Tired of doing more with less? Kill timesinks
Who thinks a.m. cops calls, minor car accident or fire reports and routine meeting coverage are a waste of time? Who can think of a dozen other things they would rather do with that time?
Journalism is having a rough time with the transition to online content. As a result, Matt King argues that reporters are becoming less specialized and have less time to create quality content. King makes a compelling argument why we should cut back mundane tasks in newsrooms everywhere:
Overwork and unreasonable expectations = stenography. Stenography of some sorts (the sentencing of the principal child molester, the city council vote, etc.) is very important, but we need to stop doing so much of it. It’s important but it’s also about the easiest thing a reporter does, and there are people willing to do it for us for free.
King gives us a three-step program to cut the mundane work out of our day to give us more time to innovate and create (highly condensed, my emphasis):
1. It’s past time to understand 99 percent of car accidents, fires and arrests are the mundane details of life and people really don’t care, despite what page views say. In almost every instance these stories are cupcakes, eaten because they’re there, but wouldn’t be missed if they were not. Ever hear anyone crave a cupcake? This applies especially in non-competitive markets. …
It’s tantamount to flushing 10 hours of reporter time that could be spent talking to sources in cafes, or editing a cool video project, or writing a really strong narrative piece, or, in my case, playing with a spreadsheet.
Sunday, May 25th, 2008