WHY CNN DIGITAL'S NEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF WANTS TO MOVE PAST THE GENDER QUESTION
MEREDITH
ARTLEY MAY BE AN ANOMALY IN THE TESTOSTERONE-SOAKED WORLD OF MEDIA
MANAGEMENT, BUT SHE'S INTERESTED IN TELLING A DIFFERENT STORY.
When
Meredith
Artley
talks
about digital
news media,
she sounds a little like an inspirational coach talking to her team
before a big game. Her voice is animated as she describes how mobile
and social media
are
changing news platforms and storytelling possibilities. She says she
wants her team to stretch and take on new challenges, even if they
fail at first. And in her new post as CNN Digital’s
editor-in-chief, overseeing the media
giant’s
domestic and international mobile, social and desktop digital
efforts, she’s in a position to make those plays.
Artley,
who is also president of the Online
News Association,
doesn’t overanalyze the fact that she’s an accomplished woman in
the testosterone-soaked world of upper
media management,
but it’s a tough detail to overlook. While 2014 annual census from
theAmerican
Society of News Editors and
theCenter
for Advanced Social Research
found that 63% of the news organizations surveyed have at least one
woman among their top three editors, men
in supervisory roles still outnumber women
by almost two to one. But, Artley says the digital sector seems to
have less of a gender issue.
“I
think when we do these studies, [they still focus] on the legacy
parts of legacy
media as
opposed to the digital pieces, but that’s not to say that there’s
not a problem. It’s just to say that sometimes I have a problem
with how wide we’re casting our gaze,” she says.
PATHWAYS AND PERSISTENCE
Still,
Artley says there aren’t enough clear paths and role models showing
women what’s possible and how they can model their own careers. She
wants to address that in her own role, remaining accessible to her
team members and helping them find their way through perseverance and
tenacity, which have been important in her own rise.
She’s
been working in digital news media for roughly 20 years, and her
background includes leading digital teams at LATimes.com,
the International
Herald Tribune,
andNYTimes.com.
In 2000, she was part of the New
York Times’
Pulitzer Prize-winning team for the “Race in America” series.
Artley
says much of the abstract hand-wringing over whether women should
“lean in” or “lean out” can be counterproductive. Instead,
her vision is to keep her “rock star people”—women and
men—close to her and help them navigate their career paths in ways
that are right for them. She says that means checking in with them
regularly, remaining accessible to them, and giving them
opportunities to try new ways of working and telling their stories
across platforms.
“We
have a scenario where women are spending a lot of time self-analyzing
and the men are focusing on the work and getting the job done. So,
you can’t look in the mirror for too long, otherwise you’re just
going to become so narcissistic and focused on ’Am I doing the
right thing or am I saying the right thing?’” she says.
SLOW DOWN AND LEAD
Artley
also knows the value of thoughtfulness in leadership. On a recent
trip to London, she found an Oscar Wilde quote on her pillow that
read, “Life is too short to be taken seriously.” It reminded her
to periodically detach from the frenetic pace of 24/7 news cycles and
spend time thinking about how she is leading her team. While her new
role is demanding, she says sometimes it’s important to take a beat
and ask questions about overall objectives and how people can work
together creatively to realize them.
Creativity
as essential as digital
media proliferate
and make up increasingly popular news sources. A 2014
survey by the Media Insight Project found
that the majority of Americans get their news from five key sources
or technologies in a given week—television, laptops or computers,
radio, print
media, mobile
phones,
and tablets. Nearly half of Americans with Internet
access have
signed up for news alerts.
As
a result, each story has to be adapted for different screens and
platforms, Artley says. How that’s done is evolving—and where she
expects her team to experiment and try new things instead of making
digital a “junior varsity version” of the television broadcasts,
she says. Where reporters would typically work on television package
and possibly a short piece for the website, Artley calls on her
reporters to think much more broadly.
That
may include an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) engagement on Reddit,
allowing news consumers to find out about what the reporter has
learned so far and what she hopes to uncover. The reporter may then
post photographs from her assignment to her Instagram account and
work with a video team to create a graphic and video package that
tells the story effectively on a mobile
device with
the sound turned off. The next step may be an on-air interview about
her Reddit AMA or a story-related Facebook chat.
“There’s
a line outside of my office of people who want to talk to me about
ideas and cool things they could do, and we just need to start
putting even more of that in motion. So that’s one of the things
I’m really excited about with this job,” she says.
BY
GWEN
MORAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3038454/strong-female-lead/cnn-digitals-new-editor-in-chief-explains-why-shes-tired-of-the-gender-qu?utm_source
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