Work hard AND make good decisions

Chip Hutcheson

Nov 1, 2024

The lesson learned by the coffee experience can carry over to the newspaper business — the road might be difficult and rocky, but determination to overcome obstacles is necessary to provide a newspaper that will serve your community well.
Hutcheson

Returning to my hometown of less than 7,000 people, my wife sent me on a mission to get her the latest fad in coffee drinks. It wasn’t easy.

The small, free-standing building is in the middle of a large parking lot where the pavement has disintegrated over the years. To drive up to the window to place an order requires maneuvering through gravel that has been dumped onto sizable potholes. Determination to fulfill the mission meant traversing a jarring path — but it was worth it for my wife.

In the newspaper business, the path to success can require navigating rough, difficult terrain. While technology has made it easier than ever to produce the printed product, there are factors that challenge profitability — and survival, in some cases. The lesson learned by the coffee experience can carry over to the newspaper business — the road might be difficult and rocky, but determination to overcome obstacles is necessary to provide a newspaper that will serve your community well.

THE CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME

  • Being timely. Central printing plants have become the norm in much of the country, but the advantages carry a huge negative — many papers are outdated when they are delivered to subscribers. One of the largest dailies in Kentucky didn’t carry the results of the governor’s election last November until two days after the election. Face it — readers don’t care for excuses. They expect timely stories, and papers that are not timely are not going to keep readers.
  • Postal costs coupled with delayed deliveries. It seems there is no light at the end of the tunnel because postal costs are rising while delivery issues abound. If you mail newspapers, you know that service seems to get worse with every passing year. Stories abound of weekly newspapers that take weeks or months to get to subscribers. We moan and groan about it, but if that problem could be solved, it would be revolutionary for community papers. It was hoped that e-editions would solve the problem, and while that option has helped, it has not been a cure-all. Many people still want to hold a printed copy in their hands.
  • Embarrassing errors and sloppy work. High standards should not be optional — they should be mandatory. That means investing in quality cameras for sports photos, and prudent cropping is a must. We see far too many papers today where photos are not cropped. Spelling errors and grammatical goofs are credibility killers. Pub Aux carries helpful articles related to writing and editing; take advantage of the wisdom offered there. Don’t be satisfied with lame leads.
  • Use social media to your advantage. Follow as many community leaders as you can, and watch for story ideas there. A reporter may get “scooped” by a Facebook or Instagram post, but that reporter can use information from social media to develop a more comprehensive story and address issues that social media posts don’t begin to touch.
  • Staffing shortages. Most newspapers have faced the reality that newsrooms will not be staffed to the extent they were a decade ago, but strong news content is still possible. I’ll never forget a comment made in the newsroom of the daily newspaper where I worked just out of college (50+ years ago). It was not uncommon for a reporter to complain about having too much to do. That ended the day that a veteran in the newsroom emphatically stated, “If you didn’t want to work, you shouldn’t have hired out!” The newsroom folks of today might need to work harder and must be diligent to not waste time. Strong news products are possible — even with decreased staffing.
  • A leadership void. There must be a competent leader for a newspaper to thrive. That reminds me of the story of the farmer who hired a man to work for him. The farmer told the hired hand to paint a fence and expect it to take three days to complete. But the new hire finished it to perfection in one day. More tasks followed, and the man completed them all in less time than expected. Finally the farmer told the man to sort out a large pile of potatoes, arranging them in three piles — seed potatoes, food for the hogs and potatoes that were good enough to sell. The farmer said it could easily be done by the end of the day. But when that time came, the farmer found the hired man had barely started.

“What’s the matter?” the farmer asked.

“I can work hard, but I can’t make decisions,” answered the hired man.

Just because someone is a hard worker doesn’t mean that person can be a wise and effective leader. Too many times, a good worker is promoted to a leadership position but soon fails because leadership is not the person’s strength. Watch and identify who in your organization can be the leader who is capable of making the newspaper so appealing that readers will not let any obstacle keep them from buying every issue.

Chip Hutcheson is the retired publisher of The Times Leader in Princeton, Kentucky. He was NNA president in 2015. He currently serves as a content strategist for Kentucky Today, the online news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. chiphutcheson@yahoo.com