The 20 years experience problem

When you’re doing a NYT crossword puzzle, you have a significant advantage if you’ve been filling them in for years. That’s because the same words with similar clues keep cropping up time and again, so your experience is an important factor in completing the puzzle.

But what happens if they suddenly stop using all the old conventions?

Your habits will defeat you.

As I get ramped up to launch by new blog, Eat Sleep Publish, I see this problem all over the newspaper industry.

To illustrate my point (and maybe back it up with some experience), here’s a comment from a USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review blog post asking whether or not “the folks running your shop can get it done” over the next ten years:

no, they’re just too old. most of them don’t even know what RSS stands for and they’re unwilling to listen to the younger folks in the newsroom who actually do get it. part of what holds them back is the old newsroom idea that you have to have been in journalism for 20 years before someone in a glass office listens and respects your opinion. this new ‘challenge’ that faces our industry isn’t about journalism, it’s about surviving in a new medium, the web, and current management, better surround themselves with folks who ‘get it’ before they drive our industry into the ground. hopefully it’s not too late.

I could not have said it better.