Q&A with Robin Kwong APM’s newest Honorary Fellow and New Formats Editor at The Wall Street Journal

Prior to joining The Wall Street Journal in 2019, Robin Kwong spent 13 years with the Financial Times in reporting, editing and senior management roles. Kwong is also the creator of the Uber Game, an award‑winning online news simulation game, and Co‑founder of the Contemporary Narratives Lab, which facilitates projects that seek to create artist‑journalist collaborations.

What was your reaction to being named an Honorary Fellow of APM?

I was excited and felt very honoured to be named. I became interested in project management because I wanted to help people work better together. But since project management was not well established within journalism, I always felt that I had to chart my own path and find my own way to become a better project manager. I therefore feel very privileged to be welcomed into the broader professional community and recognised in this way.

You began your career as a reporter. How and why did you transition to digital delivery and innovation?

A traditional print newsroom is a factory where well‑established infrastructures and deeply honed processes keep everything working at a high speed and a high volume. A reporter can focus just on the words for his or her article and trust that the system will turn all the words into newspapers delivered to readers’ front doors by the next morning. The internet changed all that. Suddenly, digital journalism required cross‑disciplinary teams to collaborate with no established playbook and, often, no common language. Experiments and projects abounded as technology opened up new ways to do journalism and connect with more diverse audiences. I saw project management as a force multiplier and well‑run projects to be the only way to develop new best practices and processes.

How have projects influenced the current media landscape?

Media organisations have had to adapt to simultaneous overhauls in business model (from advertising to subscription), customer habits (from print to computers to mobile) and competitors (from other newspapers to Netflix, Facebook and TikTok). Project‑oriented ways of working help by giving news organisations the flexibility and adaptability needed to survive these seismic changes. Instead of a factory mindset, they can workshop new ideas, explore and innovate. This applies to editorial formats (i.e. the rise of data journalism or interactive news applications) as well as business practices (i.e. developing metered paywalls). More importantly, projects have been the main way to bring new skills and disciplines into newsrooms, whether that’s software developers, audience specialists, multimedia producers or user‑experience designers.

Read more about APM Honorary Fellowship 

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE AUTUMN 2022 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.