It was with great sadness that I read Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times this weekend on the steady and slow death of the newsroom…the physical newsroom…as a place of collaboration, inspiration, and career growth. We all know the reality of the world we are in today…technology has made remote working easier and maybe given us back a lot of our time, but at the cost of the random interaction which really drives creativity and collaborative thought.
It may be a byproduct of The Pandemic…the “AHA” moment when we realized we are a global society and can use technology to interact with colleagues and friends around the world in seconds and in real time…but what we have found is that the hiding behind screens has made us maybe more global but has also cost us in ways that are really creatively human…random acts of thought, random observations, creative and inquisitive listening…are all part of what makes us thinkers and storytellers.
However all is not lost just yet for those random interactions that are not limited by time and space. Some examples that we thought would go away with the ability to Zoom in and out at our leisure but have started to ebb back in.
In sports, many thought that the open locker rooms, or even mixed zones where media interact with athletes, coaches and executives to curate more effective storytelling was gone for good. Once “the leagues and teams” got control of the space, it was thought, access would go to almost zero. Well that didn’t happen, and although there have been some adjustments (the WNBA deciding this year not to open their locker rooms is one example) almost all North American leagues have gone back to pre Pandemic access, and it has benefitted both sides once again. Now that’s not to say that Zoom calls and streaming video are still not in play….in fact that type of real time access to highlights and interviews online which happened during The Pandemic is a best practice that arose and has been kept to broaden the storytelling field…but showing up to listen and engage face to face in sports is back and has been infinitely helpful in keeping the stories alive.
What else has returned are conferences, random lunches, meetups on the street in cities and the like. The ability to look someone in the eyes, to listen to their stories or more importantly to cross paths with a colleague we had not seen in a while other than on a screen, has been fun and useful to everyone out and about. One example…I was literally walking through Times Square a few weeks ago when I saw a colleague from Chicago, Steve Byrd, walking the other way. We had a quick conversation amidst the returning bustle of 42nd Street and I mentioned that I was going to an event in a few hours if he wanted to come. There was Steve in the room at NYVC Sports first in person event in almost three years just a few hours later. It would not have randomly happened over Zoom for sure, and those type of random run ins…at a sports or music event, at a kids concert or a game, in the community…are so necessary to our being personally and professionally. On the conference side, The post-Pandemic budget crunch has probably limited a great deal of widespread travel, but that doesn’t mean that listening at events to thought leaders and again running into colleagues, isn’t important or necessary. What IS important is to think more about a touch of FOMO…if I can’t go to any events, what am I leaving on the table? Those who show up tend to get the random opportunities especially in a hyper competitive world.
Back to the Maureen Dowd piece about the newsroom. This past week it was an honor to accompany two conference commissioners and colleagues, Jessica Berman and Reagan Carey, to the AP Sports Editors Executive meetings at AP HQ in New York. While not the bustling smoke filled rooms of decades ago, the ability to sit in a room with a wide range of professional storytellers and just listen and watch was inspiring and encouraging for all. It was not a distracted Zoom call, it was a wide ranging face to face two hours of thought, questions, laughter and discussions, something which was sorely lacking during our days of screen time, and I think the face to face cues were infinitely more valuable than the convenience of a mass streaming event. You get more out of a handshake and a sandwich than you do from a keyboard prompt. The APSE meeting was one in a series of events I was lucky enough to attend in person recently…the bell ringing for the opening of NASDAQ for 100 days leading to Women’s World Cup, the aforementioned NYVC Sports event, The Women’s Sports Symposium in Studio 8A at Rockefeller Center were just a few…and I left each one with new thoughts, new ideas, new encounters and the randomness of energy that we lost during the time away.
Look, we fully realize that the days of mass work events where everyone is in cubicles or offices is not coming back, and it probably shouldn’t. We can find better things to do with our time than endless commuting every day, and as someone who has worked on one’s own for almost 15 years now, the management and value of time has been well spent and not at the loss of anything workwise.
That does not mean it is all or nothing though. Like we have seen with media access, with events, with travel we can find the happy medium. Show up for more than the past few years, make the effort to have a drink, or coffee, or breakfast or lunch and plan accordingly. The value of being in the room where it happens, and using that room to grow and inspire has not diminished, it has evolved, and it should be conveyed as we push others to join us.
We only miss what we don’t experience, and as humans, showing up is more critical than ever in whatever form that takes. It’s still about the journey, the people and the randomness of being united. It can’t be lost. Amended sometimes, but never lost.
Invite me to the newsroom any time. Can’t wait to be back there again.
