"Grid" Lock: A Preliminary Case Study of a Management Initiative at the Winston-Salem Journal

Abstract

As daily U.S. newspapers have faced increasing competition, they have experienced falling circulation and declining household penetration. In an effort to cope with the adverse changes, some newspapers have sought the advice of consultants who have advised such administered changes as total quality management and similar managed workplace transformations. While such changes have succeeded in other workplace environments, such as manufacturing, they have faced resistance in professional settings, such as newsrooms at daily newspapers. One newsroom that faced a similar administrative change was the Winston-Salem Journal, where the North Carolina daily in 1995 adopted an efficiency “grid” for newsroom professionals that was rejected in early 1996. A preliminary survey of the professional news staff at the Journal two years after the efficiency initiative was announced found that news professionals there remained strongly resistant to business-administered changes in newsroom routines and professional norms, and they strongly adhered to traditional views about the separation of business and news departments. The study also found worthy of further study suggestions that some newsroom professionals view staff cuts that coincide with administrative changes as falling within the purview of business administrators and as unrelated to professional norms and values and work routines.