Rowe's Email: Better Than it Reads
Jeff Alworth
On Monday, Willamette Week drew attention to some changes in the editorial management at the Oregonian, posting an internal email from Editor Sandy Rowe. Riddled with unfortunate jargon ("we must transform The Oregonian into a news organization characterized by a reader-first culture across platforms, by agility, and by rigorous and shared standards of success"), it was mocked by WW readers and picked up by Slate, which was so impressed with the poor writing that it started a new series:
Written in the saddest bureaucratese, her 760-word note stops whatever conversation it was designed to start. Swap out a few journalism-specific words for computer lingo and Rowe's memo could be addressed from a software company president to his staff as he reorganizes the place.
Ouch.
Leaving aside the syntax (let the first blogger who has not written an unfortunate post cast the first stone), I have sympathy for her position. Newspapers are in the midst of a major transition, and those that don't capitalize on the immediacy of the internet are doomed. Thus does she write:
[W]e know the work we do in this newsroom can drive increased readership of our content on OregonLive and that we can build our value to readers and viewers by creating content on OregonLive that is more suited to online utility rather than print.
Again, painfully worded, but the substance is welcome: the Oregonian has stepped up its commitment to news with various blogs and breaking stories that appear online in real time.
Bloggers were quick to ridicule OregonLive's early incarnation. The stories appeared late, if at all; links were often broken; the site looked terrible. But we haven't been as quick to note the improvement over the past year. I regularly check in on the O's politics blog, where stories often break first. The expansive Legislature page more than compensates for the dramatically reduced print coverage. They've added other blogs in entertainment, sports, and business that substantially increase the news they provide.
Normally, we ridicule media companies that indulge in corporatese because it signals a move away from serious reporting--as if the jargon can conceal the reality. Rowe's email, to the contrary, is a call for more and better reporting:
We must learn new tools and how to best utilize them, we must prioritize our work, and we must find new ways to maximize the talent and impact each of us has in print and online.... In short, we must expect and help everyone do the very best work of their careers during this time of transition and challenge. We must all be committed to this transformation.
The language of the memo may be regrettable. The message isn't.
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connect with blueoregon
Mar 21, '07
Any chance of including dumping Reinhard among the planned improvements?
Mar 21, '07
Yeah! Let's get rid of everyone the Blue Oregon crowd doesn't already agree with! We'll call it "diversity".
Mar 21, '07
I actually haven't seen any notable improvements to OregonLive. I continue to find the search capabilities hopeless, or at least hopelessly confusing. One would think that at a minimum they could make the print edition available online, but they don't. And of course if the O wants to stay in business, they need to have additional stuff available online that people are willing to pay for.
12:02 p.m.
Mar 21, '07
I don't know Bill. What if they replaced Reinhard with an actual conservative intellectual who was capable of more than transcribing the Talking Points of the Day.
I think that we should count our blessings, 'cause the demographic that gives credence to Dirty Dave is the exact same group of 27%ers that listens to Lars, Sean, and BillO for their daily reenforcement of Dogma.
Mar 21, '07
Yeah, Reinhard gives conservatives a bad name. I'm fine with the O keeping him there and making the movement look bad two or three days a week. Kind of a shame that they waste column space on him, but better him than a smart conservative.
Mar 21, '07
"The language of the memo may be regrettable."
You are too kind, Jeff. I find it beyond ironic that an organization designed to attract readers would put out something so unreadable.
Mar 21, '07
Poor Oregonian. Folks on the left say it's a right wing rag. Folks on the right say it's a left wing rag. Must be tough for them.
Mar 21, '07
Maybe Sandy was entering the Bullwer-Litton bad writing contest and just running it by the editors. That was the worst writing I've seen by an employee of The Oregonian since Jonathan Nicholas' last column (or any of his others).
Maybe as a fundraiser for the Dems, Blue Oregon should sponsor the annuual Sandra Rowe Bad Memo Contest. Charge entrants 20 bucks and give the winner a trip to Brookings.
3:26 p.m.
Mar 21, '07
Good catch Jeff.
Apart from all the left/right stuff, I hope the new OregonLive.com editor will take this opportunity to address basic, and I would think embarassing, functionality problems on the site.
Foremost in my mind is the mystery of vanishing stories. Older links to stories litter the Internet, but result in blank pages when clicked.
I can understand that the O. might want people to pay for access to older stories, but they fail to communicate HOW to locate a story - even if one is willing to pay - based on its now-defunct link.
If expired links led to a "click here to enter credit card info" button, that would be a mild improvement.
If the resulting page also gave basic bibliographical info that allowed me to track the story down at the library, that would reflect the spirit of service that I think most expect of the news leader in a major American city and state.
4:27 p.m.
Mar 21, '07
Apart from all the left/right stuff, I hope the new OregonLive.com editor will take this opportunity to address basic, and I would think embarrassing, functionality problems on the site.
Like the fact that the drop down menus don't work in a lot of browsers. To build sites for IE and not fully functioning in Mozilla/Firefox is just ridiculous. IE isn't the industry leader anymore.
OL could use a lot of work and improvement. But they get rid of most of their people, except ad people, and then wonder what is wrong.
10:31 p.m.
Mar 21, '07
Foremost in my mind is the mystery of vanishing stories. Older links to stories litter the Internet, but result in blank pages when clicked.
I can understand that the O. might want people to pay for access to older stories, but they fail to communicate HOW to locate a story - even if one is willing to pay - based on its now-defunct link.
As I wrote once to Michael Arrieta-Walden, the problem of vanishing Oregonian stories is actually a major economic development and public safety problem for Oregon.
If the Oregonian is the newspaper of record for this region, then its stories serve as a historical record. By vanishing them, investors considering investments, companies considering expansion, and talented people considering relocation are less able to do the research they need for due diligence.
From a public safety standpoint, having old seemingly-minor crime stories can be tremendously important. I sent my note to Michael A-W when my brother was looking for a bass player to colloborate with musically. He remembered a guy from high school, and Googled. Ouch - he'd been arrested five years ago for molesting a kid. That's critical information, and in the Oregonian's world, it wouldn't exist.
The Oregonian works very hard to be the paper of record for Oregon and SW Washington. Why do they then undermine their position in the community by running away from the historical record they produce?
10:33 p.m.
Mar 21, '07
p.s. It's not like disk space costs anything anymore, so the financial cost is negligible.
And there can't possibly be much revenue in the old archives. Do you know anybody that's paid for a story from the O's "morgue"? I don't.
There's gotta be more revenue in having more Google traffic magnets sitting out there and more pages for ads to run on those pages.
(Oh yeah, the Oregonian doesn't run their own website. Can somebody fix that already?)
12:21 p.m.
Mar 22, '07
Oh, Michael Arrieta-Walden was already the web editor? That's funny, cause I thought the memo said…oh, never mind.
"Paper of record" - that's the phrase I was looking for. Thanks.
In addition to "economic development" and "public safety" - which may be the most persuasive arguments - I'd add "civic engagement."
Individuals - neighborhood activists, bloggers, Wikipedians, etc. - trying to keep track of what's going on in Oregon, and wanting to participate, typically hit a brick wall at OregonLive.com. To the extent that things are getting done in Oregon, the Oregonian opts out of a key role - a role that nobody else is able to play.
Imagine if Zach Randolph just didn't think rebounds were all that important?
1:33 p.m.
Mar 22, '07
From Slate: Far from rallying the Oregonian staff to help the new bosses remake the paper, Rowe's memo pours a round of Kool-Aid and invites the newsroom to do a Jonestown.
Too bad that memo could hit such a high note.
Mar 23, '07
"We must learn new tools and how to best utilize them, we must prioritize our work, and we must find new ways to maximize the talent and impact each of us has in print and online." -- Sandy Rowe
Utilize ... prioritize ... maximize ... jeez, three "-ize" words in one sentence! When I was in J-school they warned us against using "-ize" words. Guess that no longer applies.