Others Under the Gun

According to Jeff Howe, (Contributing Editor of Wired Magazine) the nation's largest newspaper chain, Gannett, was in deep trouble. It would seem that the "ink-on-paper daily news business was is in the middle of a long, painful, and seemingly irreversible decline." Circulation had dropped 30% since 1985. Gannett, then hired Craig Dubow as their new CEO and his mandate was to "drag a 19th-century industry into the 21st century, and do it without busting the budget or alienating Wall Street."

The company used Michael Maness and Jennifer Carroll, two "media stars" of the company, and gave them free rein to question every assumption. The results were that the Web became the primary vehicle for news, photographers were trained to shoot video, and they used "crowd-sourced" investigations in addition to their own staff. (See August 2007, Wired Magazine.)

The process was met with skepticism, hostility, and some who were just baffled. Others expressed relief as they wanted to find a way to keep their jobs. If I may jump ahead - the results were excellent for Gannett.

Today, the Church finds itself in much the same situation. That would be, to keep our message and our values intact, while trying to re-invent how we do Kingdom business. I am happy to say that I believe that the opportunities are here to help us do what is needed. What is needed, is to bring the Church into the 21st century and do everything that we can to make is successful.