Embrace change – there are so many opportunities today thanks to technology

 Asia is such an interesting place… so many nuances like in India… we have to be sophisticated about how we look at these things. That was Stephen Dunbar Johnson, president, International, New York Times (NYT), answering questions put up by Nalin Mehta, dean, UPES School of Modern Media, at the recent INMA South Asia News Media Summit. One of the phrases Stephen used was ‘people in the pipes’ – he was referring to product engineers and data scientists, people “we can’t get enough of and that for us is the biggest concern… it is our largest cohort of people on the business side… fundamentally important to us”. Without them and the right talent, Stephen said he saw an impediment to growth.

 

Talking about the success of NYT in its transformation from print to digital-first, Stephen made some pertinent and interesting points. “Every single initiative we look at… we now have cross-party, cross-departmental collaborative groups working side by side with the newsroom. It’s a habit. Seems strange talking about it now – it seems normal. That was not the case ten years ago at NYT, not the case in 2014. Now everything is built from the ground up right across the group with the fundamental understanding that editorial independence and integrity is rich and that is what we are all working towards. Start from that and that is how we all build.”

 

Stephen was convinced that media today would be driven by technology and journalism in unison – it is not binary, he said. “Journalism is profoundly important, it is what we (NYT) do, we will continue to invest in that. That means visual investigations as well, using data, using technology. What does good journalism mean across all our platforms? Graphics, the importance of visual journalism, good storytelling has to be engaging across all of the platforms and devices our readers are using. You can’t today divorce the two (journalism and technology) – they work hand in hand.”

 

So, how do you drive innovative storytelling? NYT, of course, has a lot of talented people with eyes and ears all over the world. Innovative storytelling, according to Stephen, is organic, which often leads to interesting ideas. The NYT climate change initiative (about a dozen journalists are focused on this) has, for example, bonded people from across the world. Referring to obituaries, he said NYT was not good at recognising women who should have been really recognised. “We are correcting, we are going back retrospectively creating really fabulous stories. These stories can develop in different ways – is there a podcast series we can develop out of this? Is Hollywood interested in this as well?” All an organic emergence of interesting storytelling, as he put it. And if you have a newsroom that is vibrant with a lot of tech people around, you fare even better.

 

While earlier adverting at NYT was analogue-focused, today there’s a huge difference – Stephen likened it to the difference between night and day. “A huge set of skills we have, (advertising) has been completely transformed from top to bottom.  Selling print advertising is pretty straightforward; selling digital advertising is a completely different ballgame, an ongoing marketing process, bundling with audio and visual. You need different skills, a different mindset.”

 

And what about changing the newsroom? There are young people coming into the newsroom with relevant skills but with different mindsets. How do you mix all in the vinegar so that it’s all working well? “That’s an ongoing process, it creates a lot of interesting internal issues,” said Stephen, “but you’ve got to tackle those, because you want to have both working together. It’s tricky. Newsrooms have to understand this – if you belong to the analog group and resist change, you won’t be around. You have to embrace the change. There are so many opportunities, not just individually but collectively in an organisation to get people thinking about this. Thinking about the opportunities that technology allows, and being transformative.”