David Marino-Nachison’s Post

Mike Bloomberg hired Matt Winkler in 1990 for the vertiginous challenge of building a news organization from scratch to compete with Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters. One way Matt focused reporters and inspired people was through the endless repetition of short aphorisms. He mentioned them in speeches and used them to sign off on emails or memos. A missive from Matt would end: “More, Better, Faster” or “The Best is Yet to Come.” I didn’t reflect much on the practice at the time because I was so young. I was the 15th editorial person Matt hired for Bloomberg News in November 1990. It was my first real job. But three decades later, I can see how the slogans cemented the group’s DNA. Any of the thousands of reporters and editors who spent time at Bloomberg News during Matt’s near 25-year reign will remember some or all of the dozens of maxims he espoused. Some will recall the aphorisms as hokey. But most would agree that they were effective. It’s hard to build culture and establish best practices. It can’t be accomplished with too much nuance. But done right, the payoff can be huge in terms of creating a winning team. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” as Peter Drucker famously said. The most effective management aphorisms are true and timeless and idiosyncratic. Below I collected some of Matt’s more memorable lines, along with my interpretation. The Best is Yet to Come: An expression of hope and optimism essential to get through rough patches. More, Better, Faster:  A succinct message of what it takes for a digital news organization to succeed. Write more content. Be fast and improve the quality. Do that and no one can touch you. Fail and you are vulnerable. News You Can Use: Write stories that have utility to your audience. People pay for content they can act on. Names Make News: People like to read about people. They connect to stories by reading about protagonists. Writing Well Matters: An important reminder to wire service reporters who tend to emphasize speed. Well written stories are more influential and capture larger audiences. Seize the Day: A reminder that everything worthwhile takes effort. The Definition of News is Surprise: Write stories that people don’t expect.  Ignorance and Arrogance is a Deadly Combination: Don’t make assumptions. Report the story to get all the information. It Isn’t News, if it isn’t True: Accuracy is more important than speed. You are Never Tired on the Day of Victory: A personal favorite having pulled a number of all-nighters myself. It captures an essential truth about competition. (Part of a series of management lessons learned from three decades at Bloomberg)

“This kind of multifaceted market failure sounds complicated, but it’s a simple concept. In a failed market, the free market produces too much or too little of a particular good, and the consequences of that mismatch hurt society. The incentives in a failed market tend to make the world worse. Think of a market that makes it profitable to pollute, for example. Or a digital platform that incentivizes clickbait. There’s no rational business strategy or innovation that can fix a market failure. In fact, free market approaches can often distort things further, making bigger or less-scrupulous players even more powerful. […] Which is why it’s time to start thinking about the journalism industry as an example of classic market failure. This isn’t just semantics. Conceptualizing the journalism market as fundamentally broken changes how we’ll need to fix it.”

So why are so many journalists losing their jobs, across so many different organizations, all at once? (In a very strong economy, no less.) Industry insiders I spoke to are starting to use a really grim economic term: market failure. What does that term mean in practice? What if the news industry is so broken that no amount of hustle, innovation or grit can fix things? And what if free market approaches can actually make things worse? This is not just semantics. Viewing what's happening market failure changes how we think about cure. Read more here:

Hope everyone made it to the end of Richard Tofel’s recent newsletter on The Wall Street Journal’s current culture because the wisdom of his last paragraph is golden. News publications, even if they are for-profit publicly-traded companies, should behave better than corporate America. The free press is protected because it *should* operate as a public good, not a private commodity. Turning the former into the latter is much of where we went wrong, and which many of us now are working to right. As Tofel puts it: “… treating people in newsrooms callously is always wrong, and that institutions where this happens repeatedly become coarsened and brittle. Editors and managers who behave badly, or even those who tolerate others doing so, are unlikely, at least in my experience, to possess the empathy that marks much of great journalism. That is to say, newsrooms which are run with arrogance and disregard ultimately will number their readers among those whom they betray.” https://lnkd.in/g_2vuj73 #secondroughdraft #newsroomculture #freepress #forthepeople #withthepeople

We know that when journalists provide insight into the reporting process it helps build trust. But what does that *actually* look like? 1️⃣ The first thing we tell newsrooms is you don’t have to add transparency elements to EVERY story. You could, but that seems unrealistic and probably isn’t necessary. So, to make day-to-day transparency more realistic and doable, consider these questions. ❌  Is the story covering a controversial topic?  If you have a story about a topic likely to create controversy, or if it’s a story you put extra care into, explain why you’re doing the story and how you’re working to be fair. 🗣️ Is the story a talker?  Did people in the newsroom have a lot to say about the story when it was pitched? If so, that’s a good sign the story could probably benefit from some transparency around your decision-making and reporting process. 📚 Did the story take a lot of time/resources?  For investigative pieces or stories demanding extensive resources, journalists should explain the dedication involved. Transparency here illuminates the depth of research, the complexity of the subject matter, and the commitment to uncovering facts.  🤔 What are people curious about?   The goal with transparency elements is to answer users’ questions (or correct their misassumptions). So, when thinking about which story to add transparency elements to, think about what a user may be curious about or have questions about related to the story. Then address those in the story. ---> For more tips on how to insert transparency into daily coverage and see more examples of how newsrooms are doing it, check out our Trust Kit on the topic. https://lnkd.in/gd962A4n 

The journalist wrestles with enough internal battles trying to produce a story done fair and accurately, informative and enlightening. If his/her career is also on the line each day because of circumstances beyond his/her control, the added stress to the deadline function isn’t healthy. Errors happen. Corners are cut. Ethics can be compromised. Hopefully editors help identify and support. But then, the editors seem to be less and less valued in the process and are more collateral damage. The house of cards has no foundation. Readers can provide the support with subscriptions as well as patience and collaboration.

Behind The Times. Shawn McCreesh New York Magazine on the new book, "The Times," by Timesman Adam NAGOURNEY: "This is mostly a story about a lot of very smart and ambitious people caught in the thrall of their employer. And when you look too closely, as Nagourney does, there’s not always a lot of dignity or decorum to be found. The book’s pages are splattered with pulped ego, and the career body count is high." "In true Times fashion, there is already lots of huffy whispering about Nagourney’s book. Many Times people tell me they think it was journalistic malpractice that the book’s timeline ends in 2016, since the toxic tango between Trump and the Times is the single most interesting thing about the paper’s recent history and journalism writ large. And because the Trump years were so important in the company’s economic turnaround. As recently as 2016, there were only 1.8 million digital subscribers." "The highest expression of newswriting at the Times has always been what’s called a 'lede-all.' As Nagourney writes, a lede-all is 'an authoritative article that captured a moment in history … they required a combination of command, meticulous organization, precision, speed, writerly flair and a sense of history and Times style.' You know your career is going well there when the editors start turning to you for these stories." "They’ll never do away with them completely, but at the new Times, the lede-alls are increasingly out of fashion. The emphasis now is on the 'Live Desk,' which puts out those short-burst news briefings that are thrown together into incoherent, rolling bulletins during particularly newsy moments. The cascading information keeps readers glued to the app, refreshing for more, but many reporters regard it as unrewarding work... No one is ever going to say, Remember that great live briefing … " And then there's "a lot of 'Here’s What You Need to Know.' Product reviews such as 'The 5 Best Vibrators of 2023' are rather unbecoming of the Gray Lady." Pre-order Adam's book Sept 26. Amazon: https://lnkd.in/eCwzqUjr #nyt

Seeing Journalists reach out for “stories” about companies about to blow up, makes me think this is common practice for some VCs to feed stories to the press I find this disgraceful and gross. Wanna make the industry better? Help someone! Anyone in your portfolio whom you didn’t check in a while? I find it funny when I meet another VC asking “with whom are you working these days in your portfolio?” Hmmm with all, don’t you lol! I’d love to see more stories, less journalism. Less bashing on others. If you feel bad, go help a founder or a fellow investor. You’ll feel better. @ fellow VCs who do this, the investing world is a small place, we all know who you are and it’s going to get you in reference calls for talent looking to join your firm or founders who give a call and ask what do you think of so and so. LPs might be the last ones to know but it’s catching onto them as well. The community also knows how you’ve treated founders on the way out, not only on their way in. The world would be a better place if people dealt with their own unhappiness and bitterness vs spilling on others, harming others won’t fix your problem. Build, don’t tear down.

Over the past 10 years, I've generated more media and press than just about any other financial advisor on the planet. From live hits on CNBC to the front page of The New York Times, there's very little I haven't done. The craziest part, however, is I haven't spent a dime on marketing or public relations to become a regular source in the financial media. Here's how I did it: 1. Think Local - Get to know your local news affiliates. It's going to be easier (and more impactful to your business) to find and help a local reporters/producers than ones at national media outlets. Work your way up. 2. Be Helpful - Everyone wants to offer lines or make an appearance, but few will provide story ideas and news angles to writers and reporters to get themselves mentioned. Make someone's life easier and they will keep coming back to you as a source. 3. Communicate - As you get more familiar with your specific media landscape, create a database of contacts so you can easily and regularly communicate your thoughts and ideas to reporters. This is how relationships are built and maintained. 4. Be Responsive and Say 'Yes' - The early bird gets the worm. If a reporter is looking for you, get back to them right away. Literally drop what you're doing. Remember, it's a honor and privilege to be a source. Also, say yes to just about anything. You're never too important or busy to find your thought leadership in the press. Lastly, this is a long game. Becoming a trusted and regular source in the media takes years of effort and consistency, but it can be done and done for free.

I'm pretty critical of the NYT's coverage these days - I wish they'd do much better on trans issues and on being more critical on America's involvement in global conflicts - but this is a fascinating, illuminating interview. It's honestly very refreshing to see news organizations pull back and think carefully about forging their own future, in a way that partners with tech platforms but isn't beholden to them. Two pull quotes: "I’d say that our industry is still thinking too small, and I think that’s fair: we've been absolutely battered for 20 years. But I think our industry needs to think bigger. [...] I don’t think that our industry can or should accept that we are going to collectively be smaller than an eighth-grade streamer." "We are going to meet our readers first off-platform. But we now know [tech companies] are powerful companies. They dominate the flow of traffic and engagement in the digital world. You need to be on them, and to find ways to partner with them, but your interests are not aligned. You should be clear-eyed on that, treat this as a professional partnership and make sure it meets clearly articulated standards."