When staff learns, everybody wins

Sunday, June 19, 2005

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jeannine Guttman

Staff training may be the most important initiative in any newsroom, but seldom do organizations create strategies to ensure that every journalist gets some sort of professional development, every year.

As we created our newsroom goals for 2005, our publisher, Chuck Cochrane, said he would like us to build such a strategy.

So we are embarking on an annual crusade to give professional training to every journalist - and we have about 130, counting part-timers.

The centerpiece of this strategy will be three days of workshops by two renowned faculty members from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. They are Jill Geisler, who directs the institute's leadership programs, and Bob Steele, who is nationally known as an expert on journalism ethics.

The Oct. 17, 18 and 19 program in Portland will focus on ethics, critical thinking, craft issues - such as writing, editing, interviewing, design - ethical decision-making, news judgment and journalistic values.

In addition to our news folks, staffers from MaineToday.com and our Central Maine Newspapers will participate in this training initiative.

"Journalism organizations often have a 'sink or swim' culture that presumes that staff members are competent on arrival and will learn and grow from experience," said Geisler. "But experience alone isn't a good enough teacher. We see from recent ethical and reporting problems at newspapers and broadcast outlets that even experienced journalists can make bad decisions.

"As a result, good organizations are looking more closely at the value of continuing education - not just as prevention, but as a strategy for recruiting, retention and rewarding employees."

The profession is getting help in this endeavor from organizations such as Poynter. Others that have launched training initiatives to help newsrooms range from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists to the Radio-TV News Directors Foundation, said Geisler.

"Why all the attention to the training? Because citizens deserve the best from their papers and (broadcast) stations," Geisler said. "Because on-the-job training in a busy, deadline-driven enterprise isn't sufficient. Because good journalists love to learn. It is why they chose this vocation in the first place."

A TEACHING EDITOR

The Poynter training is our centerpiece. But it's not the only thing we're doing in the area of staff development.

This past week, Dieter Bradbury, one of our key assignment editors, took on the role of newsroom writing coach. His job: To spend each Monday working with staffers on craft issues, in order to raise the bar on our writing, editing and story presentation.

Bradbury, 53, is a veteran of our staff, having spent 20 years as a respected reporter, holding beats from the police to general assignment. He covered the environment for more than a decade. He is developing a variety of programs to address each staffer's individual needs. Our goal is to have Bradbury work with every member of the news team this year in some capacity.

"We feel Dieter has the right background, the right experience and the right demeanor to pull this off," said managing editor Eric Conrad.

Bradbury has a reputation for being a no-nonsense editor. He's a highly skilled journalist who knows how to tackle a complex beat and distill the work into compelling stories - on deadline. Those abilities made him a natural for this role.

And it's one that he very much wanted. Teaching, helping reporters and other journalists find their next level of professional excellence, is a job that he told me was made for him.

"When it comes to coaching writers, I believe professional development and reader service go hand-in-hand," Bradbury said. "If I can help reporters and others in the newsroom improve their skills, we'll be publishing stories with greater clarity, accuracy and expression. It's that kind of writing that our readers expect and deserve.

"Keeping a focus on writing is especially important at a time when newspapers are changing so rapidly. We're putting a lot of energy into the appearance of the newspaper. We want to make more effective use of photographs, graphics and other visual elements.

"But we can't forget that the written word is still the foundation of our medium. It will be my job to keep our newsroom focused on that," Bradbury said.

We've got the craft issues covered, and through Newsroom University, we strive to keep our staffers up to date on the complexities of various social, political and business issues.

Each quarter we invite a state leader or recognized expert to speak to our journalists about their jobs and their visions for the future. This past week, our Newsroom U. guest was Dr. Joseph Westphal, chancellor of the University of Maine System, who talked about the challenges facing higher education in Maine.

LEARNING FROM MENTORS

Additionally, our company this week launched the Publisher's Circle mentoring program, which pairs selected employees from Blethen Maine Newspaper properties with internal mentors of their choosing for the next 12 months.

This mentoring concept was Cochrane's brainchild. And it is an important concept to him, on professional and personal levels.

In explaining its origins to me, he said nurturing the next generation of leaders is the best legacy managers can leave in any organization. When we all have retired, the lasting impact will be the people we have coached. There is nothing more important, Cochrane said, than passing along our professional values and our personal stories of successes and failures, of decisions that worked and those that did not.

There are 13 people being mentored in the first Publisher's Circle and the goal is to make this an annual event, said Liz Torraca, a senior human resources staffer who is helping direct the initiative.

"It's a very exciting program because we're looking internally and saying, 'Where's the talent? Where are we going?'

"It's very future-oriented. We also will be bringing in leaders from the community and asking them to share their perspectives. It's a way of broadening our views, going outside of our industry, to understand the dynamics of leadership.

"It also will provide an opportunity for the mentors, I hope, to realize how much they have to pass on, to understand their unique role in giving back to this next wave of leaders," Torraca said.

Like any business or enterprise today, newspapering is a rapidly evolving field, with myriad challenges and opportunities.

We believe a key to our continued success, to our goal of giving readers the highest quality journalism possible, is the professional development of our staff. And this year, we've launched a long-term strategy to ensure that path is taken and staked out for the future.

Jeannine Guttman is editor and vice president of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Send e-mail to jguttman@pressherald.com or write to 390 Congress St., Portland, Maine 04101.

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