“My newsroom has great ideas for online innovation. We have great brainstorming sessions, but then it all kinda peters out, and nothing happens.”

Paraphrased, this is a question a paper staffer asked me recently: How do I bridge the gap between a great idea and its implementation?

I know this is the hardest thing for an alt-paper – time and resources being so limited.

Here are some suggestions I had – what would you add?

1. Think Small

Sometimes, thinking of a great meta-strategy is too-much – too overwhelming, too expensive, too far out of reach. Identify a small improvement that can be made, and get it done this week. Free tools that bloggers use are a great place to start – embedding video, adding audio, or creating a photo slideshow – any tool that someone is using to spruce up their MySpace page can probably be incorporated into your site.

2. Think Storytelling

Photos, video, and audio are tools in your journalistic arsenal. From the first pitch of an idea, through reporting and story meetings, consider these tools in addition to your standard print accompaniments of sidebars and graphics. Its much easier to gather multimedia content during the reporting phase than to add it at the last moment.

3. Think Experiments

It’s one thing to imagine adding local mp3s for each music story running in the paper. That could potentially be a lot of work! So – think experiments. Try different methods; see what works for your readers and your staff before making commitments.

4. Think Collaboration

Many papers have a dividing line between the editorial staff and the web staff. The website might be produced downstairs, by a freelancer, or by another arm of your corporate ownership that you never see. Of course, at many smaller papers, the web duties are 20 percent of what a staffer with another full time job does. In either scenario, the key to accomplishing a project is for the content producers (writers, editors) to work with the web producers throughout the writing and reporting process – no Monday morning requests for slideshows.

5. Think Workflow

“That sounds great. I have tons of ideas. The problem is – I HAVE NO TIME.” This is really one of the biggest challenges facing alts and the web – overloaded staffers who are already overwhelmed with their weekly duties and planning special sections. There are no easy answers here – but the biggest tip I can offer is to look carefully at workflow, and to make as many time-saving technical changes as possible in order to free staffers up to innovate online.

Those are my tips – what advice would you offer a newsroom struggling to implement its great ideas?

UPDATE, May 1, 2007
Innovation in College Media has adapted these tips for a college audience – with useful tips for everyone.