Page proofs

It's still micromanaging, because if something isn't up to his standards, he needs to let someone know. But as long as it's done in a professional and not dickish manner (like nitpicking that headlines aren't as clever as desired), checking the proofs is OK. Like HH said, it's his name on the masthead, so he can do that if he chooses to. But if the headline isn't up to snuff, a good night editor should see that and rework it.

 

You seriously need to trust your people.

My boss is on an extended break. He trusts we're doing our jobs. And we are. Life is moving along swimmingly.

 

Shit rolls downhilll also, so when the publisher is a twat, that makes the editors below him freak out, and they take it out on the underlings.

 

If I could point to one key moment on the road to the burnout that got me out of newspapers, it would be during my tenure as ASE in charge of the nightside when I found out that my boss was logged into the system from home most nights, making fixes himself or getting various other folks to. Micromanaging kills confidence indeed, and I never had any in the management there even after the SE got canned.

 

Sorry, buddy. But doing that from home every night is micromanagement. You hire people you trust. Not saying I don't do it; I don't do it every night. I don't do it most nights. It;s the exception, not the rule.

 

When I arrived in Trenton, we had editorial meetings every day at 4-4:30 to discuss "the line" so there was no confusion come deadline.

Slowly those meetings became 3 times a week, then 2 times and 6 months later those meetings ended. But the publisher still wanted either me (night editor) or my editor to call every night to let him know what the line was. Those calls became a headache for one reason or another. If we didn't call, he'd call us. The conversations some nights lasted 15-20 minutes -- precious minutes because deadline had been moved up from 12:30 to 10:30 and then 9:45.

After 2 years I stopped calling the publisher and built front pages based on the best interests of the paper. There were a few day-after "how come you went with this?" conversations but nothing that made him demand that I start calling him again. There were days when the line happened at noon or early afternoon so we could hammer out a line by dinner.

Other than those occurrences, he knew I was loathe to waste time discussing the front page during unproductive phone calls and he trusted me to get the job done.

Let the editors do their jobs. Deadline already is a pain in the ass without adding more stress to the burden.

 

Very true.

 

True. We had regular staff meetings every weekday, but they were gameplan type meetings. As desk editors, both news and sports, we knew we had to have the flexibility to respond to breaking news. Heck, the night Osama Bin Laden was killed, we redid both news and sports fronts (moving a story about a local race from A1 to sports cover) after 8:30 --- and that was on a Sunday with skeleton staff and late-breaking copy coming in.

Again, I think it comes back to hiring good people and then trusting them to do the job you hired them to do in the first place. Not saying executives shouldn't ever be involved, but I agree with others have said about micromanaging.

 

Yeah, we have meetings every day to discuss story placement, suggestions for roundups, etc. Then the editors let us do our thing. We'll call the SE if there is breaking news that might merit a front-page spot, but it is pretty rare.

 

I've done it but its rare and its usually only if there's a big thing and the guy on the desk is looking for ideas/feedback, not just normal proofing. Only done normal proofing once or twice when some of our staffers were unexpectedly sick.

Its a nice option to have when needed but I'd agree with the sentiments about trusting your people alone and also not doing too much work when you're supposed to be off.

 

A main point that rises from this discussion -- and yet has not been explicitly addressed -- is this:

If you're the boss, it's not your job to finger-fiddle and hover and second-guess. It's your job to hire good people, to train and teach them well, and to let them know what you and the company expect of them.

If that isn't getting done -- and, as a result, you're having to check every page from home -- then that's on YOU. You're the one coming up short.

 

Agreed. And it depends the size of the shop and staff as well. If you're a small daily, maybe you are the slot, maybe you are covering something and coming back to the office to put the paper to bed. But that's a different scenario than the one originally presented here.