Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Our old friend (and former Nieman Fellow) David Skok got a nice promotion at The Boston Globe yesterday, being bumped up from digital advisor to the editor to both managing editor for digital and general manager of BostonGlobe.com. He also spent part of the day here on campus, giving a talk at the Shorenstein Center on his work there.
A few highlights:
The challenge is, on the Internet, I can write the best lede or nutgraf for a story in the world, but if you can’t read it on your phone within 0.1 seconds, it’s irrelevant, it’s invisible, and it doesn’t exist. If you’re going to be a digital product-driven organization, the user experience has to be the first and foremost [priority].
As newspapers were disrupted by Craigslist and other things, yes, there were technological reasons for why this happened. But it would be incredibly naive and arrogant of us as legacy publishers to suggest that we weren’t also responsible for our own demise, in our structures, in our cultures, in our processes that we have in our newsrooms.
There’s a great need to have a content management system that allows for the flexibility that reporters need and want to do their jobs. Whether it’s improving the content management system, getting better analytics…improving the resources that we give our people ultimately will help us as well.
One comment:
dont make me laugh this fluff piece is completely absurd
current or former globe employee here lets talk about digital change and the nonsense buzzwords he says vs the actual actions
hes a john henry man who along with a retinue of imported dangerously incompetent yes men subordinates instilled a atmosphere of fear and retribution due to his incredibly mercurial nature.. hes successfully instilled a hostile us vs them mentality for old pre-henry employees taking an already tense place to work and making it worse — instead of breaking down barriers he has built the silo walls even higher
any success he enjoys is built off existing legacy or the backs of hardworking subordinates who he is barely aware of or their abilities. he responds only to trend and inflicts his whim. take a look at the quality of the globe from a digital perspective since its historic launch and then match dates to when he came aboard
the digital doers suffer immensely at the globe and it shows.. look at the average employee retention time age or gender balance for purely tech and you start to see what is really going on — ask angus durocher why he is leaving or why people are surreptitiously recording corey gottlieb itll be funny. or hey where did matt gross go? what is less funny is how poorly managed and toxic digital is at the globe and how horribly mismanaged a formerly landmark site has become. why not call up hr and find out how many digital workers have recently quit or been fired and why or why they are astroturfing glassdoor so hard. you know do some journalism instead of calling the prow of a sinking ship a mountain
if you think this writing style discredits my words let me stop you and say that i am purposely masking it because the environment he is very much responsible for creating is one where i would 100% fear retribution for open dialogue or honest criticism. there are a lot of challenges yes but he is only adding to them
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