The Soul of The Newsroom
It always irks me when people speak of an organization as having no Soul. Anywhere there are people, there are Souls. I think what these critics intend to say is that certain organizations lack any outward projection of their deeply held values. Souls show up for work every day, but an outsider couldn't know what unites them.
By organizations I mean corporations, political parties, publishing houses — you get the idea. But I want to talk specifically about newsrooms because they are the environment with which I am most intimate.
As for the meaning of the word “Soul” — a gamut of belief systems vie to tell us what a Soul is. In these musings, “Soul” means the core of any endeavor. The passion and values poised like a little fist at the center of action (or inaction). A synonym here is “identity”. If that definition doesn't satisfy you, fair enough. But I have to start somewhere.
The newsroom with the strongest mandate that I have spent time in was The Christian Science Monitor whose mission is “To injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” I also interned at NPR, whose storytelling mission pervades at all levels of activity. However, neither of these newsrooms were immune from disagreements as to what their Soul was saying.
So it’s never easy, but sometimes it is much harder. With one mass layoff or disruptive technology, suddenly a blue chip newsroom becomes like a start-up stumbling over seemingly neophyte questions. One personality gets held up as an emblem of the publication’s identity because it’s simply easier.
One week ago I began my new job as Director of Social Media and Analytics at a growing media company. If you ever begin at a new company and someone sits you down and says “this is the Soul of our company” that’s very good. But even if you do get a thorough education in the core values of your new 9–5, how do you know that it’s not just a tired cheatsheet? That the language isn’t stale? That it’s not actually someone else’s identity that they were trying to pass off as your newsroom’s and everybody noticed and nobody wanted to say anything?
Either way it’s done, after you get the passwords and someone shows you where the restroom is; after you get a cup of coffee and a stack of fresh Post-its, it’s time to hit the ground with an itty bitty travel toothbrush and see how deep you can dig.
And so you dig.
Soon someone comes along with a steam shovel. They have more Twitter followers than the population of Delaware and they want to tell your organization WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU STAND FOR.
But what do they know about your newsroom’s collective passion? (Which in the short time you’ve been digging you have ascertained is greater than the sum of its parts.) They want you to squat like a catcher behind the researchers, reporters, and editors and whisper-chant “who are we, what do we stand for” until they go crazy and do something violent with the soup at Au Bon Pain.
This isn't just a flowery essay on what is essentially brand building; a brand is a story the newsroom tells about our collective Soul — in addition to, you know, reporting. The Soul of the Newsroom can only be shared by someone with dirt under their fingernails or else it won’t be believed.
An outsider, however professional, can’t teach the patience the itty bitty toothbrush requires—only your coworkers can do that as they inspire you with their enthusiasm and their successes. Every person is a part of the whole identity, but the nature of that identity just happens to be in the bedrock.
