Member-only story
Culture of Speed
Why the culture of speed makes it hard for newsrooms to embrace a product mindset.
The business of news is fast-paced. New information surfaces faster than ever before; bulletins, press releases, and tweets drop in by the second. For the past years, newsrooms have had to adapt to process the ever-faster spinning news cycles, verifying and curating the most important and relevant information for their audiences.
The traditional deadline approach from print times has been largely abandoned in the digital publishing realm. Instead, stories get published throughout the day to meet the demand. Then, journalists move on quickly to a follow-up or even a new story.
The increased pace creates many challenges around journalism itself worth exploring. However, this culture of speed established in newsrooms also makes it difficult for media organizations to fully embrace the transformation to a product-focused mindset.
Agility On Steroids
People working in product management — including myself — tend to complain about the newsroom’s lack of understanding of agile development. There are undoubtedly true aspects to this.
Usually, a story is refined until published; instead, changes occur than institutionalized. The journalists’ strive for perfection, paired with a still roaming deadline socialization, is…
