| The Mercury News (1999) | Google (1999) |
|---|---|
| >150 years as a profitable operation | <1 year as a non-profitable operation |
| Thousands of empoyees, many with more than 50 years of service | Tens of employees, most with fewer than 3 months of service |
| Well-defined roles, with 7 unions to enforce them | No defined roles and strange looks if you ask about them |
| Key decisions made around an imposing boardroom table by a committee with the publisher presiding | Key decisions made in the cafeteria line while a founder is loading his plate with baked organic tofu |
| All new products based on P&L projections for five years out | Most new products based on an engineer developing something Larry or Sergey thinks is cool |
| Products not released until perfect - this is the first draft of history and the newspaper cannot appear fallible | Products released as soon as they're checked for security and stability. We'll let users tell us what needs to be fixed |
| Smart, articulate journalists, who know what people really need, even if they don't | Smart, articulate engineers, who know what people really need, even if they don't |
| No tolerance for marketing, which is an unfortunate necessity, but taints the journalistic mission | No tolerance for marketing, which is an unfortunate necessity, but taints the engineering mission |
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
So different, yet so alike
I ran into an administrator for the Knight Fellows program tonight at a book signing party for Steven Levy. We shared notes about the parallels between journalists and engineers and it reminded me that I had once put together this handy comparison chart describing Google and the San Jose Mercury News when I made the leap from the latter to the former in 1999. While the differences were great, there were some surprising similarities.
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3 comments:
Things have changed quite a bit since '99. The differences are much less pronounced nowadays. Anyway, I've been reading your blog since its inception, and I think I recall a similar table somewhere at the beginning of it.
Dmitry... Thanks for being such a long time reader. I did post this early on, but took it down when I thought I might include it in my book. Didn't make the final cut, so I reposted it. I'm curious about how things have changed. I still see newspapers struggling with new technology, though those that have survived must have improved their decision-making processes.
And what's wrong with recycling ..
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