I would say within the first couple of weeks, I realized we have a problem.

I had a group of managers who were managing a group of young journalists on the digital side,

and they shared with me how my team, who were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s wouldn't play nicely

when it came to doing projects together.

Nicole Smith was in her 30s when she was hired as a manager in a newsroom.

Her job was to oversee a team of veteran print journalists who'd been at the paper for decades.

My goal was to get in there and say, okay, the way that we've been doing it, I respect it.

Is there also another way that we can do it so that more people can see your work?

Journalism was in the midst of a seismic shift from print to digital.

Suddenly, success was measured by online clicks, views, and shares.

This transformation demanded new skills and new ways of thinking.

It called the value of classic

reporting into question. It required even the most seasoned journalists to change the way they did their work. But that wasn't the conversation Nicole walked into. Instead, it was all about age.

I'll never forget this. They told me how there was an invisible barrier where people from the team that I was now managing

wouldn't even walk over into the other side of the room lest they would be seen as a traitor

for working with the younger group.

And I remember getting done with that meeting, and I sat and I watched.

I watched to see over the next couple of days if anyone from my team walked over past that invisible barrier, not one person.

That barrier was generational, or at least the newsroom staffers thought so.

And this really threw Nicole for a loop because she knew all her

colleagues had something to offer, regardless of their age.

That was the moment that terrified me when I realized I was in something deeper that I wasn't

...