Newsroom culture of excellence, foundational document No. 1: A clear mission statement
The York Daily Record/Sunday News/York Newspaper Co. mission statement has been in place since about 2006 – and has held up well.
An interdepartmental team at the YDR/YSN/YNC met at Shank’s Mare’s second-story meeting room overlooking the Susquehanna River in 2006.
Among other things, our task was to hone a statement of what we are about.
One way to know we are moving ahead?
It’s easy to articulate: We’re the No. 1 source of news and information for and about York County. It kind of rolls off the tongue.
But more importantly, it has guided us as we’ve evolved from a newspaper organization to a digital news organization – a newsroom that produces content first for digital platforms and later for print. In other words, we were able to see all those years ago that the first line should not say: The No. 1 newspaper in York County.
We do produce that, of course. But that newspaper is not what we are in this digital age. Our news organization, and partners across the southern tier of Pennsylvania, fuel more than 50 sources of local content – and receive information back in many of those pipelines. (Here’s that list of platforms.)
We did not foresee constructing that many interactive sources for information on that sunny afternoon in Long Level.
But the breadth of our mission statement has guided us along the way. And it must continue to as we accelerate our presence in the digital world.