---
title: Three-point turn
description: How newsrooms can turn ideas into meaningful actions
---

[Media Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter)

# [Three-point turn](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/three-point-turn)

 Written by [Alan Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/author/alan-hunter) | Oct 3, 2025, 4:00:00 PM

**How newsrooms can turn ideas into meaningful actions**

At this time of year my thoughts turn to some of the great cities of Europe: Antwerp, Amsterdam, Athens, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Oslo, Copenhagen, Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg and Helsinki.

Why? All of them have hosted autumnal media conferences or study tours that I have attended over the past decade or will soon attend. I’m sure readers in America, Asia and Africa will have a list of their own. It’s that time of year.

Each city evokes memories of learning new things alongside a group of people who were similarly inspired to find answers to the challenges that face us. That and fainter recollections of the evening entertainment – it was on these trips that I learnt that where there are Norwegians, there is karaoke and shots.

I’m certain that many people are returning from this year’s crop of events buzzing with ideas. But now is when the hard work begins. Because newsrooms and the wider news business have an ability to suck you back into the day-to-day like no other. The big ideas that are floating in your head can quite easily drift away on an autumn breeze.

How do you stop that from happening? How do you make sure you put those ideas into practice?

1 Act fast

I have a theory that most of the time we live in a 14-day bubble, our attention only extends to a week before today and a week after. I can barely remember last Friday – I’m not sure if I wrote last week’s email on Friday or the day before, for example –  and am not much concerned about what I’m doing a week tomorrow.

(As if to prove my point, on re-reading this for editing I realise it’s my daughter’s birthday next Saturday!)

With that in mind, my advice is to take the big ideas you’ve brought back from your conferences and act on them right away. If you wait too long, both your memory of what you were going to do and, crucially, your enthusiasm will pass.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t reflect on what you heard. I remember some really bad initiatives coming from an editor on a study tour before we’d even got on the plane home. He wanted “action this day”. But nonetheless my message is: don’t delay.

2 Share your ideas

It’s a good rule of thumb that your idea has been well received when someone repeats it back to you as their own. Annoying as it is, this is the moment to take satisfaction: your idea has landed.

If you’re back from a conference, tell everyone what you’ve learnt and what you might do about it. Find out what they think too. How might we develop this? What are the obstacles? Who do we need to help us?

I’m always wary of those who squirrel their ideas away and only produce them in front of the big bosses. Hierarchical news companies often reward this behaviour. How many people do you know who suddenly produce new ideas in meetings with the editor-in-chief or CEO?

In the long term this is self-defeating behaviour. There’s no point in giving good if you haven’t built the internal coalition necessary to get an idea done. I remember delivering a single presentation more than 30 times to people from all departments to get a smartphone and website redesign signed off.

3 Don’t try to do too much

We are instinctively programmed to think in threes – just look at how ChatGPT structures its sentences if you want to know how hard-wired this is. So decide on three ideas to take forward and discard the rest, or at least wait for another day.

It might be worth trying to focus on two ideas that you or your own team can accomplish without outside help. Then you just have one wider idea for the company to give its attention.

A former colleague of mine used to carry around an “actions list” of nearly 50 things to do. Unsurprisingly, almost none of them got done.

If it’s a company-wide initiative, be sure to get some entirely dedicated resource. If something is an addition to someone’s job it just won’t get done. Never, not ever.

I hope that’s useful. Of course all this applies to ideas that didn’t spring from a conference centre and a karaoke bar. Good luck!

[View full post](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/three-point-turn)

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