How to Share Bad News with a Newsroom (and How Not to)

Remember that we are in the transparency business

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

At the end of last year, I wrote that I think we are in a period of normality in the business of news. That means that the experiences of newsrooms will differ significantly from one another, as the fortunes of businesses often do in an economy such as ours. Some are quietly growing, others noisily contracting. Some are happily hiring, others, often to greater attention, letting people go. Some are promisingly starting, others disappointingly failing. Don’t be misled by “trend” stories that see one part of this picture but not the other.

With that said, in recent months, I have seen a series of missteps in communicating bad news, when that is the task, to newsrooms. (No one notices when a business fails to make the most of good news.) I want to look more closely this week at how to talk about bad news—and how not to.

The first thing to remember in talking to your own newsroom is that it is full of professional skeptics. So, where obfuscation is rarely an effective communications technique with anyone, it’s especially unwise when talking to reporters and editors. They will smell it, and either pounce (if they think they can) or just trust you less. In other words, there is a reason that the saying “honesty is the best policy” is more than 400 years old.

(Aside before we go on: For those thinking that this week’s column is about to turn specifically to the unfolding disaster at the Los Angeles Times, it’s not. The problems there don’t strike me primarily as ones of communications, but of management— and likely merit a separate column soon. Thoughts and suggestions welcomed in the comments.)

Don’t kid yourself: They will be paying close (and skeptical) attention

What does this mean in practice?

Here are a few specifics that I think can make a difference if you’re facing the need to relay reverses in your business:

• If your problems are specific to your own company, don’t try to duck that. If your leading competitor is growing while you are shrinking, people will figure that out. If funding for nonprofit news is increasing overall (as it is, with more money flowing in 2023 than 2022, and very likely more this year than last year), don’t try to blame your own challenges on some sort of problem across the field. You may set off a few of those trend stories (which could hurt all of your peers a bit), but eventually the truth will emerge, and, again, your own credibility will be diminished.

• If you have multiple, different problems, make sure your communication aligns with that. There is a temptation, in running any business, to package disparate announcements when all of them are negative. The cliches employed range from “biting the bullet” to “ripping off the band aid.” But no one advocates biting two bullets at once, and simultaneously ripping off two band aids is almost physically impossible. So if you need to make a strategic shift, but also to dismiss a divisive employee, you will only confuse your own team if you do both things at the same time. When multiple steps are announced together, people will naturally conclude that they are related, and will seek an overarching explanation, even when there is none. The resulting speculation can be enormously destructive.

• On the flip side, if you have a large, secular problem that will require a number of painful steps, it will, if possible, make the most sense to reveal them all at once. The first bit of bad news will only, understandably, leave your staff asking whether there is more bad news ahead. If you set up a drip-drip-drip of setbacks, you can trigger a downward spiral in a business (e.g. the departure of employees you could and want to keep) where that might have been avoided.

• Avoid euphemisms and, well, lies. Thankfully, managers have more or less stopped exhorting teams to “do more with less,” but “right-sizing” should suffer a similar fate. Treating people you are laying off with respect— telling them in person rather than by email (and having those who made the decision do it personally), paying decent severance, limiting immediately excluding people from their former workplaces to the most extreme cases— goes much farther, including with those who remain, than hollow phrases about wishing people well or thanking them for their service.

Minimizing the chances of bad surprises

There is no guarantee against adverse events in running any business. Given long enough, every company will encounter problems. But the best way I know to avoid having your own team being surprised when things go wrong is to establish a rigorous regime of transparency. I’m constantly taken aback by how few newsrooms—which, after all, are in the transparency business—practice this in their own affairs.

What do I mean here by transparency? I see no reason why newsrooms shouldn’t regularly and publicly share traffic and circulation numbers (from email newsletters to print copies), First, the numbers aren’t really secret, except for the smallest players, anyway (and social media followings are already public). Your competitors have ways to estimate these numbers, and unions can and will demand them. Next, consumers aren’t likely to be overly influenced by them; they mostly read what they want. Finally, knowing that the numbers are going to be disclosed can be a significant internal impetus to improving them.

For similar reasons, regular public disclosure of aggregate revenues and expenses is also a good practice. For public companies (sooner) and nonprofits (later), they are required anyway. Increased salary transparency when hiring has removed one frequent rationale for keeping quiet about the largest source of expense. And again, transparency can enhance business discipline.

Most of all, in relation to communicating bad news, transparency can yield an early warning system, significantly reducing the chances that newsrooms will be surprised when things are going wrong in the businesses on which their livelihood depends. Yes, that means you may face anxiety sooner, but it can also mean your team is much less likely to feel blindsided, which can create huge trust issues in the longer run.

If we’re honest, reporting and publishing bad news, at least up to a point, can be one of the thrills of journalism. Delivering it in your own house never is. But how it is done can be the difference between a business hiccup and a fatal turning point. When your time comes to tell people that things aren’t going well, do so with care— and forthrightly.

Second Rough Draft will likely be off next week for some travel. See you soon.