From the outset of Project Unbolt, a key goal was to produce a manual for other newsrooms to follow.
As I prepare to leave Digital First Media (tomorrow will be my last day), here is that manual, my recommendations for newsrooms to unbolt from the processes and culture of print. Our work on the project has not been as extensive as I had hoped, but I think we have produced a valid plan for accelerating the digital transformation of newsrooms. I hope my colleagues will continue the work and continue blogging about it.
Thanks to the editors and staffs of the four pilot newsrooms of Project Unbolt: the New Haven Register, Berkshire Eagle, News-Herald and El Paso Times. I applaud their willingness to change and experiment during a time of upheaval in our company and the industry.
Most of the manual is in earlier blog posts published here and elsewhere during the project. This post will summarize the important steps you need to take to transform your newsroom, with links to posts that elaborate on each of those points (some links appearing more than once because they relate to multiple points):
The unbolted newsroom
Several posts cover overall newsroom unbolting issues:
How an unbolted newsrooms would work.
Time to dismantle the newspaper factory culture
Excellent journalism is still our product
Getting your newsroom started
First you should conduct a newsroom assessment to help you set priorities for your transformation:
First step in transformation: Assess where you are, what you need to change
Then you need some good newsroom conversations about where you’re going and what that means for individual staff members:
Nancy March starts unbolting the Pottstown Mercury
Cover events and breaking news live
Live coverage provides depth, immediacy and interactivity for the digital audience. You should always cover breaking stories as they unfold. If you’re sending a journalist to cover an event, you should provide live coverage unless you have a compelling reason not to.
More on live coverage:
Project Unbolt posts:
Newsrooms need to provide live coverage routinely
Tom Cleary explains DFM’s Connecticut breaking news team
Daily Freeman shows variety of live coverage
20 tips for live coverage of events
Tips for liveblogging a (big) trial
1,552,145 engagement minutes
Earlier posts:
Suggestions (but not standards) for live tweeting
Liveblogging: Telling stories as they happen
Tips on liveblogging for journalists
Sports liveblogging tips
Unbolt enterprise from the Sunday story
The traditional practice of planning enterprise stories for the Sunday newspaper doesn’t work for digital coverage. In unbolting, you need to plan enterprise stories for digital platforms, planning publication at the best time for the digital community and planning digital coverage elements from the first. You can still publish the story on Sunday in print, but that may be several days after it publishes online.
More on unbolted enterprise:
Questions to help newsrooms unbolt enterprise reporting from the ‘Sunday story’
Five Satins: A ‘Sunday’ story published digitally the Monday before
Sunshine Week project showed digital-first enterprise approach
Digital-first enterprise projects by the Bangor Daily News
Cover routine daily news as it unfolds
The morning-newspaper routine of having reporters start work in the late morning or even early afternoon, then work all day on stories they turn in sometime in the evening. That doesn’t work for the digital audience, which is most engaged during the workday. More on routine daily coverage:
Newsrooms need a Digital First daily news flow
Digital First Media slowly changes newsroom deadline culture to reflect digital realities
Focus on mobile success
An unbolted newsroom makes a priority of pursuing mobile opportunities:
Project Unbolt posts:
10 steps toward a mobile-focused culture
Berkshire Eagle plans for mobile success
Earlier posts:
News organizations need mobile-first strategy
How news organizations need to change to pursue a mobile-first strategy
News organizations need to help local businesses pursue mobile opportunities
A mobile-first project for your community on the go
Lead your newsroom in pursuing mobile opportunities
Newsroom meetings
Daily planning meetings need to focus on digital platforms, rather than the next morning’s newspaper:
NY Times focuses more on digital in its morning meeting; your newsroom probably should, too
Advice for editors: Lead Digital First meetings
News budgets need to reflect and guide digital planning, too:
How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?
Leading the unbolted newsroom
Tom Meagher’s advice for transforming your newsroom
Much of my series last year on advice for Digital First editors also relates to unbolting your newsroom, though we weren’t using that term yet. (The post linked above has a list of other posts at the end.) Some that I think are most essential to unbolting:
Develop new leaders in your newsroom
Recognize and reward excellence
Ask staff to propose ways to measure performance
Lead your staff in learning data skills
Check a job candidate’s digital profile
Hiring is an opportunity to upgrade your newsroom
Blog about your newsroom’s transformation
Make training a priority
Lead and stimulate discussions of ethics
Stand for accuracy and accountability
Deliver criticism with a challenge
Praise is free but priceless
Disrupt your newsroom culture
The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors
Editing
Editing remains important in the unbolted newsroom, but newsrooms today don’t have as many editors as we used to. We need strong editing standards, starting with reporters doing a better job editing their own work.
Should we edit digital products with the same rigor as print?
Copy editing: It’s taught me a lot, but it has to change
Measuring success
I didn’t work on the project long enough to fully develop metrics for all the changes involved in unbolting. But here are some suggestions and observations on the topic:
Project Unbolt posts:
How do you measure success in culture change?
Numbers can be misleading in journalism or sports
To understand metrics, dig below the surface
Earlier post:
Introduction to Digital First metrics: How do you measure success?
How the Berkshire Eagle is unbolting
The Berkshire Eagle’s Unbolt Master Plan gives a good model for a newsroom to follow in planning your unbolting work:
Berkshire Eagle Master Plan gives direction to the work of unbolting from print
Unbolt: The Eagle poised for takeoff
Digital First Media pilot newsroom involves entire staff in its local version of culture change
Berkshire Eagle’s plan to unbolt coverage and storytelling
How the Berkshire Eagle is unbolting planning and management from print culture
Berkshire Eagle plans for mobile success
How the Berkshire Eagle plans to update and uphold standards
The Berkshire Eagle’s plan for stronger engagement
Berkshire Eagle unbolts its processes and workflow from print
Working Digital First
In many ways, Project Unbolt continues the transformation I outlined in a 2011-2 series of posts on how Digital First journalists should think and work. I include those posts here because they address some important issues we didn’t get to in my short time on Project Unbolt:
How a Digital First approach guides a journalist’s work
Digital First journalists: What we value
10 ways to think like a Digital First journalist
Leading a Digital First newsroom
Questions to guide a Digital First reporter’s work on any beat
How a Digital First reporter should approach statehouse coverage
Continuing Project Unbolt
Project Unbolt doesn’t stop with my departure from Digital First Media (tomorrow is my last day). CEO John Paton has said the work should continue. I encourage the pilot newsrooms to continue both working to unbolt and sharing their stories, either in guest posts in my blog or somewhere else (I’ll link to their posts here if they blog elsewhere). I encourage other newsrooms to start working on the steps outlined here. I welcome their guest posts as well, or encourage them to share their lessons elsewhere.
As for non-DFM newsrooms interested in unbolting from the culture and processes of print, I welcome your guest posts as you follow the recommendations here or develop your own recommendations. And if you’d like my help in unbolting, you can reach me at stephenbuttry (at) gmail (dot) com.
Filed under: Project Unbolt Tagged: Berkshire Eagle, El Paso Times, liveblogging, New Haven Register, News-Herald, Project Unbolt 
