Media Life’s first point: the printing process still defines newspapers, although most of them seem to have realized – officially – that they are becoming multimedia companies. The daily routine of the printing process, according to Media Life, numbs newsrooms’ desire for change.

"Innovation requires a different culture. That’s why the most successful newspaper internet operations were developed outside the newsroom,” says Philip Meyer, now teaching journalism at the University of North Carolina.

Denial of the necessity for change and arrogance are two other factors that lead to newsroom paralysis. Arrogance can be most visible among a newsroom’s best staffers, who are often the most reticent about change. Why would they reform their success story? Editors must use tact and psychology to convince their staffers to change life-long ways. But they must also impose a sense of urgency on their staff, which too readily dismisses the need for change as an option rather than a necessity.

“If a newspaper doesn’t already have a strong information strategy and can’t already tell you who its readers are and what they like, if they haven’t already tied online and print together, I have no optimism they can turn it around and make it different. It’s too late,” says Miles Groves former chief economist for the Newspaper Association of America.

It’s not too late. Newspapers that are still ‘behind’ in the integration process, or about digital, can still survive. Before anything though, newspapers have to go through an internal and cultural change in the way they envision their product.

Source: Media Life