Hello Scholars!
Who among us has to deal with assignments from more than one editor? And has anyone noticed that sometimes these editors aren’t aware of all the assignments on your plate at a given time? How do you handle the juggling game?
And/or…..If you’re fortunate to have only one editor, how do you juggle your daily assignments with longer enterprise stories?
Looking forward to your posts by March 7,
Coach Col
Lisa Song
03.03.10
Lead times at HCN are incredibly long. A typical 700-word story for the magazine might go through 6-8 edits before it’s published (which takes >1 month). On the other hand our blog posts should take ~2 hours each to write, and generally require little or no original reporting. At the moment I’m juggling 4 different print pieces in various stages of drafts/reporting, a video, and a blog post. It actually helps me to stay focused because as soon as I get tired of working on one thing I can switch gears to something else. Where it gets dicey is when I have multiple interviews in one day, each one on a different story. What really helps then is to write down all the questions I plan to ask each interviewee beforehand, so I don’t get mixed up during the phone conversation.
Starting about 3 days before a written draft is due, I don’t do anything but work on that particular story, whether it’s writing or fact-checking. I spend all my effort on it unless I hit a wall; then I’ll go work on a blog post or something easier to de-stress. Of course, I have the luxury of taking my time because I’m at a bi-weekly publication; those of you at dailies, I have no idea how you handle it!
Kiah Haslett
03.06.10
I work under two editors. One is an assistant, the other is the head business editor. I primarily work with the asst. business editor, but my managing editor assigns me breaking stuff. My first priority is anything breaking or deadline that they give me. No matter what I’m doing, if I’m given something to turn at the end of the day, I work on that. It can be a press announcement or something coming from the DC bureau that they want localized. That happens once or twice a week
I tell both of my editors about my enterprise ideas and set deadlines for myself on those. When the assistant editor swings by our side of the office, I tell him what I have so far, what I don’t have yet and what he can do (if anything). I also ask him for story ideas that can become longer enterprise pieces.
I work on about two non-deadline stories at a time. I’m one of those reporters who sometimes gets in a zone and writes prolifically, while other times, I write some, read (webpages, newspapers, magazines) some, and then come back and reread/rewrite.
Editing enterprise takes about two weeks, only because Thursday and Fridays are bad days for my editors (who have to get the weekend stories proofed), and like Lisa, stories that long take forever to get edited.
Nicole Norfleet
03.10.10
I tend to work for one primary editor, but a couple times a week my stories are edited by other people depending on the section of the paper they are going to run in. There have been issues of miscommunication between editors in terms of what the story length was suppose to be and sometimes the angle. At the moment, I haven’t had as big of an issue with juggling from multiple editors as I have had juggling stories with just my primary one! I give my editor daily updates of my enterprise stories that I’m working on. He knows that when I’m not working on a daily or a brief that I’m working on my enterprise stories based on the ones which we decided have priority. Sometimes I get confused about which stories during the day have the most priority because he changes his mind throughout the day. lol But as long as I check in with him when I’m unsure, we stay on the same page.
Diane
03.21.10
I work with two editors on the city desk. It depends on the time of the day. Sometimes if I have an assignment in the morning and I turn in my story early, then I’ll work with the morning editor. But most of the time, I’ve worked with the nighttime editor who has edited majority of my stories. We have a schedule list on our Newsdesk program. Every reporter lists the assignments they’re working on during the week in that file. It really helps to keep our editors in the loop about what we’re doing that day or throughout the week.
My deadlines vary. I cover an educational feature that appears weekly in our Wednesday paper. The story is due Tuesday evening, so I try to find a live event happening at a local school on Thursday, Friday, Monday or Tuesday morning. We aim to cover a school that hasn’t been covered recently and/or in the past. Pickings are slim, because it’s not as easy as it sounds. I have to find an event going on at a new school in that particular week and the event must have an educational component. But somehow I’ve managed to make things work by planning ahead and calling schools before the Tuesday deadline. For that story, I have the luxury of reporting the story earlier and then waiting to write it when the deadline creeps closer. But I also tackle daily stories throughout the week. I’ve received assignments at 1 p.m., and have been asked to turn it around as early as 4 p.m. It’s been a learning experience so far.
colleen
03.25.10
By jove, you’ve got it.
To summarize what you’ve all written: Here are critical techniques/skills to have in order to keep on top of things in a newsroom:
— personal time-management/organization skills
— bringing into one communication loop all your assigning editors
— checking in often with your editor(s) about story priority
— checking in often with your editor(s) about how each story is developing, especially for those stories that are being relied on for the next day’s paper (or the day’s blog).
We can take any or each of these four elements and devote a full discussion to it. Any interest in doing so?
Coach Col