An all-star panel came together on Friday evening at the Online News Association conference in Chicago to discuss The New York Times’ celebrated Innovation Report — an internal document about the Times’ efforts to adjust to the digital age that became public when it was leaked to BuzzFeed.
The report, wrote Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab last May, is “one of the most remarkable documents I’ve seen in my years running the Lab.” Both the full document and a comprehensive summary are available as part of Benton’s piece, and they are well worth reading. The report describes how the Times — in many ways an innovator in the transition to digital — is still being held back by an antiquated management structure, an overemphasis on what goes on page one of the print edition, and a lack of understanding of how to promote and distribute the Times’ journalism.
The ONA panel was moderated by Ann Marie Lipinski (@AMLwhere), curator of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. The panelists were Amy O’Leary (@amyoleary), deputy editor for digital operations at the Times and one of the authors of the report; Tyson Evans (@tysone), the Times’ editor of newsroom strategy, who also contributed to the report; and Alex MacCallum (@alexmaccallum), recently promoted to a newly created assistant managing editor’s slot to oversee audience engagement.
Hundreds of people were on hand, and many of them — including me — live-tweeted the panel. Bursts of fragmentary news are no substitute for a well-crafted story about the event (here’s one by a student who covered it), but they can give you some flavor of the discussion. Here’s what I had say, including a couple of retweets that I thought were worth sharing.
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515638644028489728
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515640356046905345
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641386117640192
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641711557890048
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641932325081089
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515643566836969472
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515645167823781889
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515646695141822464
Mobile push alert is more important than page one, @tysone says. You literally make people's legs vibrate. #ONA14
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 26, 2014
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515652338045157376
.@karaswisher takes the mic, quotes her own tweet, grills panel, then says she wants to kill her own homepage. #ona14innovate #ONA14
— Flavia Nuetzman (@NuetzmanFlavia) September 27, 2014
https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515653245948424192