Leadership

Leadership Communication

Historically the newspaper industry has been a fairly stable industry, until the economy turned south. With the change in the economy, coupled with the rapid growth in technology, the landscape of the news industry as a whole drastically changed. No longer were people getting their news from the traditional sources, such as newspapers, T.V. and radio. New media outlets were introduced via the internet.

I was lucky enough to jump from the print side of the newspaper industry into the online world in 1998. The internet was a growing phenomenon and my organization made the decision to take the newspaper to the next level and start to publish online content. My organization was structured in such a way that there were virtually two separate companies, in fact, at one point the online side operated out of a separate building. Eventually, the two divisions were merged back into one company and online integrated into the existing traditional print departments.

In the business world, organizations are forced to reinvent themselves. Change, instead of coming in little ripples, sometimes hits an organization like a tidal wave. The merging of the two media channels was our tidal wave. During this transition I was promoted and assigned to work for the director of operations, the director of the print operations. As I’m sure most people now understand, print and online are two entirely different animals and require different skill sets. During this transition, the director made a decision that the online workflow would operate the same as the print workflow. No questions asked, that was the way it was to be. Autocratic leadership at it’s best.

Bad leaders attempt to control employees through orders, policies and rules. They alone decide what to do, when to do it and how to do it, as defined by Simonton (2012). This particular director had every employee that worked for her write “how to” documentations and “standard...