The Printer’s Devil

Jump to Comments

Someone who reads this blog — about 33 percent of the readership — pointed out that I had talked about W. Edwards Deming, the American prophet of management without honor in his own country, but left out a few things.

I said that Deming had many things to offer to small-town editors and offered a few examples. However, I mentioned a list of his 14 points and seven “crash and burns” without really saying what they were.

Nor did I mention the Web site for the Deming Institute, based in Washington, D.C., and dedicated to spread the word about Deming and his philosophies: www.deming.org. And there’s a fair amount of information about Deming and his ideas in books and on the Internet. He’s worth a visit.

He’s still largely ignored by American corporations — and American newspapers.

Therefore, here are my adaptations of Deming’s precepts and philosophy:

• Learn how your newsroom works, learn how your newspaper works, learn how your community works.

• Set an example. You should be the best employee in your newsroom and a good citizen of your community.

• Be a good listener, but don’t compromise on the important things.

• Continually teach other people.

• Help people to try new things and perhaps even transform what they do.

• Understand that all people are different. Nor are you or your publisher likely to get people to change, especially through evaluations or by ranking people.

Encourage people to do their best. Do what you can to help them do their jobs better and then get out of their way — and try to remove those impediments in the system — and in the world of CorpsNews there are many — that keep them from doing their best.

• As much as possible try to get along with everybody. That’s in the newsroom, in the newspaper building and in the community.

In the newspaper business, friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

However, in a small-town newspaper, you’ll find there are those times when you have to work with an enemy.

• Improve constantly, and forever. That means you, your newsroom, your paper and even the community.

Remember improvement. Merely aping what the nearest big city newspaper or following the latest fad among stupid and busy tain’t necessarily improvement.

• There’s a bumper sticker: “The beatings will continue until morale improvements.”

Funny, but not leadership. Fear is a popular but crappy management style that will bite you, especially in the confines of a small-town newsroom. Build trust so that everyone can work more effectively.

• There’s nothing wrong with cooperating with other departments in the building — even the ad department within reason.

Tell the circulation director if you’ve got a hot story that day — he or she can bump up the press run.

Ask the ad people for news tips — you’ll find they have a good, if somewhat blinkered, feel for what’s going on in the community. Ask them which business and power elite types would be good sources for certain types of stories.

Swap lies with the carriers and if you have any extra tomatoes or chives, offer them to the front office ladies.

• Avoid slogans, exhortations and blather about zero defects or new levels of productivity — popular among stupid and busy publishers.

Your reporters get paid to detect phonies and such things are as about as phony as they come.

• No daily quotas. As I pointed out in the first Deming post, it’s an easy but stupid form of “managing.”

• Play no favorites and tell no lies in your newsroom.

Deming’s ‘crash and burns’

Deming also had a list of seven deadly sins. Most of them may look familiar. They’re straight out of the CorpsNews Publisher 101 textbook, among the reasons why newspapers are dying:

• Lack of constancy of purpose.

• Emphasis on short-term profits.

• Evaluation by performance, merit rating and merit pay, or annual review of performance.

• A revolving door of management (and employees, for that matter).

• Running a company on visible figures alone.

• Excessive medical costs.

• Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees.

Lesser sins

Deming also had a list of lesser stupidities:

• Neglecting long-range planning.

• Relying on technology to solve problems.

• Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions.

• Excuses, such as “Our problems are different.”

Obviously, as a lowly managing editor, there may not be much you can do outside of your newsroom. But you do what you can.