SuperVision

I'm not sure how David Rutter found the time to read my recent column about tips for managing change in the newsroom. He's been a bit busy. Rutter was named publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun in Waukegan, Ill., at the end of May. By the end of July, he had converted the Lake County daily from an evening to a morning paper and from a broadsheet to a tabloid or, as he puts it, a "compact."

Rutter sent me an e-mail about the project that said:

It likely was more dumb luck than smart-minds-on-the-same-wavelength, but most of your gathered wisdom about managing change actually works, and I have good evidence of it…

I knew there was a leadership saga that I that could mine for even more tips. 

According to Rutter, many staffers at the 22,000-circulation suburban daily had never worked for any other paper. Leading these good folks through rapid change was one part of the challenge; taking the all-important readers on the adventure was yet another. 

When he shared the story with me by phone and e-mail, the change was only two weeks old.  "But it's working. Hallelujah," he wrote. Yes, some readers criticized the changes using the paper's "Talk of the County" phone and e-mail feedback lines. Rutter made a point to respond to all who identified themselves. He reports fewer than 100 dropped subscriptions, about 600 new home orders in the first week of the change, and a 25 percent increase in single-copy sales. 

Rutter reports that the newsroom staff is still in place after the changes. In group and one-on-one meetings, Rutter challenged them: If you have ever been frustrated, now's the one chance you have to create a wonderful, fine newspaper and present your work to audiences in a new way.

Here's my e-mail Q&A with David Rutter:

JILL GEISLER: What fueled your decision to make these major changes at the paper?

DAVID RUTTER: Lake County is a robust county on the edge of Chicago. It has intense print media competition. In order for the News-Sun to grow into a more dominant role -- both for readers and advertisers -- it needed more than cosmetic changes. It historically served basic needs well, but it was unlikely to break out into the bigger market in its current format. Many long-time readers still saw it as "the Waukegan paper."

As with many papers, it faced circulation growth challenges, especially with younger suburban readers, and needed a fundamental repositioning. That sounds like "corp speak," but the truth is every daily newspaper should be concerned about the long-term future and tweaking is never much of an answer. Fundamental change may be the only sure way to restate your value to readers.

How did you share your vision for the change with the staff? Specifically, was there an overriding message about your goals?

On the day I was introduced to the staff in late May, I announced that the immediate goals of the paper were to proceed with a conversion to morning (we had been delivered at midday for many years) and to commence planning for the conversion to the compact format. The rumors of "going morning" had been discussed in previous years but had never been fulfilled.

The overriding message was that (the) "Lake County model" would become a valuable test model not only for the company -- the Sun-Times News Group, of which the News-Sun is a part -- but also be a platform in which a fine, experienced staff could produce a paper they had always hoped to produce.
This was to be a great chance to practice our craft at a higher level. I believe I was clear in signaling that change, both as a concept and a reality, was finally here and that everyone in the building would be a part of it.

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More columns by Jill Geisler about leading through change in the newsroom: Leader to Leader: Tips for Managing Change in Your Newsroom Thoughts from news leaders around the country on how to deal with the constant state of change in the newsroom. Building & Busting Newsroom Trust: A Top-10 List Creating a climate of mutual trust and understanding within your newsroom Keeping the Faith A Q&A with Mizell Stewart, managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, on leading through uncertainty Leading Through Uncertainty Learn more about leadership in one of our seminars. Sign up to receive Leading Lines by e-mail, click here.

 
How did you communicate your vision and goals to readers?

Over the next two months -- in columns, Page One descriptions of the change, radio interviews and public appearances -- we laid out what would happen. The clear message was that the News-Sun would always focus on local news at its core, but that we intended a brighter, more aggressive, more compelling newspaper.  We would do almost everything [that] we had been told would make the News-Sun more valuable (especially 6:30 a.m. delivery). We would produce more local voices, more ways for readers to interact, more outreach.
   
There were meetings with business leaders about the changes as they began to take shape, and finally we produced an eight-page special edition [PDF] that detailed each area of change. Included in each of the presentations was a personal letter from me describing what we were doing. That was distributed to 100,000 customers and potential customers.
 
You oversaw significant change in a short amount of time. What was your strategy for making it happen?

The most basic necessity was creating a template for [a] 64-page compact edition that took the best of what we did every day [and] translated that into a different shape and proportion. Then we allowed for expansion in areas where we wanted improvement.  We also had to accommodate the conversion of ads and classified[s].
 
The fundamental design was created by me and designer James Smith, a exceptional talent, who was loaned to us from the News Group's sister paper in Joliet, Ill.  We went through the paper, section by section, and created a new flow, a new look, a new approach. The goal was to create "destination pages" within each six pages. They were to have personality and anchor/key topic[s]: the Games People Play, Our County's Teens, Life Advice and Local Faith, for example.
 
We anchored the standard pieces (obituaries, weather, etc.). The sports section begins on the back page and flows inward. We unified sections with common page headers and made the style sophisticated but simple and clean. The goal was to raise story count in every section and create far more ways for readers to use the paper. I had a few rules. No jumps. And the translation must be simple, but elegant.
 
Harvard's John Kotter has written extensively on change. He says emotions can be more powerful than logic when people are dealing with change, and that leaders need to address those emotions in order to be successful. What do you think?

Given the tight time frame, we may have spent less time on that than would have been useful. The entire conversion took barely two months. But I was clear to counsel each department that the changes we were contemplating could only work with their best efforts. We held regular meetings with the staff to generate ideas and also to explain how the paper would look and feel. We talked at some length about how all change is difficult. But this set of challenges posed an amazing opportunity for them to be leaders. I suggested they would seldom have as much chance to play such a fundamental role in their careers' success. Based on the performance I've seen across all lines, they took up the idea of the challenge as a chance to strut their stuff.

Change can be especially difficult if people feel it involves an abandonment of important values. What values guided your paper's transition, and how did you articulate them?

The core value here is devotion to local news. But, as with all papers, what local news looks like is the question. We wanted more stories that told a county story rather than a town-council-by-town-council approach. I believe in a daily newspaper's basic function not only to say what happened, but to ask why and how. And to tell those stories with great energy. This is a place with great stories to tell, and we just needed ways to tell more of them. Plus, we will be a watchdog paper and good watchdogs need sharper teeth as well as a loud bark.

You use term "compact" instead of "tabloid" to describe the new format. What's the message you intend to convey by that choice of words?

"Tabloid" has a certain negative connotation for many, even though many of our readers are well acquainted with the Chicago Sun-Times, which is bright and forceful in its presentation. We were not going to become a supermarket scandal sheet, but we were going to translate our best storytelling into a different size. We needed shorter stories and more entry points. The size (and lack of sections) remains a challenge for some older readers.

Advice time: What are a few "must-know" things for managers who want to lead change efforts with maximum success and minimum stress?

Talk to everyone as much as you can about how their personal role in this change will be meaningful. I think almost all change is stressful, but the antidote is making everyone a part of it. Everyone kicks in ideas, everyone plays a role. I stressed that no one could sit on the bench and watch, because this was a big job for a small paper (23-person newsroom) and success depended on everyone shifting [his or her] game into a passing gear. I think they understood that and responded to it. The experience has shown how professional they all are. And how talented.

Are you involved in an adventure in newsroom change?  I'd love to hear about it –– and perhaps share your lessons and tips with Poynter readers.