Thank you for your interest in the Center for Community Journalism's on-site training program. This survey will help us learn about your newsroom and its philosophy so our training can work in concert with the values important to your news organization. It will also help identify what you see as your strengths and weaknesses, and decide how training can best help you.

Please take the time to be as specific as you can about the expectations, standards and problems related to what you consider your training needs. The more specific you are, the more focused we can make our training. It's important to remember that training is not always the answer. It's important to remember that training is not always the answer.

If you would prefer to run through this questionnaire in a telephone conversation or in-person interview, please call me (315) 312-5640. You may use this sheet as an outline and type the results on another piece of paper or e-mail me your response at jhatcher@oswego.edu

The basics

Name of publication or publications:___________________________________

Name and title of person filling out survey:______________________________

Phone number:____________________ e-mail:___________________________

Circulation:______________ (If you are a newspaper group, see next question)

No. of newspapers in group:_____

Combined circulation:_________________

Newsroom staff size:___ (If part of group, list total of newsrooms combined.)

Duties: Please mark the number of people in each kind of position.

__ Reporters. Primary duties involve writing articles.

__ Frontline editors. Duties include reporting, writing, editing and page design.

__ Copy editors. Duties include page design, copy editing and headline writing.

__ Managing editors. Primary duties include working with staff and editing copy.

__ Graphic artist.

__ Photographer.

Longevity: Please mark down the number of employees that fall into each of these categories.

__ More than five years with newspaper.

__ Between two and five years.

__ Between two and one year.

__ Between six months and one year.

__ Less than six months

Defining mission – the big picture

What you are: List the three attributes that describe the foundation of your newspaper’s philosophy. Every issue we strive to be…

What you want to be: Build off the above answer, and look toward the future. List your aspirations. I would like this newspaper to become…

Identifying problems

1a. Look at the attributes that describe the current philosophy your newspaper. Now think of specific problems that most hinder you from realizing your current expectations.

1b. Result of problems: What are the ramifications of each problem on your newsroom and in your newspaper? How often do they occur? How badly does present performance fall short of desired expectations?

1c. Source of problems: What do you think is causing or contributing to these problems? This can include things like workload, staff size, experience level, lack of understanding.

1d. Monitoring. What mechanisms currently exist to measure performance, and what steps do you presently take to let people know when they've done both a good job and when they've missed the mark?

2a. Now look at what you would like your newspaper to become. List any skills you think would help your staff work toward these goals.

2b. A picture of success. Think for a moment about what success would look like. How will you be able to monitor whether a new skill is being used and determine whether it has lead to success? What would the result be in your newsroom and in your newspaper?

2c.Rewarding success. Training experts agree that if a skill is not practiced, and if success is not rewarded, people will eventually revert to their old routine. What kinds of things will you do if success is realized?

Please use this space to list any other topics you feel are important to know to make this training a success.