COVERING Election Day

You said, "daily basis.". So you are saying your managers can't come up with a coherent plan by 6 at night on a daily basis. Interesting.

Maybe I've been spoiled, but the news editors I've dealt with had their plans pretty well set by the time the designers and copy editors arrived to the newsroom for the start of their shifts. Perhaps once or twice a week, something would change, or a story would get bumped to a different page or for another day. Only time that a wholesale tearing up of two sections would happen if it was something absolutely major, like a murder, which is relatively infrequent.

 

I think LTL is right. You really do live on another planet. One in which working at a newspaper rarely entails dealing with news.

 

More importantly, how much do you think Wright Thompson makes?

 

You didn't answer the question again. Do your managers come up with a coherent plan on a regular basis, or is there chaos on a nightly basis? Which is it? Because from what you've written, it sounds like you have some disorganized managers.

 

You've made it pretty clear that of all the things you don't understand, the role and function of management top a long, long list.

 

Oh, I guess I started this thread, so ...

1. At our shop, everyone (news and sports) gets pizza and pop around 7 p.m. Except one year, the ME sprang for trays of election-night enchiladas from a local Mexican joint. If I haven't said it before on here, my ME is a good guy.

2. News desk vs. sports desk. When you work at smaller shops like I have, a "universal desk" exists by default. When sports is swamped near deadline, we'll help proof or even finish a page. When we're swamped or short staffed, they help us out. The world doesn't end.

Baron, I appreciate what you're saying about more sports pages being "live," but even with that, there's planning involved. You know which prep or college games you're shooting each day, for example. You have the game schedules ahead of time, so you can try to budget space for gamers/roundups. And it's very rare anymore that you "tear up the sports cover" for breaking wire news, such as a no-hitter.

You have to piece the sports pages together as stories and photos trickle in, according to the planning mentioned above. I call that "building the pyramid."

In general, you have the stories and art you need for the local news section by, say, 6 p.m., but getting it all to fit in the space available is tricky. I call that "solving the jigsaw puzzle."

That's my 2 cents.

 

Fair enough. I know there's planning involved, but my point is what you said. It's "Live".

Schedules are great and all, but like I said, there not always an indicator. There might be extra games on the schedule, or less. Space is budgeted as far as the schedule goes, but if there aren't enough call-ins, or too many of them, then adjustments have to be made. On the fly. An hour before deadline. Not four hours, like Sunshine's example.

For news, the fitting should be fairly simple. Give writers a length, and tell them to stick to it. If they go long, or short, you find out five hours before deadline, not an hour.

 

You sound like a grown man who follows professional wrestling.

 

Oh, geez. Disagree if you want, but there's obviously some room for disagreement with you.

 

shortbus is getting his dander up again.

 

One more point about the news desk.

Having all the copy by 6 p.m. doesn't necessarily give you "five hours before deadline." Especially at a smaller shop.

Like many places, our shop's local news section is due at 8 p.m., so they can print it with the feature section and classified section earlier in the night (and stuff it with inserts).

Sports and the A section get the later deadline, so our news desk doesn't even start laying out A until after 8 p.m. most nights. That gives us 3 hours.

 

Baron has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. He keeps clinging to the same ill-informed nonsense (everything is set by 3, all copy is in by 6!) despite them being refuted repeatedly by numerous people. But this is what I get for trying to debate the board simpleton.