Newsroom trainers get their MoJo going

Twice I've seen Kate Marymont train journalists. I've never seen the end of her planned presentation.

Each time Kate starts talking about the amazing transformation of her staff at the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., the group hijacks her session with question after question. Kate answers them with more information about the News-Press and its MoJo and crowdsourcing work and the questions keep coming.

Howard Finberg pressed for the "lessons learned" wrapup that Kate had planned and she gave the annual newsroom trainers conference at the Poynter Institute a quick summary. But really she had already told us a whole lot about the lessons. Some of those lessons:

Teach the teachers. As the News-Press was teaching new skills to its "mobile journalists," Kate said, "we managers had to learn it, too." Just as an old-fashioned print reporter's editor needs to understand how she works, the MoJos' multi-platform editors needed to understand the work their staffs are doing.

Invest heavily. "Figure out what your budget will stand and then stretch," Kate said. She stretched a while, outfitting 12 reporters from her budget with their MoJo backpacks - kits with wireless laptops, digital cameras and audio recorders that the reporters use to file news reports and photo galleries directly to the web throughout the day. Then Gannett helped her make the big stretch this year, providing 40 more backpacks so that all 52 reporters on staff are fully mobile.

Ask the staff. "Let your staff help design your training," Kate said. "They know what they don't know." This year, as the News-Press has trained 40 more MoJos, then trained them again for video and trained other staffers in skills needed for photo galleries and databases, the staff has had 305 "training touches" - individual staff members receiving a training unit - for a staff of 140 journalists. And that doesn't include the pizza lunches where people learn about cool web sites someone on the staff has found.

Manage the angst. As the News-Press started making new demands of its MoJos, it was easy for staff members to get the impression that they would be doubling their workloads. Editors needed to manage the work flow, so that people weren't just working more. For instance, she said, the Red Sox reporter covering spring training doesn't spend any more time at the ballpark during the day, but blogs during the day before writing the print story. The education reporter covering the first day of school blogs and posts a photo gallery during the day before writing that print story at the same time every print reporter writes that first-day-of-school story. The work day isn't longer but the output changes. "This is not about killing our staff," Kate assured.

We are still journalists. The News-Press is achieving innovation that strengthens, rather than sacrificing, its commitment to watchdog journalism. The third phase of the MoJo reporting focuses on maintaining core values. The first two phases teach people how and when to use their equipment. The results are inspiring to this ink-stained journalist with roots in another generation: The News-Press isn't just hosting community chat, but recruiting the community as watchdogs in crowdsourcing investigative projects such as the Cape Coral utility investigation or the current inquiry asking for public help in investigating the 2.2 million pieces of data just released by FEMA spending after Florida's hurricanes. That is informal crowdsourcing, asking your community to help you with stories. The News-Press also takes advantage of its large, knowledgeable retired community with Team Watchdog, a group of community experts who advise reporters as they work on stories. For instance, a retired school superintendent can help an education reporter understand the budget. A retired FBI agent helps reporters doing background checks on political candidates.

A mistake Kate confessed was that "we took our eye off training for core journalism" during the MoJo training. Now the traditional training on public records and watchdog reporting skills has been added to the training in how to use new tools. "All of those things that make good journalism still make good journalism," she said.

"Our job is still nailing the scoundrels if they're up to no good."

Kate was one of four presenters Friday at the newsroom trainers conferences that have been meeting annually since the early 1990s, first hosted by the Freedom Forum and now by Poynter. This year a group of more than 50 newsroom trainers from around the world is focusing heavily on training for multiple platforms.

Paul Grabowicz, who directs the New Media Program at the University of California's Graduate School of Journalism, led a storyboarding exercise in which the trainers determined the parts of a hurricane story, then the best way to tell each part - video, slide show with audio, text, graphics.

Lauren Hertel, who teaches multimedia skills at the University of Florida, demonstrated some valuable online tools for journalists to use. She led an exercise helping us decide which kinds of skills staff members can and should teach themselves and what the trainers need to teach. "We're doing a disservice if what we're giving them in training is skills," Lauren said. If we teach staff members how to learn new skills, she said, they will learn more skills than we can teach.

Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter's new interactivity editor, led a session on the tools you need for effective multimedia training.

In Saturday's program, Michael Roberts showed us the extensive training plan and led us through the training process used in conferting the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com newsroom into a single information center.

Thursday's and Friday's programs included the rapid-fire idea exchange that has been a feature of the conference since its inception in the 1990s.

Chip Scanlan wrapped up the program with the witty, insightful "Parable of the Content Provider."