Want to change newsroom culture? Failure might just be your friend

Fail fast, fail cheap. It’s a popular phrase used around start-up companies as a way to stress the importance of experimentation and that it’s OK to fail at new ideas.

Unfortunately, it’s not part of many newsroom cultures.

Last week, GateHouse Media held an editors conference with all of our top newsroom leaders where we discussed a variety of big topics, from video to social media to showcasing some of the best big journalism our newspapers are doing. We also conducted a panel with Sachin Kamdar, CEO of Parse.ly; Michael Dowling, CEO of Tout; and Robyn Tomlin, managing editor of the Dallas Morning News. The panel talked about using data in their operations, the future of video and culture.

During the culture portion of the panel, we spent some time talking about this idea of failing fast and cheap. It was incredibly eye-opening to hear how the group thinks about failing. They don’t believe it’s a bad thing, as long as they learn from it.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s important to try and fail because the old models of journalism just aren’t working. We have to be innovative and learn — we have to develop new products, solutions and experiences that work for today’s readers. And we can’t be afraid to try and try again, even if what we last tried didn’t work.

For news organizations today, I think there are some real lessons to learn around this idea of failing fast and cheap. But first, it’s critical for newsroom leaders themselves — and their bosses — to be OK with the idea that every new idea may not be a home run.

As Tomlin said during the panel, news organizations are so fearful of making mistakes because, well, credibility is everything. She talked about the first mistake she made in a newsroom and how it stuck with her for quite some time. It’s understandable why newsrooms fear making mistakes, but that fear stops us too many times from trying new things. So, before a news organization can say, yeah, we are going to fail fast and cheap, you have to have a leader acknowledge that failing is actually OK.

A few finer points on this idea:

• Measure it: As a new idea and initiative gets off the ground, understand what data you are going to use to measure if it’s a success. That can be analytics, research or panels. You have to go in on Day 1 understanding how you are going to measure if it’s working.

• Have a goal: Are you trying to see a certain number of page views for the initiative? Increase the number of Facebook fans? Have a goal, so you have something to measure.

• Assess and adjust: Just because your idea didn’t hit your goals, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea. Maybe you need to tweak it. At some point, it may be clear that the idea just isn’t going to get there. That’s OK. Try something else.

• Show the successes: When things are working, such as a reporter really being successful with a new digital tool or your audience reacting positively, make a big deal out of it. Celebrate the win.

• Be honest: While editors often bear the responsibility for the success or failure of initiatives in their newsrooms, they need to be totally transparent if something isn’t going as planned. Don’t talk around it. Face it and figure out what needs to happen to improve it or move on to something else.

• Talk about why it failed: Data and research will tell you something, but your anecdotes and experience from your newsroom mean a lot, too. De-briefs are really important. Those lessons can help you do the next initiative more effectively.

• Determine the risk: You should be aggressive in your experimentation, but you should also be smart about it. Learn enough before you press the gas on something that can have major negative impact on your audience. For example, GateHouse Media is in the process of redesigning our websites. We have launched two beta sites, and we’re taking several weeks to address bugs. We are also running surveys that help us understand user experience and technical challenges readers are experiencing before taking it across our company. We laid out goals ahead of time, and we’re wanting to make sure the data we’re seeing with these betas aligns.

We need newsrooms fearless to experiment with new tools and ideas.

One of the themes of our editors conference was to feel empowered to own your audience and your product lineup. That means trying new things to drive that audience and constantly reviewing your product lineup, making sure you have the right mix in place. If you don’t, launch new things and kill the ones that don’t work.

Don’t be afraid that you may not get it 100 percent correct. Put data and readers and smart people around you to make sure you do all you can to not fail. But if you do, pick yourself up, knock off the dust, learn from what didn’t work and try something else.