And no, I’m not talking about content decisions. Obviously, any newspaper is bound to cover the main news of the day. Whether it’s national or local, local or hyper-local, content is driven by the day’s events.

No, what I’m talking about are the business decisions. You know, the things that people scratch their heads about and say “huhhhh???”

In my current gig with a media company’s corporate staff, I get to hear plenty of ideas. Some are OK, some are good, but most, thankfully, never get to see the light of day.

They’re that poorly thought out.

And I’m not talking little decisions either. Nope, these are ones that would change the landscape of the business as well as cause the local newspaper staff to jump through hoops in order to accomplish the goal. A goal which is dubious at best.

I was involved in a discussion recently where one newspaper was about to venture off and change the look and feel of some of its advertising. Now, normally, trying new things would be applauded, even if it meant a lot of work with very little apparent reward.

But, this was different. When the proposed changes were brought before the vice president responsible for this group, she immediately hemorrhaged because she had never heard of this idea before.

Yes, that’s right, she didn’t know a single thing about a major overhaul of how this newspaper was going to go about its business.

Listening to the conversation, and pointing out a few flaws in the property’s thinking, got me to thinking.

That’s always a dangerous thing. But, I got to thinking about how decisions are made and the impact those decisions have on both the newspaper’s staff and its readers.

Decisions about business should be motivated by business reasons. There should be a benefit for both the newspaper and the customer, whether it’s a reader or advertiser. But, often, decisions are made seemingly in a vacuum. How many of us have sat in a conference room, or in a group meeting, and had someone start rattling off a new product, service or initiative that just doesn’t make sense? Come on, be honest. Too many times.

Either the process won’t work or seemingly adds tons of work to an already tired and overworked staff. Especially now with newspaper staffs being razor thin after nearly two years of layoffs.

So, let’s walk through the decision-making process. Shall we? I knew you wanted to.

So we’re going to paint a picture devoid of corporate involvement and make this entirely local at the newspaper itself. It’s cleaner that way.

Let’s say the vice president of advertising decides to launch a product. We’ll say it’s the “Healthy Pets” special section.

Why? Because Pookie, the V.P.’s dog, is just so special to him/her that the ad executive assumes everyone in the world feels the same way about their beloved pet and will do anything to keep them healthy and happy.

The V.P. turns to a financial analyst and asks, or demands, a report outlining what potential revenue is in the market. From veterinarians to pet supply stores, let’s see the total market spending for this segment.

So, the analyst goes off and starts designing the report and running queries on various systems and a week later, the report is ready.

Now, armed with this, the V.P. writes a sales plan, outlining the cost of the ads, picking a proposed section size and determining profitability based upon the estimated number of ads sold. In this case, we’re going to say it’s a 12-page tab section with a 70/30 advertising split. The newspaper has to sell 25 $250 ads in order for the section to make money.

So, then, all the sales managers are briefed on this “great” new section. They are assigned sales goals based on their territory and told to kick it off in a week.

A week goes by and at the next sales meeting, the section is kicked off and deadline is two weeks away! Happy selling!

But, along the way, no one told the press room or the production department.

So, when the spec requests for the local pet groomer start hitting ad services, the manager about blows a gasket.

“What’s this,” they ask.

“Oops, forgot to tell you,” says the ad executive. “It’s a special section and it prints in two weeks."

“Did anyone arrange printing?”

“Ah, no. I trust you can take care of it,” the ad exec says walking away.

Now, the ad services person makes their magic happen and secures a print date and arranges distribution with the mailroom. Great. All’s good.

Except, sales are not going well. At two days before deadlines, nine ads have been sold. So, the ad services manager does their best and arranges for canned content to be delivered for the section. Advertorial. At least the pages will be filled.

So, when deadline comes and the ads are released and the section printed and delivered – the ad services manager gets called to the publisher’s office.

“What in the hell is this!???” the publisher asks.

“It’s the healthy pet section,” comes the answer.

“Damnit. I killed this yesterday because we were going to lose money on it,” barks the publisher.

“No one told me.”

The famous last words at every paper.

No one told me.

And while this is not every decision, it shows how many are made.

Decisions should have business value. And not just sales blitzes to boost a bad month. They should have real value.

And the staff needs to know the value and the reasons behind the decisions.

To be sure, creating a newspaper from scratch every day is not the easiest thing in the world, but we’ve had more than 100 years to perfect it. Or try to.

In virtually every newspaper, virtually every day someone learns of a decision or problem that they didn’t know about a few hours before. And that decision may have catastrophic results.

At a newspaper in the Midwest, the press is plagued by electrical problems. One night, very recently, the problems were so bad the night production staff decided to only print two of the three editions.

This impacted circulation, news and advertising heavily. There was coverage for that missing second edition that was unique to the area it served. There were going to be downed routes and upset readers and revenue lost. The vice president of advertising started calling early Saturday morning wondering why no one had called. The vice president of operations stated bluntly that he wasn't called either. And so the vacuum began.

It embarrassed the paper and frustrated the in-charge executives. And I’m sure the Publisher gave more than a few people an ear-full about this. But it illustrates a point beyond that of the decision vacuum – that of the lighting quick decisions that have to be made for good reasons. It also illustrates how people need to know what’s going on.

Back in the day, when I was at a newspaper day-in and day-out, to be sure I forgot to tell everyone everything some days. Sometimes it was on purpose. Most days, it was not.

Good managers try really hard to keep their staffs in the know about what’s happening, either through meetings or e-mails, but even the best of them let things slip. Even really big ones like deciding to kill classified on a given day of the week or upcoming special sections.

But my point is simple – the more people know, the better they feel about going to work every day and facing that blank page wondering how they’re going to fill the space and make people want to buy the product.

And it can even be the simplest of decisions -- if the product is going to be printed that night.

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