How to build innovation in newsrooms
Google engineers spend 80 percent of their time working on assigned projects and 20 percent of their time on their own projects. Is it any wonder that Google is such a good company?
What if reporters did it too? What if reporters devoted 10 percent of their paid time to their own projects?
That’s the question Mindy McAdams asks in her Teaching Online Journalism blog. Mindy points us to the Fleet Street blog, where the blogger reports that the BBC is already doing 10 percent time in newsrooms:
All of the designers, developers, project managers at BBC Audio and Music Interactive are allowed to spend 10 per cent of their time working on their own pet projects — anything they like as long as it is work-related and benefits the Beeb.
Wow. How awesome would that be? And how practical is that for a small, community newspaper? There’s not really going to be anything truly new that you can create or do. I guess for the most part, small papers would have to try to catch up with the big papers.
I guess if I could work on a project that has nothing to do with my assigned duties, I’d try to find a way for my paper to make more money on its Web site. I think that’s the absolute best way for this industry to survive. I am concerned about the future of quality reporting and storytelling. But it’s hard to know where to start.