Partnership & collaboration: Assessing the gaps in your newsroom
Douglas K. Smith, Quentin Hope, Tim Griggs, Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative,This is an excerpt from “Table Stakes: A Manual for Getting in the Game of News,” published Nov. 14, 2017. Read more excerpts here.
Take the following quiz for a quick read on where your efforts stand vis a vis this Table Stake. Please note: these statements are phrased so that a ‘yes’ answer indicates your efforts have gaps – that is, fall short of the requirements of this Table Stake. And, the more yesses, the more gaps you face.
It is worth having many folks take these quizzes, including people in the newsroom as well as from technology, marketing, sales, HR, finance – and top management. Compare and discuss your respective responses and where you have agreement or not. Use these discussions to identify and highlight the most significant partnering gaps you face.
| Yes | No | |
| 1. We do not consider partnering regularly as an option along with make versus buy. | ||
| 2. Partnering rarely works for us because our situation and needs are unique. | ||
| 3. We worry that we will lose control when we partner with others. | ||
| 4. Our newsroom limits collaboration to efforts related to content/stories. | ||
| 5. We see ourselves strictly as competitors and not partners with other news enterprises. | ||
| 6. We do not routinely think about partnering and collaboration as avenues to lower costs, increase revenues and reduce risks. | ||
| 7. Partnering always requires top management involvement and approval. | ||
| 8. We lack a shared understanding of the distinction between a vendor versus a partner. | ||
| 9. We do not have criteria for determining when and why to choose partnering as a path forward. | ||
| 10. We do not have any executive or team/committee overseeing partnering. | ||
| 11. We lack a defined step-by-step process for partnering. | ||
| 12. Partnering with others beyond our organization rarely happens at the desk and/or other front line levels of our enterprise. | ||
| 13. Few if any partnering arrangements have results-based commitments that we and our partners regularly monitor for success. | ||
| 14. We have few, in any, partnering arrangements in technology. | ||
| 15. We lack significant partnering arrangements that help us do the following: (1) address needed capacity; (2) add required capability; (3) increase speed; (4) reduce or share risks; (5) increase revenues; and, (6) lower or share our costs, or make them more flexible. | ||
| 16. We have few, if any, partnering or joint venture revenue-focused arrangements with companies that provide content management, search engine optimization, events, marketing, or other services and products that meet needs of local customers and enterprises. | ||
| Total: |