Leadership Styles and Power

Being a good leader is like conducting a symphony: You don’t necessarily know how to play each instrument but you do know how to make the instruments work together to produce music.

This image, according to Jill Geisler, head of the Leadership and Management group leader at the Poynter Institute, illustrates how leaders see the big picture and get their teams involved and invested in their work.

Difficult Conversations: How to Deal with Conflict in Newsrooms

by Lindsey Wray

We all deal with conflict on a daily basis, and in a newsroom, it can be exacerbated by tight deadlines.

Consider a newspaper reporter who constantly turns in stories late. This would hold up editors and the copy desk and could even delay the production schedule of the newspaper. Avoiding the issue would make the problem worse and disrupt workflow. The reporter’s manger should plan to approach the reporter about why deadlines are being missed and how to best resolve the situation so that newspaper production can stay on track.

Difficult conversations, such as this one, involve the discussion – and hopefully resolution – of conflict. They can include everything from talking to someone about a missed deadline to laying someone off because of budget cuts.

Leading Generation Y in the Newsroom

by Lindsey Wray

Woodstock meets American Idol.

Baby Boomers and people from Generation Y sharing a newsroom is like this strange encounter. But just because your musical tastes are miles away from your colleague’s doesn’t mean your work styles have to clash.

News gathering is already a frenzied operation. Striking a balance between generations can help everyone work toward the goal of effectively bringing the news to the public.

Members of Generation Y bring a particular set of strengths and a new set of challenges to the workforce. Born after 1978, they were shaped by historical events such as 9/11 and the Columbine High School shootings and grew up using technology such as iPods and TiVo.

So, how does this translate to the newsroom?

2007 IWMF Courage Awardee’s Publishing Company Convicted

 

The IWMF is concerned for 2007 Courage in Journalism Award Winner Serkalem Fasil. Her publishing company was convicted June 11 by the Ethiopian High Court – along with two other publishers and four editors – on anti-state charges linked to coverage of the government’s handling of disputed parliamentary elections in 2005.

Fasil, a publisher who owned three newspapers at the time of her arrest in November 2005, could face heavy fines or have her company dissolved, according to CPJ. Fasil was acquitted in April.

Dawit Fasil, brother of Serkalem and deputy editor of one of the company’s newspapers, had also been released in April, but he has now been returned to prison. He faces up to three years of imprisonment on charges of “inciting the public through false rumors.”

• Read the CPJ alert.
• See the press release about this year’s IWMF Courage in Journalism Award winners.

Journalist Threatened, her Car Sabotaged in Mexico

Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho’s car was sabotaged May 8. Cacho was also threatened earlier this month when she testified at the trial of a pedophile.
Read (in Spanish) about the incident on Cacho’s website.

Al-Jazeera Producer Receives Prison Sentence

Howayda Taha Matwali, a producer for Al-Jazeera, was convicted May 1 on charges of harming Egypt’s national interest and falsely depicting events for her work on a documentary exposing police abuse. She was fined and sentenced to six months in prison. Matwali, of Qatar, also works as a reporter for the London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi.

Uzbek Journalist Sentenced to Prison

Umida Niyazova, an independent journalist in Uzbekistan and a human rights advocate, was sentenced May 1 to seven years in prison. At a trial that was closed to the press, Niyazova was found guilty of charges of smuggling subversive literature and distributing foreign aid material that threatens national security. Niyazova, who has already spent more than three months in jail, will have 10 days to appeal the charges.
Read the CPJ alert.

Threats Grow Against Female Bloggers

As their presence in the blogosphere increases, female bloggers are facing increased threats. Women are targets of sexual harassment and other threats, which are often of a more explicit and malicious nature than those against men.
Read the article in The Washington Post.