3 tips for using retrospectives to improve future news projects

This is a series on Better News to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative and b) share replicable tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole. 

These tips come from Elite Truong, vice president of product strategy at the American Press Institute. She oversees API’s product portfolio, which includes Metrics for News, an analytics tool that aligns journalism metrics with an organization’s editorial values and business model, and Source Matters, a tool that allows publishers to track and improve the diversity of their organizations.

Resources from the retrospectives workshop, held in May 2024:

• Make a copy of the worksheet and resource guide from this workshop
• Make a copy of the API Product Team’s retrospective meeting template for long-term projects
• Try these retrospective questions to ask for your elections coverage

Editor’s Note: This article was organized with and includes notes generated by Otter.ai, a voice-to-text transcription software that uses artificial intelligence. The summaries were edited for style and clarity and checked for accuracy by Tom Huang, Emily Ristow and Jan Ross Sakian of API’s Better News and Elite Truong of API. 

Whether it’s for daily news, special coverage or a news product, teams at news organizations work hard to bring an idea into fruition as a published project. However, opportunities to reflect on this shared work can be hard to come by. 

Retrospective or “look back” meetings can add value by helping your team suggest improvements, ask questions, recognize wins and ultimately learn from hard-won lessons to avoid making the same mistakes. 

In May 2024, Elite Truong, vice president of product strategy at the American Press Institute, spoke to alumni of the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program about the importance of retrospectives. Here are three tips to avoid common mistakes and improve outcomes for your news coverage: 

Understand communication styles to build trust

To prepare for a retrospective meeting, start by identifying the varying communication styles among your group. Truong shared ideas on how to approach different styles:  

• Passive communication: Someone who rarely speaks up or is happy to support others’ needs would benefit from being familiar with the project’s communications plan.
• Aggressive communication: Someone who is direct and will usually speak up may feel unsupported and could benefit from an opportunity to check their assumptions or get clarification. 
• Passive-aggressive communication: This style is often indirect and may come from a person who is uncomfortable with speaking up. If they don’t feel accepted by the group, building stronger interpersonal relationships with this person could help them feel more comfortable. 
• Assertive communication: This style is often direct and can be productive. Listen actively and when appropriate, support with positive reinforcement.  

Overall, it’s important to make time to build relationships with team members. This helps to create a psychologically safe environment as the foundation for honest feedback and collaboration.

Leaders also have choices when it comes to delivering feedback and facilitating meetings. Synchronous meetings like video calls are best for when decisions need to be made. One-on-ones work well when you’re looking to gain a better understanding with another person. You can even use email memos or a shared Slack channel to share updates and pose questions to the group more efficiently.

Create opportunities for asynchronous feedback  

Truong suggests creating a document for the project, which the team can use to “throw notes into a parking lot” and share the lessons at a later time. 

Giving written feedback asynchronously can help better articulate ideas and grow trust between team members. If everyone participates by adding their thoughts in a shared Google Doc, the team can develop a shared understanding without meeting in the traditional sense. Setting deadlines for these written contributions can also build accountability within the team. 

For long-term projects, Truong shared an asynchronous retrospective template developed by the API product strategy team. It’s formatted to highlight themes and lessons learned with prompts for each team member to share their thoughts. 

These questions about the overall experience can help drive retrospective meetings: 

• How did you feel about communication during the project? Between teams or within our own? 
• How did you feel about the team’s capacity while doing the work? 
• How did you feel about how tasks were prioritized? 

To carve out time for retrospective discussions, modify meetings that already exist on your team’s calendar. With asynchronous feedback laying the groundwork, these check-ins can be as short as 15 minutes. Truong suggests dedicating time to two meetings: the first to gather feedback and another to share the insights and lessons with the group.

After a project ends, your primary goals when conducting retrospectives are a) to remember and b) to share what you learned with your team. Documentation can help team members see the big picture, draw conclusions, and spur ideas for how to change workflows for better news coverage.

Set expectations with collaborators 

Think about a group or person’s level of accountability to and responsibility for the project, plus how often they need to be informed and consulted about developments. 

Visuals like the one below can help you keep track of different teams and stakeholders based on their level of involvement. Customizing the visual to your needs and keeping it updated can help you manage expectations and communication throughout the project.

Here are a few questions to ask when setting expectations: 

• What assumptions are team members making?
• What do I need from team members?
• How can I deliver the information the team needs to know? 
• Who are the folks we tend to leave out of the discussion? Who should be there?

You can avoid blind spots and keep the work aligned with your news organization’s mission by considering who else needs to be updated on your team’s progress. 

If they’re not already involved in the early planning stages, your colleagues working on engagement, product, marketing or business development could benefit from getting updates at major milestones.   

Sending these stakeholders written updates or inviting them to attend select meetings will help them track developments that are relevant to their own day-to-day work and strategy.