Reports by Melanie Sill and Michele McLellan may help guide journalism’s future

I call your attention to two reports on journalism and where it is headed:

• The Case for Open Journalism Now by Melanie Sill of the Annenberg School for Communication &  Journalism at the University of Southern California.
• New practices shape transformative news leadership in the digital age by consultant and News Leadership 3.0 blogger Michele McLellan.

Melanie and Michele are both friends of mine and both reports feature Journal Register colleagues. Michele focuses heavily in one section on Jon Cooper, a vice president of JRC and Digital First Media. Melanie cites this blog in a list of 100 Ideas, Arguments and Illustrations for Open Journalism and uses several JRC examples throughout the report, including a mention of me. Melanie and I collaborate regularly in leadership of the #ASNEchat on Twitter and Michele has helped me many times, featured me frequently in her blog and we have crossed paths at more conferences and seminars than I can count.

I don’t have the time to blog extensively about either report (though I may do that on either or both later, practicing the reflection that I praised in a Saturday post). But I call both to your attention.

Michele cites nine best practices from news executives who have participated in Knight Digital Media Center programs:

1. Focus the mission
2. Adapt the structure
3. Overcommunicate
4. Get comfortable with not having all the answers (this is the section featuring Jon, who actually has a lot of good answers)
5. Be a catalyst
6. Get out of the way
7. Use the tools
8. Own the numbers
9. Make time for the future

Melanie examines several practices and trends toward open journalism that shares and collaborates more with the community and competitors. She closes with five action steps for journalists and news organizations:

1. Build transparency into every step
2. Build a culture of responsiveness; make engagement part of the journalism as well as the marketing
3. Make participation a public exchange with benefits for all
4. Learn from collaboration success and expand peer-to-peer partnerships
5. Embrace journalism’s changing role in a networked information universe

I encourage you to go into greater depth with both reports than I have here. Both women have made significant, useful contributions to the discussion about what journalism needs to do and how to lead it to a prosperous future.

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