The Onion, an American satirical paper, has offered advice to editors: tech developers have a valuable input.

In an interview with Adweek, the Onion's lead developer Jeff Weston likens the traditional relationship between editors and tech developers as that between Willy Wonka and his Oompa-Loompas. Weston told Adweek that tech developers at newspapers are a "huge team of laborers behind the scenes" that "have a constructive input, but they are not being asked." They work as technical laborers hired to carry out someone else's ideas.

Weston cites lack of faith as the reason they are not asked to collaborate with editors for important decisions. Editors end up dictating what content management system works best and how to develop apps.

Because of the freedom allotted to them, The Onion's three-person tech team created the paper's iPad app cheaply and quickly, and built it to be scalable across multiple platforms.

Last year's Knight News Challenge echoed these pro-tech sentiments. Knight, a journalism foundation, created a journalism challenge that aimed to generate ideas that could save journalism. Last year, the challenge was extended to reach new constituencies - the tech community. The challenge targeted tech-related non-profits and software developers. Gary Kebbel, a journalism program officer for the project, explained that people with technology backgrounds might see the same problem "from a completely different perspective."

This perspective is increasingly being recognized as valuable. As News & Tech reported last week, the Orange County Register left the creation of its iPad app entirely up to a team of developers. Rather than asking the team to implement a design created by editors, the team itself had free reign to produce an App that imaginatively showcased the newspaper, adapting it to the digital medium.

Newspapers today have less money to allot to research and development. Collaborating with tech developers (rather than dictating to them) can eliminate this need, as their fresh perspectives and different background are not as fervently tied to print formats as some editors. While the editorial staff itself should adapt to new technologies (such as Twitter, smart phones, and other social media), that alone cannot revolutionize a newspaper struggling to adapt online. Listening to tech developers may open up new possibilities in newspaper publishing.

Sources: Adweek, Poynter, News & Tech

Photo credit: yourtechnavigator.com