My sense is that many newsrooms haven’t yet internalized what it really means to be digital, the level of transformation this requires and how a digital newsroom is supposed to look and behave. Multimedia and social media aren’t just something you add to the fringes and tinker with occasionally when you have time. They need to be seen as essential, and many newsrooms don’t seem to fully understand this or incorporate it in how they make decisions and how they communicate what’s important and valuable.

Worst of all are the newsrooms in which leaders profess to be “digital first” but the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) message that continues to be sent to the troops every single day is that time spent on Twitter, blogging, multimedia, etc., isn’t contributing to the cause. They may say the right things but they don’t really *mean* it.

We need to rethink how we define productivity. Some metrics or benchmarks would be useful here, but I digress. Who contributes more to the newsroom – the person who cranks out two print stories a day and shoots 2-3 photos a week, or the person who writes 2-3 print stories a week, blogs a couple times a week, tweets almost every day, shoots photos and is actively learning new skills? How do you evaluate their performance? How do you begin to make it rewarding for those who are leading the charge?

It’s not about “content.” It’s about news.