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Why one editor spends entire training budget on the Web
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| Editor Joe Howry speaks with Gretchen Macchiarella in the multimedia laboratory of the Ventura County Star. |
Ventura County Star Editor Joe Howry's multi-media strategy
By Adolfo Mendez | Associate Editor
Editor Joe Howry decided in 2002 to spend his entire training budget on helping his print-focused newsroom embrace the Web.
The gamble came long before a “Web-first” strategy became common in the newspaper industry. And The multimedia learning curve was steep for everyone at the Ventura County Star, including Howry, editor and vice president of the 87,000-circulation California daily.
“I’ll be very honest with you: I didn’t have a clue what multimedia really meant,” said Howry, who doubted the potential of online. “I was open to it, but I didn’t see much of anything that I thought had any real, meaningful application. It was a slow evolution.”
At the time, the Star’s Web site was only an online repository for print content. “We were doing nothing more than any other paper, which was taking our print content and putting it online,” he said. Then Howry decided to put the paper’s entire training budget � with the full support of upper management � toward making his newsroom a true multimedia facility.
Training
In making his decision, Howry considered many factors. “I was looking at the paper’s budget and I realized I didn’t have a whole lot of money for training,” he said. “If I was going to take seriously attacking the online puzzle, I was going to have to take a focused approach to it.”
Training sessions on other topics had produced mixed results. “With most of this [training] money, you send a reporter here, an editor there. How beneficial is it, especially for reporters?” Howry said. “I had my doubts. They go out and get inspired and come back and want to try new things, and sometimes editors don’t want to try any experiments. It really quells all the enthusiasm that you bring back from those training seminars.”
So Howry chose a different strategy for his Web training. First, he insisted that the multimedia training be done in-house so everyone could have access to the same information. He also made the training voluntary yet available to anyone who wanted it. “I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, but I think it’s wrong to try to force everybody to do this,” Howry said. “There are people who only like to write for the newspaper, and they do a great job and they have great value. I wouldn’t put them into a lower category because of that.”
Howry met with senior editors to identify instructors. They eventually chose Jane Ellen Stevens, who teaches multimedia at the University of California at Berkley. “We contacted Jane, and she came down,” Howry said. “We thought we were interviewing her. She was interviewing us.”
Stevens agreed. “Yes, I was,” she said. “Many news organizations ask for workshops for video training. But that's not what the Web is all about. It's much more complicated than that, but it boils down to giving the staff the education and tools to adapt to a new medium that's as different from newspapers as television is from radio.”
A key aspect of the training was helping current staff realize they could make multimedia presentations � from beginning to end � without the aid of technicians or experts to do it for them. “If we were going to get into online and were going to do these kinds of things, where were those people going to come from? They weren’t going to come from new bodies,” Howry said. “Newspapers aren’t going to hire new people to do this. You know they’re going to take bodies from the newsroom to do the online.”
He said it also made sense back then to have editorial staff learning new media. “That way, they have the technical skills to do it and still can produce great journalism for print as well,” he said.
Howry selected eight staff members from a group of 24 who volunteered for the first training session. “The first group of eight was a good mix of younger reporters and some veterans and encompassed every aspect of our newsroom from sports and life to business,” he said.
His plan was simple. “I thought that what we needed to do was dedicate people to our online operation,” he said. “We had an online director, but that was it. I wanted to create two positions out of the newsroom and have them just be fully dedicated to our content online, either re-purposing what we’re doing in the paper or creating new content.”
Howry’s online push didn’t stop there. He next made the difficult decision to pull reporters off their beats so they could spend six weeks entirely focused on their training. This meant certain stories weren’t going to get covered, but Howry was willing to make the sacrifice. “I could do it because I knew it wasn’t going to be permanent,” he said. “Could I invest in six weeks? Yes, I could.”
This was a paradigm shift from the usual editor mindset. “I think the biggest resistance came in my way of thinking,” Howry said. “Some editors think that if reporters want to learn new media, they have to learn it on their own. They have to do it and still do their job � which doubles their workload.”
Howry wanted to avoid this. “We didn’t try to force this on top of everything else they do,” he said. “If it doesn’t feed the beast � and that’s what newspapers are supposed to be doing � it can be difficult to let them do it.”
But Howry let his reporters step away from their daily duties because his multimedia expectations were high. “This was not something you can just pick up with a couple days of training or by osmosis,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.
“It was originally conceived to be three days of intense training in multimedia and then they’d go back to their regular jobs,” Howry said. “I said, �No.’ I said, �For the next six weeks, your job is to do this.’
“Both myself and the managing editor were aware that this put burdens on others, and we were saying, �That’s OK. If you missed something, fine. There’s not going to be repercussions.’”
Participants spent days of intensive training working in teams to produce multimedia stories that were later posted online. Stevens said six weeks was a sufficient time period for the print journalists to acquire the required multimedia skills.
Meanwhile other newsroom members covered for the absence of the eight trainees. “To help that along, we said, �If you help us now to get through this period of a little bit of pain with these people out, that would be wonderful. Then you will get your chance,” Howry said. “Everyone who wanted the training would get it. And they bought into that.”
Today more than half of the staff has received the multimedia training, which is ongoing. “From the moment I made those initial decisions, I never had a moment of doubt,” Howry said. “I said, �This is right, it works for us, I’m sure of that. I’m committed to it.’ People who are in the program reinforce that all the time. I watch the progress of the first group and each succeeding group. The level of our projects that are multimedia constantly improves. We were building audience with it, too.”
As the instructor, Stevens said she witnessed the staff improve with practice. "At some point, they make the transition to using the video camera as their reporter's notebook, and can do a multimedia piece as well as a text story for the print edition," she said.
“However, the long-term goal is to treat every story as a Web-first multimedia story," Stevens said, "making the decision on what part of the story works best in video, still photos, audio, text and/or graphics, and 'reverse-publish' the story in its Web-centric form to the print edition."
Going multimedia
Embracing the Web as the Star did would be a smart move, but other newspapers may face their own hurdles before achieving similar results. “I would not even dare to say ours is the formula for every newspaper,” Howry said. “If you’re a union shop, you’re going to have difficulty. If you don’t have a total commitment from the top down, you’re going to have problems. If you don’t pick the right mix of people and if you’re unwilling to make some sacrifices � like taking people out of the room realizing there are some things that aren’t going to be covered like they used to be � then you’ll have problems.”
The Star purchased all the necessary equipment so the newsroom could produce quality audio and video and use Flash animation. “Somebody is going to be filthy rich if they can develop a multimedia program other than Flash that is intuitive and easy,” Howry said. “We found some things out there that made things easier, but to put together a true multimedia program, Flash is about the only thing out that really works and it’s not an easy program to work.”
Howry said he should’ve named someone to manage the multimedia operation earlier. “After a period of time when we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 people trained, we really needed somebody to manage the whole process,” he said. “You had all these people putting all this demand on the equipment, so you have scheduling problems and someone needs to have oversight.”
So Howry created an assistant managing editor position to be in charge of multimedia. The paper couldn’t afford to equip everybody with laptops, so it developed a system to loan them to reporters on a case-by-case basis. A reporter pitches a multimedia idea and if the editor agrees that it has potential, they schedule the reporting around when video or audio equipment is available.
“Breaking news is something else,” Howry said. “There are equipment packages available just for breaking news all the time.”
The paper will also pair someone trained in multimedia with someone who lacks the training. “If a journalist not trained for this is working on a multimedia story, we’ll say, �Help us as we build a multimedia presentation. Let us know who your sources are. We’ll send somebody out with the camera with you when you go on an interview.’ We have one or two people in our digital media area that are quite capable of doing that.”
Howry said the Web has now become an integral part of the Star’s newsgathering. “I think for the most part, they get it,” he said. “They embrace the fact that there are more ways to tell a story � elegant ways to tell it � that don’t just involve ink on paper.”
Contact:Joe Howry, jhowry@venturacountystar.com
The gamble came long before a “Web-first” strategy became common in the newspaper industry. And The multimedia learning curve was steep for everyone at the Ventura County Star, including Howry, editor and vice president of the 87,000-circulation California daily.
“I’ll be very honest with you: I didn’t have a clue what multimedia really meant,” said Howry, who doubted the potential of online. “I was open to it, but I didn’t see much of anything that I thought had any real, meaningful application. It was a slow evolution.”
At the time, the Star’s Web site was only an online repository for print content. “We were doing nothing more than any other paper, which was taking our print content and putting it online,” he said. Then Howry decided to put the paper’s entire training budget � with the full support of upper management � toward making his newsroom a true multimedia facility.
Training
In making his decision, Howry considered many factors. “I was looking at the paper’s budget and I realized I didn’t have a whole lot of money for training,” he said. “If I was going to take seriously attacking the online puzzle, I was going to have to take a focused approach to it.”
Training sessions on other topics had produced mixed results. “With most of this [training] money, you send a reporter here, an editor there. How beneficial is it, especially for reporters?” Howry said. “I had my doubts. They go out and get inspired and come back and want to try new things, and sometimes editors don’t want to try any experiments. It really quells all the enthusiasm that you bring back from those training seminars.”
So Howry chose a different strategy for his Web training. First, he insisted that the multimedia training be done in-house so everyone could have access to the same information. He also made the training voluntary yet available to anyone who wanted it. “I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, but I think it’s wrong to try to force everybody to do this,” Howry said. “There are people who only like to write for the newspaper, and they do a great job and they have great value. I wouldn’t put them into a lower category because of that.”
Howry met with senior editors to identify instructors. They eventually chose Jane Ellen Stevens, who teaches multimedia at the University of California at Berkley. “We contacted Jane, and she came down,” Howry said. “We thought we were interviewing her. She was interviewing us.”
Stevens agreed. “Yes, I was,” she said. “Many news organizations ask for workshops for video training. But that's not what the Web is all about. It's much more complicated than that, but it boils down to giving the staff the education and tools to adapt to a new medium that's as different from newspapers as television is from radio.”
A key aspect of the training was helping current staff realize they could make multimedia presentations � from beginning to end � without the aid of technicians or experts to do it for them. “If we were going to get into online and were going to do these kinds of things, where were those people going to come from? They weren’t going to come from new bodies,” Howry said. “Newspapers aren’t going to hire new people to do this. You know they’re going to take bodies from the newsroom to do the online.”
He said it also made sense back then to have editorial staff learning new media. “That way, they have the technical skills to do it and still can produce great journalism for print as well,” he said.
Howry selected eight staff members from a group of 24 who volunteered for the first training session. “The first group of eight was a good mix of younger reporters and some veterans and encompassed every aspect of our newsroom from sports and life to business,” he said.
His plan was simple. “I thought that what we needed to do was dedicate people to our online operation,” he said. “We had an online director, but that was it. I wanted to create two positions out of the newsroom and have them just be fully dedicated to our content online, either re-purposing what we’re doing in the paper or creating new content.”
Howry’s online push didn’t stop there. He next made the difficult decision to pull reporters off their beats so they could spend six weeks entirely focused on their training. This meant certain stories weren’t going to get covered, but Howry was willing to make the sacrifice. “I could do it because I knew it wasn’t going to be permanent,” he said. “Could I invest in six weeks? Yes, I could.”
This was a paradigm shift from the usual editor mindset. “I think the biggest resistance came in my way of thinking,” Howry said. “Some editors think that if reporters want to learn new media, they have to learn it on their own. They have to do it and still do their job � which doubles their workload.”
Howry wanted to avoid this. “We didn’t try to force this on top of everything else they do,” he said. “If it doesn’t feed the beast � and that’s what newspapers are supposed to be doing � it can be difficult to let them do it.”
But Howry let his reporters step away from their daily duties because his multimedia expectations were high. “This was not something you can just pick up with a couple days of training or by osmosis,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.
“It was originally conceived to be three days of intense training in multimedia and then they’d go back to their regular jobs,” Howry said. “I said, �No.’ I said, �For the next six weeks, your job is to do this.’
“Both myself and the managing editor were aware that this put burdens on others, and we were saying, �That’s OK. If you missed something, fine. There’s not going to be repercussions.’”
Participants spent days of intensive training working in teams to produce multimedia stories that were later posted online. Stevens said six weeks was a sufficient time period for the print journalists to acquire the required multimedia skills.
Meanwhile other newsroom members covered for the absence of the eight trainees. “To help that along, we said, �If you help us now to get through this period of a little bit of pain with these people out, that would be wonderful. Then you will get your chance,” Howry said. “Everyone who wanted the training would get it. And they bought into that.”
Today more than half of the staff has received the multimedia training, which is ongoing. “From the moment I made those initial decisions, I never had a moment of doubt,” Howry said. “I said, �This is right, it works for us, I’m sure of that. I’m committed to it.’ People who are in the program reinforce that all the time. I watch the progress of the first group and each succeeding group. The level of our projects that are multimedia constantly improves. We were building audience with it, too.”
As the instructor, Stevens said she witnessed the staff improve with practice. "At some point, they make the transition to using the video camera as their reporter's notebook, and can do a multimedia piece as well as a text story for the print edition," she said.
“However, the long-term goal is to treat every story as a Web-first multimedia story," Stevens said, "making the decision on what part of the story works best in video, still photos, audio, text and/or graphics, and 'reverse-publish' the story in its Web-centric form to the print edition."
Going multimedia
Embracing the Web as the Star did would be a smart move, but other newspapers may face their own hurdles before achieving similar results. “I would not even dare to say ours is the formula for every newspaper,” Howry said. “If you’re a union shop, you’re going to have difficulty. If you don’t have a total commitment from the top down, you’re going to have problems. If you don’t pick the right mix of people and if you’re unwilling to make some sacrifices � like taking people out of the room realizing there are some things that aren’t going to be covered like they used to be � then you’ll have problems.”
The Star purchased all the necessary equipment so the newsroom could produce quality audio and video and use Flash animation. “Somebody is going to be filthy rich if they can develop a multimedia program other than Flash that is intuitive and easy,” Howry said. “We found some things out there that made things easier, but to put together a true multimedia program, Flash is about the only thing out that really works and it’s not an easy program to work.”
Howry said he should’ve named someone to manage the multimedia operation earlier. “After a period of time when we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 people trained, we really needed somebody to manage the whole process,” he said. “You had all these people putting all this demand on the equipment, so you have scheduling problems and someone needs to have oversight.”
So Howry created an assistant managing editor position to be in charge of multimedia. The paper couldn’t afford to equip everybody with laptops, so it developed a system to loan them to reporters on a case-by-case basis. A reporter pitches a multimedia idea and if the editor agrees that it has potential, they schedule the reporting around when video or audio equipment is available.
“Breaking news is something else,” Howry said. “There are equipment packages available just for breaking news all the time.”
The paper will also pair someone trained in multimedia with someone who lacks the training. “If a journalist not trained for this is working on a multimedia story, we’ll say, �Help us as we build a multimedia presentation. Let us know who your sources are. We’ll send somebody out with the camera with you when you go on an interview.’ We have one or two people in our digital media area that are quite capable of doing that.”
Howry said the Web has now become an integral part of the Star’s newsgathering. “I think for the most part, they get it,” he said. “They embrace the fact that there are more ways to tell a story � elegant ways to tell it � that don’t just involve ink on paper.”
Contact:Joe Howry, jhowry@venturacountystar.com
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