Patrick Beeson

Update: Mindy McAdams has posted a response to Mutter's entry that spotlights a great blog entry by journalist Meranda Watling.

Declining circulation may not be the biggest threat to newspapers these days. The true killer could be the "brain drain" of young, technologically savvy employees fleeing what they see as a sinking ship whose captains sail on without a clue.

Former Chicago Sun-Times City Editor and current Silicon Valley CEO Alan Mutter's blog entry "Brain Drain" is among the most revealing portrayals of what's wrong in most newspapers. Namely, legacy newsfolk not allowing for often-younger journo-technologists to play a guiding role in that paper's strategy going forward.

Sadly, it's these dissatisfied employees that are paramount to saving the newspapers.

Mutter backs this assertion with several quotes from anonymous sources all currently working in the MSM who question their devotion to a business unwilling to leverage their online experience.

And more confirmation arrives in the entry's comments.

From one anonymous commenter who professes to work for a large daily newspaper:

I just don't understand it, there are people in the mix who really are trying to save this industry but who are battling of all things, this industry.

I feel fortunate to have worked for The Roanoke Times/roanoke.com, a newspaper that "gets" online in a way others in the industry do not. And my current position with Scripps corporate is an invigorating continuation of how a successful online media operation should run.

But these experiences differ greatly from descriptions I hear from colleagues at other media operations. Tales of regurgitating the newspaper online each day -- OK, I did this to some degree in Roanoke -- while other potentally lucrative ideas are relegated to the shelf are common.

Experience in the newsroom should be divided into two time periods: before the Internet, or B.I., and after the Internet, or A.I.

It doesn't matter if you've worked for the newspaper since before I or other 20-somethings were born. If you don't care to adapt to the trends that will save the newspapers, you're simply helping destroy them.

Likewise, if you've just graduated from college and arrive on the job market with fistfulls of Web design, databases and a smattering of journalistic knowhow you should be put in the driver's seat (or damn close to it).

There aren't many newspapers with online folks calling the shots. The Redding Record Searchlight, a Scripps-owned paper in Redding, Calif., promoted their site manager to editor.

There should be more bytes than ink flowing through newsroom management these days. But will it take a revolution or a funeral for this to happen?