been pulling back."

This pullback also forced API, which each year offers about 50 courses -- roughly the same number as Poynter -- to cancel classes last year, the first time it has done so in nearly 10 years, according to Carol Ann Riordan, vice president for programming and personnel. She says four courses were canceled during the last six months of 2001 and a fifth was dropped this March, all due to lack of interest. "It's very unusual to cancel any program. We've seen about a 40% to 50% drop in attendance since the spring of 2001," she tells E&P. "People are cutting their budgets."

The enrollment decline sparked API to alter its marketing approach. It has boosted the number of letters and e-mail messages it sends to prospective students, while also highlighting how newspapers realize revenue gains from ideas learned at API. "We are hitting them with everything," Riordan explains.

It's in the bag

Most individual newspapers confirm that training budgets are being cut, although many say they are still providing instruction to staff with events closer to home and more in-house programs. Instead of splurging to send a handful of staffers to a conference somewhere else, some editors are simply holding brown-bag lunch meetings to discuss writing habits and others are letting veteran journalists lead discussions on reporting tips.

"We are doing the same amount of in-house training, but it is slightly down for sending people out," says Yvette Walker, assistant managing editor for staff development at The Kansas City (Mo.) Star. Ken Bunting, executive editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, also sees a return to training programs within the newsroom, stressing the need to "try to stretch the dollar more these days."

At the Houston Chronicle, Deputy Managing Editor Susan Bischoff still sends some staffers to API and Poynter, but targets more resources at cheaper programs closer to home. "By the time you look at airfare, hotels, lost time, and tuition, you can have a lot more people involved if you do it here," she tells E&P.

David Yarnold, executive editor of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, agrees. He cites several examples of saving money by using existing staff, including the holding of seminars on public access taught by the newspaper's attorney and a workshop on investigative reporting run by a veteran Mercury News reporter.

I hear that training coming

Along with demanding more training, the majority of journalists also are seeking seminars closer to home, at a lower price, and over a shorter span of time. They say they don't have three or four days to spend at a training center and that they don't want to travel thousands of miles to get there. Both the FACS survey and the Knight Foundation study bear this out.

The FACS survey indicates 36% of respondents prefer sessions that last no longer than a day, compared with 22% who want training for more than two days. The survey also shows 68% prefer training within their workplaces or nearby, while only 4% are eager to travel to other cities.

"We are moving our training out into the field," says Carole Phipps, director of learning for Knight Ridder, which this year launched its first regional writing workshops in seven cities. It also replaced sales-training classes usually held at the company's San Jose, Calif., headquarters with 18 seminars around the country. "It cuts their travel budget and time," Phipps says.

Jennifer Laurain, a 20-year-old sales representative at Detroit Newspapers, which handles ad sales for both the Knight Ridder-owned Detroit Free Press and Gannett Co. Inc.'s The Detroit News, is among those who benefitted from the regional approach. A single mother of two, Laurain says she was able to attend a five-day sales seminar in July because it was conducted within driving distance of her home. "I would have had to find someone to watch [the children] for a week," she tells E&P. "This made it a lot easier. I didn't have the distraction of travel, either."

SNPA's Traveling Campus provides the same approach. After decades of running typical seminars in big-city hotels throughout the South, the organization found it difficult to draw people to the usual high-priced events last year. So its program organizers created the gypsylike seminars and hit the road.

Using a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, SNPA runs the operation on a shoestring budget that eschews expensive hotels in major cities and opts instead for cheaper venues to hold down costs and reach more people. While most meetings are held in local newspaper offices, other sites have included a former air force base and a community college, with a movie theater among the possibilities for an upcoming location.

"It was really born out of adversity," says Walter E. Hussman Jr., president of SNPA and publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock. "We decided we had to do away with the old model."

SNPA leaders map out the Traveling Campus stops so that nearly every daily paper in the Southeast is within a two-hour drive of at least one of the sites, ending the need for costly plane trips. The result is a program that is expected to serve more than 7,000 people, at no cost to them, when it ends in December. "Our effort has been to maximize the amount of training rather than deal with the overhead," says Edward Van Horn, SNPA executive director, who adds that participants get themselves to the classes, receive no meals or refreshments, and must even provide their own paper and pencils.

Attendees have included more than half of the 20 staffers at The Times Journal, a 4,648-weekday-circulation paper in Fort Payne, Ala. In April, they went to sessions over three days in Birmingham. Publisher Ben Shurett says he juggled workloads to allow the employees time to attend, but believes it was worth it. "There was something for everyone," he says. "We are not in a position to send someone to Chicago and pay $1,200, so this was very handy."

Another Knight Foundation-funded program is NewsTrain, launched by the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) using a $100,000 Knight grant. The program, which also receives funds from The Associated Press and APME, is working with regional AP offices and other journalism organizations to build a national network of training sites.

API, meanwhile, conducted eight regional workshops between September 2001 and July at locations from San Jose, Calif., to Norfolk, Va. "These represent a more aggressive effort to reach more people," says API's Watson, who adds that the number of off-site seminars has increased by 25% in the past 12 months.

Workin' the Web

Although bringing seminars to local newsrooms or nearby venues can cut costs and time, bringing them directly to an employee's computer can do even more, according to training leaders. This belief has sparked an explosion in training via the Internet, with groups ranging from Gannett to API implementing lessons on the Web.

"The goal is to have this portal for training for all departments," says Laura Harrigan, Gannett's manager of professional development and technology. "It takes training to a new level."

Gannett seems to lead the industry in providing training via the Net, with several options for online teaching. Virtual Campus, created in July of last year, began with a weekly, one-hour live Web classroom -- a program still held each Tuesday at 3 p.m in the Eastern time zone. The weekly event allows employees from any Gannett newspaper to link up, using a combined Net/telephone approach, for an hour-long lesson in subjects including classified-ad programs and circulation theories.

Numerous Gannett online lessons can be downloaded at any time and offer several hours each of instruction, while others provide moderated chats, video conferences, and exercises in problem solving. "I found it much easier than a live classroom," says Nancy Kavanagh, human-resources administrator at the Daily Record in Parsippany, N.J., who participated in two Web courses this year. "I could concentrate better and practice on the system at my desk."

API, which after three years ended an online training program in 2000, brought the project back in June with nine courses, in subjects such as circulation, copy editing, and sales. "We have ramped it up," says API's Riordan. "It allows us to reach different groups of people who will not be able to come to seminars here." Scripps' Phillips says his company also has boosted online programs. "They can pack as much information into half a day as they would over 21/2 days at a workshop," Phillips boasts.

Going to the new school

While newspapers and journalism centers are revamping how they teach today's newsroom employees, what they teach also is changing and expanding. Among the most popular specialized-training subjects is business reporting, with editors and reporters seeking to better understand the complex workings of financial institutions, especially in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, as well as the ailing stock market.

"They realize that most journalists missed the Enron story and want to know more about finding those stories," says SNPA's Van Horn. SNPA launched a series of regional business seminars in March that will be held in 20 locations over two years. "They can also be used for people who cover government, the music industry, and sports, because they all deal with business and budgets."

Many newspapers, such as The Kansas City Star, have focused more on the fundamentals, especially in the always-needed area of copy editing, with the Star launching a six-part copy-editing workshop. "We need to provide it for retention," says the Star's Walker. "Copy editors are among the most valued members of the staff." API, for its part, recently expanded its annual Copy Editing Boot Camp, which crammed 14 events into a 31/2-day program last month.

Other areas receiving increased attention at individual papers are computer-assisted reporting and ethics. The Houston Chronicle held a mandatory libel workshop for all editorial employees this year. The Knight Journalism Fellowships program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta ran its first 10-day public-health "boot camp" in June, when it covered bioterrorism, chemical spills, and related training. Eighteen journalists -- all of whom donned silver, spacesuitlike, protective outfits at one point -- took part in the exercise, held in Anniston, Ala.

But one of the hottest new areas of training relates to convergence, the marriage of newspapers with TV and Internet operations. Numerous local papers and several newspaper groups have stepped up efforts to make sure that their reporters and editors can make the transition to online- and broadcast- news preparation and reporting.

"You need to understand how to work with the other folks," says Phillips of Scripps, which has 16 of its 21 daily papers in partnerships with TV stations in the same market. "You have to learn by getting in there among them." Phillips says every managing editor at a partnership daily has gone through a daylong TV tour at the paper's sibling station and that four of the papers have reporters working in joint reporting projects with the broadcast outlets.

Convergence training has increased at other newspapers as well, including the Houston Chronicle, The Kansas City Star, the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, and The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa.

API, meanwhile, added 10 seminars on convergence, Internet advertising, and digital news management, along with its annual Convergence Tour, which takes participants on a three-day bus trip through Florida to visit convergence operations in Tampa, Sarasota, and Orlando. "The tour helps to understand a lot of the issues," says Dayton Daily News Editor Jeff Bruce, who hopped aboard the bus last year. "There is a lot more to it than cross-promotion."

Live and learn

As newspapers and their employees seek to keep improving skills during these troubled economic times, many say there is no magic formula. The best way, they contend, is to focus on the basics that you need, not necessarily what you want. "It's kind of like Southwest Airlines or Wal-Mart," says SNPA's Hussman. "Do it better, quicker -- and cheaper."

Or, as Jim Woodward, director of corporate human resources at Media General Inc., puts it: "When you can't afford to eat out as much, you eat at home. We are just eating more at home."