When people see training as medicine

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Someday I'd like to do some historical research about cranky journalists.

I'd like to know if journalists a century ago disdained use of the automobile or telephone to gather news. I'm old enough to remember some reporters who balked – or at least griped – about using computers to write. I like an antique typewriter as much as the next guy, but I knew computers were better the first time I hit the delete key.

I wrote a recent column about the reluctance of some reporters to master basic data analysis skills. An editor responded with a note expressing frustration at the reluctance of members of her staff to attend training sessions that they needed, including sessions on math for journalists and using spreadsheets. She was asking help in how to get journalists to attend training they need but don't want.

The editor will remain nameless here, since she asked me privately for help and her question implies criticism of her colleagues. She recalled an occasion when her newsroom made attendance mandatory for some sessions on using Excel "and there was great reluctance and some outright rebellion. The general attitude is ‘I don't need to know that.'"

I responded in three ways:

• Some advice that I thought might help.
• A rant about journalists who think they don't need to know basic skills (no need to repeat that).
• A promise to seek more advice from training colleagues on the "Newscoach" listserv.

Responses from my colleagues went in two directions: advice on interesting journalists in training they need but don't want and a discussion far more thoughtful than my rant about the importance of journalists learning computer skills. I'm going to milk that discussion for a couple of columns. First the advice in persuading journalists to take their medicine (I'm not sharing my own advice, because my colleagues made mostly the same points but made them better):

Michael Roberts, Deputy Managing Editor Staff Development at The Arizona Republic, is one of the best in our business at translating lessons from the business world to journalism. He provided a strong answer:

It's time for the mindset about newspaper training to make the leap to performance management, a leap many other industries made a decade or two ago. Adults will embrace new skills if they believe the new skills will help them prosper on the job. They will believe that only if the system they work in asks for, coaches, evaluates and recognizes the use of those skills. Performance management is about designing and managing an overall system in which training is just one element. Requiring people to attend training without such a system is essentially asking them to attend training in a void.

How many people go off to training with no idea about why and when they return never hear anyone talk about using the skills learned in training? CAR training, in particular, is prone to this kind of quick death.

Back in 1989, Dana Gaines Robinson and James Robinson wrote the book, Training for Impact, which made one of the first clear statements about moving from training to performance management. Training offered in a void is called "training for activity," basically training for training's sake. Instead, they described "training for impact" in which training is directly linked to an organization's business needs and an individual's related job needs. Training is offered with clear job needs in mind. After training, the work environment reinforces the use of those news skills. This means use of the skills is required, coached, evaluated and recognized. Simply, the issue is not mandatory training but mandatory use of certain skills.

In the example above, what were the expectations for use of Excel? In many if not most newsrooms, the expectations are more like hopes. Instead, let's say all beat reporters in the newspaper above were required to develop one modest analytical or investigative piece that relied on data. (And this requirement was in support of the newspaper's goal of being a better community watchdog.) In order to do that reporters and editors would need basic Excel skills. Suddenly Excel training is a means to an end, not an end in itself that needs to be mandatory.

Michael actually described my first training experience in computer-assisted reporting. My newspaper sent me off to a National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting conference for training. When I got back, my editors should have set me up with the software I needed and told me to start practicing my new skills and let them know when I had a story ready. But I didn't even have Excel on my computer or Internet access at work. To use the tools at all, I had to go home (this was the mid-1990s). I was assigned immediately to a story that had no computer application that was immediately evident to my inexperienced mind. (Really, these computer skills can be used on nearly any story, but I needed to develop the skills before I knew that.) So my training was largely wasted. I eventually learned some computer skills, but not as swiftly as I should have.

Elaine Clisham, my API colleague, responded basically by saying you get what you pay for: "If newsroom people have bonus pay opportunities (or ‘points' that they can spend on time off, or something similar) for showing up at training sessions, might they take more advantage?  If annual reviews had a component that focused on ‘takes advantage of work-related educational opportunities' as one criterion for advancement, raises and plum assignments, might those opportunities stay higher on the radar screen?"

Elaine asked another important question: "Do the newsroom leaders take advantage of these sessions?  If the bosses are seen to participate in training sessions, it's a strong signal to the troops that it's important."

That is absolutely on target. Newsrooms can really tell when top editors believe something is important and when they are paying lip service.
Sheila Garland, director of newsroom training at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, thought my correspondent needed to show her staff "a tie-in between learning more about math, Excel, etc., and how it would appear in a story." At AJC training sessions, she said, "we specifically discuss and use examples with the documents and the stories we've written to show how this really does apply to your daily reporting job."

Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and NICAR, echoed the importance of showing the relevance of the skills: "The way the CAR training is presented is really, really important. If it doesn't pertain to data (salaries, city budgets, etc.) that can be used for stories or demonstrate how a lot of time can be saved, the reporters will walk away. It also is important to show stories that have used it and how the reporters who don't will be left behind."

My next column will share some of my colleagues' thoughts about how the reporters who don't are already being left behind.

sbuttry@americanpressinstitute.org

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