From the large legacy news organisation where innovation happens at an excruciatingly slow speed, to the agile startup that flits from one thing to the next, creating permanent change is a challenge.

When I wrote this article for The Fix about five ways to introduce solutions journalism in your newsroom, someone commented that as with all changes, everyone needs to be committed to the new strategy for it to last. So let’s take a look at some of the ways to make change stick.

Below is some of the best advice from the media industry. I also spoke with Copenhagen-based engagement and workflow designer Morten Ro, who has plenty of experience helping newsrooms change their strategy to boost audience participation. I would love to hear your thoughts, too.

1. Win their hearts and minds

Newsrooms are, while of course not free of their own unique brand of internal politics, often remarkably flat hierarchies where each member of staff is expected to take ownership of their daily work. 

As a manager you can come up with all the grand new visions you want, but unless there is support or at the very least acceptance from those who need to execute them, old habits die hard.

It “is not simply about finding a viable strategy and business model that will support a sustainable future, but about harnessing hearts and minds inside the organisation so that they individually and independently are energised to pool their talents to achieve it”, writes strategic leadership expert Lucy Kueng in her book Hearts and Minds about the shift from a print to digital strategy.

2. Listen

Market research is a key feature of launching a new product. The same goes for changes launched within your newsroom. If key staff don’t feel these changes are needed, they won’t happen.

Listen to your employees, colleagues or bosses, ask questions, and find out what needs to change for them to be able to do their job better or for the organisation to reach its business goals.

“Care for your employees!” says Ro. “Let them be heard and decide on changes that address an actual need from their point of view. If there are no employees responding to the suggested change as smarter, better, more fulfilling, more fun or relieving, it’s uphill and a potential failure.”

This is partly about laying strong foundations before you implement the change, but it’s important not to stop listening afterwards. What’s working, what isn’t working, what can be done better?

3. Have a long-term plan

If you throw spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks, it doesn’t mean you’ve come up with a viral new hack for cooking pasta, it just means you’re probably not a very good chef. 

Similarly, while the analogy may help you in the early stages of brainstorming, if you want to give your ideas a chance to last, you need a plan. And you need to stop throwing spaghetti all over the kitchen.

“Most journalists are by instinct – and by education – output-driven. But a change of habits and behaviour is not an output – it’s an outcome. It takes time, process and intentionality, which I’ve seen a lot of managers and newsrooms still practising to learn,” says Ro.

4. Communicate, communicate, communicate

The best laid plans of mice and managers often go awry when they fail to communicate them to the team. Just like in a compelling news lede, be clear about the whats, whens, whos, hows and whys.

The Membership Puzzle Project’s membership guide talks about the importance of establishing a shared definition when transitioning to a membership-based revenue strategy, but the advice can be applied to leading your newsroom through any kind of transition: 

“The language you use to talk about the membership transition will shape how people perceive it, and if you’re not consistent, you leave room for multiple interpretations that can make communication challenging.”

Then once you’ve established your common language, you need to keep using it. Keep reminding everyone of the goal – and perhaps more importantly, keep reminding yourself to stick to it.

“Only when you are tired from your own voice repeating the same thing over and over, chances are that your message is starting to land,” advises digital consultant Dmitry Shishkin in the preface to WAN-IFRA’s report Burn the Ships about creating cultural change in a news media company.

5. Or… don’t communicate

This is terrible advice for most situations, so hear me out, but use it wisely.

If you see the need for change but you’re not in a position to make it happen immediately – perhaps you’re not a manager, or you don’t have support from your managers, or you’re a manager who’s struggling to get your reports to buy into your vision – there may be ways to introduce it anyway.

In my own cohort of the Online Journalism Association’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator, we would frequently tell each other “proceed until apprehended”. Ask yourself what you can do within your own sphere of power, implement the change there, and then try to slowly influence others.

Think of it as being the drop of water that hollows out the stone. The key to success is often to do it so slowly that nobody will tell you to stop, so if you have to take it in baby steps, that’s fine. The risk if you’re a junior member of staff is that you won’t get credit for your ideas, and if you’re a manager, that no one will pick up on your cleverly disguised cues. But when it works, it works.

6. Let your allies lead the way

Early adopters are your best assets. Identify who in your newsroom are the most enthusiastic about the change, and invest time and effort into boosting their role. The Membership Puzzle Project calls it building a coalition of the willing, rather than trying to convince the sceptics at the same time.

By allowing your allies on all levels of the newsroom to inspire their colleagues with their work, you let members of staff meet the new changes at face level. Call it peer pressure, if you will.

Use allies to experiment with new strategies, celebrate their work, empower them by giving them insight into decision-making. But it’s essential that you also provide a safety net for them if the strategies fail – don’t make your early adopters take the blame. “Encourage and celebrate learnings on all levels, and remember that failures create the most important learnings,” says Ro.

7. Don’t ignore the sceptics

You don’t need to convince everyone from the get-go, and in fact trying too hard to turn everyone into fervent advocates for your change of strategy may have the opposite effect on many sceptics (as journalists we are notoriously independent, strong-willed, and dare I even say… stubborn).

But don’t ignore them completely. Dissatisfaction left to fester can easily spread. As journalists we’re also naturally curious, and few are genuinely immune to change. When there’s opposition to new ideas, there’s often a reason if you dig deeper: poor past experience, too many changes at too short a notice in a volatile media industry, not enough time, or maybe your idea is just bad.

“Haters will hate if you ignore them. Let them be vocal about concerns to you and take it seriously – they might be right at some level and able to learn on other levels,” says Ro.

8. Be generous with time

Make sure the change is actually a change – something old being replaced by something new, not another task added to your newsroom’s already full plate. A common reason why a sceptic might be opposed to a change is because they fear that their workload is already too heavy to take it onboard.

Freeing up time is essential regardless of whether you’re talking about large, structural, strategic change or new reporting features, whether it’s to give your newsroom time to simply get used to working a new content management system, or time to diversify their sources, time for creativity, time for more interviews, time for learning, time for sourcing more data than before, and so on.

Ro suggests helping staff cope with changes by not only communicating to them what to do, but also communicating what they no longer have to do. “If you need to introduce a change that is just broadly unpopular – your magic pill is to support this with subtractive change: what will we stop doing in exchange? A stop-doing list is a very powerful tool if properly designed.”

Here’s the American Press Institute’s framework for deciding what to stop doing.

9. Without glue, nothing sticks

Anyone who’s ever worked in a newsroom knows the thrill of working to a tight schedule. You can almost touch the buzz in the room as reporters and subeditors type away at their computers, fighting to get the next issue out before the print deadline. Then suddenly, you’re done. The paper’s away, you get a few moments to breathe, have coffee and chat. And then you move on to tomorrow’s paper.

That same mindset has survived to some extent in the digital era, and it is an incredible source of creativity, but it is not always conducive to creating long-lasting change. It may help explain why so many changes seem to peak at launch, then slowly peter out until they’re replaced by the next change.

New strategies need to be nurtured to survive. You built the house, now you need to maintain it or people will eventually move out. If it helps your dopamine-driven newsroom mind, think of your new strategy as a series of closely-knit tiny strategies, where a new part has to be launched every day – whether it’s analysing data, highlighting success or adapting the bits that aren’t working.

“A lack of attention to process is where most attempts of change fail – if you haven’t realised there is no inherent glue to make changes stick,” says Ro. 

“You need to evaluate learnings, empower ambassadors to promote them, let others practise and learn, celebrate wins, show improvements, change the metrics of success if needed, and be vocal about this change being a management priority. If this is ignored, process equals zero and long-term change will not happen”.

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