As newspapers continue to struggle to keep afloat, news managers are desperate for ways to respond to a shifting business climate.  Mark Briggs advises them to ditch the "command and control" management style, and adopt the mentality of a startup business.

Briggs wrote Journalism 2.0--covering the opportunities for the news media in the digital age--and he blogs at a site of the same name.  Inspired by some of Internet entrepreneur Scott Porad's (FailBlog.org and I Can Has Cheezburger?) writing, Briggs came up with with some core ideas for bringing the startup culture into the newsroom.

1. Divide and conquer: Pick 2-3 small teams and give them decision-making authority. In other words, allow them to launch anything the whole team agrees is worth trying. But pick the right people. Remember, there are certain types of people who prefer planning to progress. That’s not who you want.

2. We report, you decide: Use the weekly or monthly meetings that normally serve to seek clearance on new projects as a progress update. So instead of “we’d like your blessing to try this new approach,” the message would be “we are trying this new approach and this is what we’ve seen so far.”

3. Don’t let money stop you: If it’s a service that costs money, don’t waste time traveling up the chain of command to get approval. Either ask the vendor for a free trial (good service providers will be flexible, especially in this climate), or if it’s an online technology, look for an open source solution or find another news organization that will share some code.  

Read Briggs's full post here.