A great report on the New York Times Org's struggle to finesse their digital approach

Here are some choice highlights sifted from this article. Source: The leaked New York Times innovation report is one of the key documents of this media age - Nieman Journalism Lab. May 2014

The value of replicability

We greatly undervalue replicability.” They point out that competitors like Vox and BuzzFeed view innovating with their platforms as a key function and allow them to create products like BuzzFeed’s quizzes — incredibly popular, but also easy to create over and over again.

This allows repackaging old content in new formats. The future friendly manifesto and ideas coming out of contemporary content strategy point to this being the direction we should be heading. Organisations that don't have it baked in to their existing business models are going to struggle for some time to get the idea of 'fluid content' and the content once publish everywhere (COPE) type strategies.

The value of 'pull' communication strategies

The report suggests creating a “follow” button that would allow readers to easily follow certain topics or columnists

I wish it was used more for internal communications strategies in organisations I have worked in. If your organisation has a staff directory with expertise and interests indicated then this is a great place to add a follow option to encourage lateral communication across your organisation.

Large Content Management Systems and traditional waterfall development patterns slow pace of innovation

One of the biggest problems is the Times’ CMS, according to the report. “But desks and producers spend countless hours on one-time fixes to the platform, rather than permanent solutions, even when it is clear the problems will emerge again and again. One senior member of the news desk said that leaders would be ‘horrified’ if they understood the situation.”

“When it takes 20 months to build one thing, your skill set becomes less about innovation and more about navigating bureaucracy. That means the longer you stay, the more you’re doubling down on staying even longer. But if there’s no leadership role to aspire to, staying too long becomes risky.”

I think this happens a lot because of the traditional management approach of some CIOs. Focusing on platforms, upgrades, and infrastructure i.e. the technology rather than building relationships with users and business areas can lead to this focus on getting platforms launched. At the coalface level with all the changes of platform, developers often just focus on delivering functions whilst at the same time wishing they could spend a little more time on innovative solutions.