MAN 4150 Module 1 Change Basics Written Assignment Example

From Seven Print Days to Three: Why a Regional Newspaper Must Change and How Its Leaders Picture the Change

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership, Thomas Edison State University

MAN-4150: Change Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

From Seven Print Days to Three: Why a Regional Newspaper Must Change and How Its Leaders Picture the Change

The answers below concern the Delaware Valley Courier, a composite daily newspaper founded in 1886 that serves Camden, Gloucester and Burlington counties in New Jersey. Its print circulation has fallen by more than half in fifteen years, while its digital subscriptions have grown to about 31,000. The publisher has announced that within eighteen months the paper will print only three days a week, move its reporters to a digital-first schedule and reduce its printing and delivery staff. I am the paper's features editor, so the final answer is a personal reflection.

Question 1: What Is Driving the Change?

Palmer et al. (2017) describe both external and internal pressures for change. The Courier faces several of each. Externally, readers have moved to phones and social media, advertisers have shifted spending to search and social platforms, and the costs of newsprint, ink and home delivery have risen while print revenue has fallen. Competitors are no longer only other newspapers but every free source of local information online. Internally, the paper's systems and habits were built for a nightly print deadline: stories are written for the next morning's paper, the best are held for print, and the website is treated as a secondary product.

These pressures are not new, but they have crossed a threshold. Seven-day printing now loses money four days a week, and the paper's owner, a regional media company, has made clear that the Courier must become financially self-sustaining. The change is therefore both reactive, a response to decline, and strategic, an attempt to build a different kind of organization around digital readers.

Timing adds urgency. The paper's printing contract with a regional plant expires next year, and renewing it for seven days would lock in costs for five more years. Leaders therefore face a deadline that is partly external and partly of their own making, which is common in change: the moment to act is often set by contracts, budgets or technology cycles rather than by readiness.

Question 2: Which Images of Managing Change Fit?

A distinctive idea in the textbook is that managers hold different images of their role in change, which shape what they do (Palmer et al., 2017). Some see themselves as directors who decide and command, others as navigators steering through forces they cannot fully control, caretakers who adapt to inevitable change, coaches who build capabilities, interpreters who help people make sense of what is happening, or nurturers who accept that outcomes are unpredictable and focus on the conditions for good results.

The director image has a long history, but even the classic planned approach was more participative than its caricature. Burnes (2004) re-examined Kurt Lewin's work and argued that his model of change was not a rigid top-down sequence but an approach built on group participation, experimentation and learning, intended to help people themselves change behavior. Read that way, even planned change depends on involving the people who must change.

The publisher's announcement reflected a director image: a plan set at headquarters, dates fixed and decisions presented as final. That image fits parts of the change, such as the printing schedule, where someone must decide and contracts must be renegotiated. It fits poorly for changing how journalists work. Research on newsrooms supports this distinction. Ekdale et al. (2015) studied a news company undergoing major change and found that technological changes met the fewest hurdles, because journalists saw the need to adopt new tools, while changes in relationships with audiences met more resistance and changes in the professional culture of journalism drew the weakest response. For those deeper changes, the interpreter and coach images fit better: editors who help reporters make sense of why audience data matters and who build their skills in digital storytelling are more likely to change practice than a memo from the publisher.

Question 3: Personal Reflection

Living through this change has made me see how much my own work depends on the print rhythm. For twelve years I planned features around the Sunday paper, with long stories and large photographs that look best on newsprint. When the publisher announced the change, my first reaction was loss: the Sunday section was the part of the paper I was proudest of. My second reaction, a few weeks later, was curiosity. Our website analytics showed that the features readers spent the most time with online were not the long Sunday stories but shorter guides to local food, events and history, which I had treated as filler.

I also noticed my own ambivalence. I agreed that the paper had to change, but I resisted specific parts of it, especially being measured by page views. Recognizing that mixture of support and doubt in myself makes me more patient with colleagues who seem resistant; many of them, like me, accept the need for change but object to how it is being done. If I were advising the publisher, I would ask for fewer announcements and more conversations, so that people like me could help shape the new features section rather than simply be told what it will be. That reflects the shift from a director image to a coaching one that the previous answer recommends.

Conclusion

The Courier must change because its economics and its readers have changed. Its leaders can direct the parts of the change that require decisions, but the parts that require journalists to work and think differently call for interpreting and coaching. My own reactions, loss followed by curiosity and mixed feelings about specific measures, suggest that how the change is led will matter as much as what is decided.

References

Burnes, B. (2004). Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: A re-appraisal. Journal of Management Studies, 41(6), 977-1002. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00463.x

Ekdale, B., Singer, J. B., Tully, M., & Harmsen, S. (2015). Making change: Diffusion of technological, relational, and cultural innovation in the newsroom. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(4), 938-958. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699015596337

Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Akin, G. (2017). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.