The Winnipeg Free Press: Not a Newspaper—It's a "News Engine"

The Winnipeg Free Press is not a newspaper.

It used to be, editor Paul Samyn said at Going Barefoot 5, the bi-annual communications and marketing conference at Canadian Mennonite University.

But not today. 

“We are a news engine that produces a newspaper—and a website, a Facebook page, video, livestreaming, and a salon at the News Café,” he stated.

Today, he went on to say, the Free Press is “trying to shake off the print legacy. That legacy doesn’t work any more.”

“We are not a newspaper, but we publish one.”

This change is being forced on them, he went on to say.

“The biggest change is the pace . . . we used to make people wait 24 hours to get the news from us. People don’t want to wait that long any more.”

One thing they no longer think of are “print deadlines,” he stated. “If something is ready, we post it.”

This is different than in the past, when a newspaper would wait until it had all the information before publishing.

“Now, we know we can do more digging later,” he said.

Samyn’s comments reminded me of what Barth Hague, Chair of the Board of The Mennonite, the official publication of Mennonite Church USA, said a couple of years ago about changes at that publication.

Writing about the resignation of then-editor Everett Thomas, he observed that under his tenure the magazine had moved from being “a print magazine to a content distribution system.”

Like at the Free Press, The Mennonite was no longer just a magazine, he told me.

"We're transitioning from being a magazine to a content distribution system," he said of how The Mennonite now offers a traditional print magazine, website, blogs, podcasts, video and a weekly information e-mail.

"The traditional methods of sharing content are waning—it’s rapidly becoming digital now," he said. "The media are being transformed."

What does this mean for non-profits?

Just like the way the media is being transformed, non-profits are changing, too, or should be.

Like with the traditional media, non-profits also need to stop thinking about deadlines and publications. 

Today, our supporters are like subscribers to a newspaper. They are no longer willing to wait until when we are ready to share information—until the fall issue of a newsletter, or the spring issue of our magazine. 

Today we live in a web-first (or, as ESPN has said, a mobile first) world. 

If something is ready to be shared, it should go up immediately on a website, ready for sharing via social media.

It could still be published in a printed publication for those who prefer to get their information that way. But that should never be the first use.

Why? Because just like the Free Press isn’t a newspaper, non-profits are no longer in the publishing (print and deadline) business when it comes to sharing their information.

We are a news and information engine.