Digital Media Outlets Need Management Too: A Toolkit for Managing Journalism Organizations

"Working on our organizational management allowed us to consistently monitor organizational processes and roles within our media outlet."

This toolkit offers organisational tools to help with the management of teams at digital native media outlets. Specifically, it offers protocols on management and team leadership that are meant to help media outlets achieve optimal work processes that will support their sustainability. These protocols are intended to assist in the development of job descriptions, organisational flowcharts and organigrams, onboarding plans, and dismissal protocols.  

The guide was created for the Velocidad programme by SembraMedia and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) with the support of Luminate. Velocidad, which was implemented from 2019 to 2022, was a media accelerator programme for digital media in Latin America. The goal of the project was to promote the sustainability and growth of local journalism outlets that are either digital native media or have a growth strategy focused on digital media, and whose focus is on quality journalism, editorial independence, and the covering of topics of public interest.

As explained in the guide, "Many digital media outlets are born from journalists' passion, namely the desire to innovatively communicate the realities they witness. The drive to produce quality journalism is so important to these media professionals that they are willing to take on all the challenges start-ups face. However, like all other companies, media outlets need tools to manage their teams and ensure sustainability."

The Velocidad programme believes that team management and leadership are key to sustaining media outlets and that an organisation requires a strong organisational foundation. The toolkit seeks to assist in building this foundation by supporting media organisations to develop protocols. Protocols are defined as "a document that lays out, in writing, a set of procedures or instructions that recipients can use as a reference. When we create protocols, we sort out the organizational practices and requirements according to predetermined criteria."

The toolkit offers guidance on developing protocols for five essential aspects of an organisation:

• Roles: Each person on the staff has a role that should be clearly defined and agreed upon. This chapter looks in particular at developing job descriptions.
• Processes: Workflows should be analysed and improved when necessary. This chapter focuses on developing flowcharts for an organisation.
• Structure: Roles and processes intertwine in a scheme that should be explicit. This chapter focuses on developing an organigram for the media organisation.
• Recruitment: When the team grows, it is important to organise the process for incorporating new staff. This section focuses on creating an onboarding plan, which is a tool to establish how new hires will be brought on to the team and trained.
• Dismissals: When it is decided that someone has to leave the team, established processes help everyone involved to more effectively handle the transition. This section focuses on developing a dismissal protocol, a tool one can use to help an organisation face one of the hardest situations for all people involved.

The appendix includes checklists for an onboarding plan and a dismissal protocol.