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Report: Discovery 101 »

ReTHINKing the Mercury News

August 6, 2007 | Author: admin | Filed under: Home

JOIN US FOR DISCOVERY 101
Please attend an all Mercury News meeting from 3-4 p.m. on Tuesday, August 7, in the assembly room

From April Lynch and Matt Mansfield

When it comes to starting the reinvention of the Mercury News, the “X-Files” may have said it best: “The truth is out there.”

We all look at our slumping circulation and revenue numbers and wonder what kind of changes it will take to grow — or even keep — our audience. The good news is that we can find out. The answers lie in the people who walk, talk, drive, shop, and read among us every day.

With the observational and analytical skills we’ve honed, we’re well qualified to track these answers down. We believe they’ll provide essential material for crafting a range of new ideas and guiding the innovations we ultimately pursue.

Getting these answers, though, will require the help of many people at the Merc. You don’t have to be a reporter or photographer in the field to join. We’re hoping people from across the paper will participate and when we say that we mean everyone. So if you are in advertising, circulation, marketing or production, please join the effort.

You will need a healthy dose of curiosity, an attention to detail — and the ability to set some of our newspaper habits aside, at least temporarily. Those are essential tools for everyone.

Who is on the steering group for this effort?

We are pleased to annnounce the members of the steering committee who will help lead as we embark on our ambitious rethinking of the news organization. They are …

From advertising:

- Michael Turpin

From circulation/marketing:

- Angela York

From production:

- Joe Kelleher

From mercurynews.com:

- Jodi Hoadley

From the newsroom:

- Richard Koci Hernandez
- Carolyn Jung
- April Lynch
- Chris O’Brien
- Amy Pizarro
- Sean Webby

Great, so how do we get rolling?

Here are answers to some of the big questions that have come up about this process, along with a description of how we’ll move forward. Please know that this is a set of starter questions and we’re likely to develop more as we go along. With that in mind …

Why are we bothering with “Discovery” at all?

To make big changes, we need to follow the mantra of the most successful innovators: Invent from the outside in.

We all know how to create a great newspaper. We just aren’t sure how to do that in today’s information marketplace. What’s missing? Knowledge of exactly what that marketplace needs and wants, and where we fit in. To get that knowledge, and use it to reinvent ourselves, we need to go outside and hunt it down.

Sure, we’ll include marketing data and all the piles of quantitative information on our paper and our industry. But we all know that stats never tell the whole story. To get it right, you need the complexities and character of human experience. People share insights that numbers never can.

We’ll be getting our current and potential audience to tell us what they need, want, and hope for from the news media in general and their leading local news organization in particular. We’ll start that process by just plain asking them about their lives, their habits, and their frustrations. We’ll also be listening for what they don’t say, along with what they do. We’ll also observe them — how they interact with our printed pages and Web site, how they find information in general, and how the media weave into the fabric of their days.

Think of this as going out on a story assignment or cold calling customers — but rolling that process back a notch. Rather than selling a specific product or researching a specific story, we’re simply looking for insights. Later on, we’ll work on turning those insights into ideas. Our only agenda is to discover what our agenda should be.

How will we do this?

We’ll start with the most basic inquiry tool — the interview. Twelve three-person teams from job categories and departments across the paper will interview current or likely Merc readers in person. On each of these teams, one person will ask most of the questions and take light notes, one person will take more thorough notes and operate a digital audio recorder, and another will take simple digital photographs throughout the interview. Each team will be responsible for conducting thorough interviews of four people and uploading their findings to a central database.

All the information in that database will be available to everyone at the Mercury News as it comes in, whether you participate directly in Discovery or not.

From the interview pool, we’ll select a small group of about five to 10 participants to follow more closely. A few people from the interviewing teams will be asked to shadow some of these people for a day, to glean more insights into their routines and daily media habits and interactions. Other interviewees will be asked to keep a “day in the life” journal, a written and visual diary detailing their experiences and media use on a given day.

We’ll also ask three to five people from the field teams to go out and be the proverbial “fly on the wall.” They’ll observe and record people’s media habits and behaviors in context, without interfering with their activities.

We’ll also convene five group conversations about the media in general and the Mercury News in particular, with groups such as Silicon Valley thought leaders, business owners, and community advocates.

The methodology most useful for these interviews and observations differs from what some of us are used to. It relies on the tools of anthropology and sociology, alongside a few lifted from journalism and market research, emphasizing observation, two-way conversations, and a deliberate lack of pre-fab assumptions. We’ll save most of the methodology details for those interested in joining the field teams. But it’s safe to say that this process works best if the field teams can suspend judgment about what they are hearing and seeing until the field work is done.

Who will we be talking to?

About 40 percent of the initial interviewees will be specifically selected, either from Merc subscriber lists or in the field, based on age. The remaining 60 percent will be selected by the teams in the field, based only on the team’s discretion. These teams will be looking for current or likely readers, with an eye to representing the diversity of Silicon Valley as widely as possible. Once we have the first round of interviews in hand, we’ll work with field teams to select subsets of interviewees for further questions and observation.

To finalize types of groups we convene for the group conversations, and draw up lists of participants, we’re asking everyone in the newsroom for suggestions.

Where will we be doing this?

We’ll be interviewing and observing people wherever they might gather and use media. Given the popularity of viewing and reading media on handheld devices, this gives the field teams a lot of leeway in looking for potential interview sites.

When will we be doing this?

We’d like to hear from people interested in being on a field team by the end of this week, although given that it’s summertime, we’ll also do our best to make room for those who are away but express interest later on. We’ll hold training sessions for field team members starting the week of August 13, and would like to have the first teams in the field starting the week of August 20.

How do I find out more?

Easy. Hunt down Matt Mansfield, April Lynch, or Chris O’Brien, who have already begun working on this first part. Or attend the next newsroom-wide Rethink meeting on Tuesday, August 7 from 3 -4 p.m. in the assembly room. At that session, we will review the first session for folks who missed it and talk about this important next step.

How can I join in?

Even easier. Just email one of us on the steering group.

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