The Times-Dispatch Must Spend More Time Innovating
By Thomas Silvestri

On my desk, there's a worn copy of Clayton M. Christensen's 2003 book, The Innovator's Solution. It's dog-eared, highlighted, and marked up.

I walk by it many times during the workday. It's there to remind me: Spend more time on innovation.

Last year, Christensen, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, helped the American Press Institute develop a "Blueprint for Transformation," which details research into and conclusions about new business models for the newspaper industry.

The Reston-based API collaborated with Christensen's consulting firm, Innosight LLC, on the project, called Newspaper Next. It advocates the use of a strategic framework, tools, and processes, all geared to breeding innovation within a mature business dependent on an important core product - such as a daily newspaper.

Armed with its groundbreaking research, the API is conducting daylong seminars throughout the country so newspaper leaders and other media managers can think through the strategies they need to create sustainable growth. The Virginia Press Association hosted one of the programs for member papers throughout the state. Broadcast general managers at Media General Inc., the parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, also brought in the API last month to explore the innovation concepts.

The Times-Dispatch and Media General had the privilege of being one of seven pilot research projects that Innosight used to probe where and how newspapers could be innovative. The project, headed by Media General Director of Research Steve Shaw, developed a set of questions that we could ask consumer, retail, and service companies about their business needs and concerns so we could contemplate ways to help them succeed.

OUR PROJECT formed the basis for what the API calls "the jobs to be done" questions. We wanted to know what a business would hire us to do, even if it had nothing to do with advertising, which right now is our main source of revenue.

We're a big believer in Newspaper Next. One of our major 2007 initiatives deals with creating effective processes to innovate and spot opportunities. Our vice president of operations, Sam Hightower, is leading it. At the same time, we want to use the innovation lessons to find the next big idea - which Christensen & Co. calls disruptive innovation.

Newspapers at one time were a large-scale innovation as the "world's first regular information pipeline to homes and individuals," the API says. In one product, readers could get local news, news about the nation, world news, opinion, ads with retail sales, and an assortment of classified ads, with an emphasis on autos, real estate, and jobs.

A broadcast era introduced innovative disrupters: radio, broadcast television, and cable TV. Each challenged the newspaper's value for providing news content and advertising. In print, disrupters arrived in the form of free weeklies and all-advertising publications called "shoppers" or "traders."

THE PACE of innovation quickened with the online era. Web sites targeted certain audiences and could be viewed at will. Some focused on one classified category, competing for additional slices of the newspaper business. Blogs showed the prowess of smart, individual commentators who weren't necessarily professional journalists but displayed an expertise or commentary that attracted communities of like thinkers.

All of this, the API says, has created an "infinite pipe of information." Everything is available all the time. Individual choices become virtually infinite with the expectation that information be available on demand. Online searches, thanks to the likes of Google and Yahoo!, become a consumer's basic behavior and skill. Users, not just editors or experts, make the information choices. Personally relevant content eclipses generic material. It goes on and on.

We've made our share of changes at The Times-Dispatch in the past two years. More are coming. None is a disruptive innovation, however. Most would be what the API would call sustaining innovation - done to help the newspaper and related Web site improve and grow.

To the pessimist, newspapers are in a tough spot - stuck between readers who don't want us to change and others who don't think we can change fast enough. But to the optimist, the future is full of opportunities, especially if a newspaper builds on its many strengths - particularly local news and advertising - and at the same time responds to the unmet needs of consumers.

I'm an optimist. But we have to innovate.

Thomas Silvestri is the president and publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and is also a board member of the American Press Institute.