Preparing entries for the Minnesota Newspaper Association writing contest this year, there was a category that stuck out in my mind. The category has to do with explaining newspaper operations to readers.
I’ve been asked about this numerous times. How does the paper go out? How do you do it? How does it work?
My week never really ends or starts. I say many times that, even when I hit the final buttons and send the newspaper to the printer, that I don’t feel done. It’s immediately on to the next week.
So that’s where I’ll start today. When the paper is done, I typically open all the mail from the week. After that I do deposits, subscriptions and prepare for our editorial and advertising meetings on Thursday. And sometimes I clean after that.
Thursday begins with meetings. I try to make them as short as possible. There’s more assignments than our writers can handle, so I try to gauge what has to be covered, and what else can be covered. I ask a lot of questions of our writers and then assign stories. If any of our writers have their own ideas, they also chip in of course.
The rest of the day is typically spent doing accounting/billing fixes. I’m also the accountant here and, well, it’s its own part-time job. I will also work on the website during this time. In the evening during the school year, I generally try to attend a sporting event to take pictures. I consider this a break. After the game, I then sort the photos and post them on Facebook.
Oh, also on Thursday we go over advertising plans for the week, who to call, and what special sections we’re considering.
Onto Friday.
Friday is an extension of Thursday. It depends on the workload, but on Thursday or Friday, I typically return phone calls for two hours or more. From Sunday through Wednesday, I generally only take phone calls that I have to, or, which have something related to the week’s newspapers.
From those phone calls, I usually have more work to do. There’s also a pile of emails from which I need to respond to that, if it doesn’t have to do with the week’s newspaper, gets pushed back until Thursday or Friday. So I send invoices, mail missing newspapers, or email a missing statement to an advertiser. I basically answer questions on Thursday afternoons until I go to football Friday night.
This past Friday included an evening in the rain. It was fun, wet, and I wish the Panthers could have won. I’m wishing us the best of luck on Homecoming Friday next week.
After the game I was too tired to cook, which I typically do every night, and ordered out. When I was finished with dinner, I sorted through hundreds of pictures and posted the best 40-50 on Facebook. I really do appreciate the kind comments readers post under those photos. Anthony Martens had a comment that the photo I took of his son Carter was the best I’d ever taken. He said, of course, he was biased because it is his son. Regardless, it made me smile, made my night, and reminded me why I put in long hours.
I try really, really hard not to work on Saturday. After not taking a day off outside of medical or family emergencies for nearly a year and a half, the effects caught up to me. Which is why I take a day off on most Saturdays.
From March until now, I’ve been battling some health stuff. I’d say I’ve gone from about 30% back to a little over 90% today.
Of course, sometimes there are events which my reporters are unable to cover on a Saturday, so I cover if that is the case.
On Sundays I go to church with Deb and family, followed by lunch. And then I settle in and begin working on the next week’s paper. Oh, I forgot. I put the Golden Link together on Fridays also. That also sometimes gets done on Saturday if advertisers are late.
Putting the paper together means putting the ads list together first. Followed by sorting through my “this week’s newspaper folder.” Everything that gets emailed into the paper, I sort according to what needs to be done. I have a folder for “extra,” a folder for “ads,” a folder for “stories” and a “put in the paper this week” folder.
I also have a file where all the stories for the paper go. At our editorial meeting, I decide what’s going on the front page, so, as long as I have all the photos and stories, that part is easy.
That is also part of Sunday’s work. Emailing, texting, and calling our staff whose material I have not collected yet. Most of the work is submitted already, but some folks forget, some are late, and sometimes the event happened on Sunday and it isn’t ready for the paper yet.
Collecting information and organizing in order to start laying out the newspaper takes anywhere from 1-4 hours. Laying out the newspaper is pretty fast. The time intensive part is writing headlines and cutlines for all of the stories. This generally requires a lot of reading.
When I’m done with the Star Eagle, I then do the same process for the Waseca paper.
And before people moan and groan about feeling that I should explain part of the reason for opening the Waseca paper, I can’t see the future, but I do worry about declining readership and advertising support as our, frankly, older demographic passes away. The cost to do a second paper is about half the cost to do one paper. My thinking really is that running a second paper makes it much less likely the Star Eagle will close due to financial instability. It’s a lot cheaper to run a second newspaper as opposed to one.
Next week’s column will pick up where I left off here. I’ll continue with the “beginning of the week” on Monday.
Until next time. Please be kind.