Newly Formed Society of Metro Editors Offers Support

When Mike Griffin wondered whether other newspapers check their paid obituaries for accuracy, he e-mailed members of the newly formed Society of Metro Editors and received immediate feedback.

This type of support is priceless, says Griffin, a former Orlando Sentinel city editor. "City and metro editors have to make 100 decisions by lunch time, " he said, and most don't have time to network with colleagues at meetings or over the telephone.

Griffin, who also is a SOME vice president, says he hopes other city, metro and news editors will find value in having their own professional organization that provides an interactive online community at its Web site, www.metroeditors.org.

SOME was formed in September by a group of editors who attended an American Press Institute seminar for city and metro editors in early 2005. Seminar members found they learned a lot from each other while at API. They continued their discussions by e-mail through an API-sponsored listserv that is set up following each seminar so that participants can continue to network and receive support from each other long after the seminar ends. Members of the City and Metro Editors seminar decided to take that listserv a step further and invite city and metro editors from across the country to join the conversation.

"It started as an off-hand comment walking out the door of API, and the more we talked about it, the more we thought a forum for ongoing conversation with people who do what we do would be useful, " said Monica Markel, deputy metro editor of the San Antonio Express-News and SOME's president.

The seminar moderator, API's associate director Mary Glick, planted the seed by suggesting the need for such a group, pointing to two other professional organizations that took root out of API seminars.

The American Association of Sunday and Features Editors was formed by a group of Sunday editors who attended an API seminar in 1947, and the Society for News Design grew out of the first Newspaper Design Seminar at API in 1978.

"Seminar participants find such great value in getting together and learning from each other. It's exciting when a group like this one, with strong leadership and a lot of energy, wants to continue and expand, " Glick said.

SOME will focus on examining trends in local news coverage and readership, and providing a professional forum to serve frontline local news editors.

City, metro and news editors have the most stressful jobs in the newsroom, said Markel. These editors are managing up and down, and dealing with the daily news rush, she explained. Many are senior writers who have been promoted into editing jobs without much management training.

SOME's online access allows busy editors to log onto the site from their desks and quickly find out what's going on, says Holly Roberson, Suffolk bureau city editor for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, and a SOME vice president.

"We deal with a lot of the same issues and the more voices and ideas you have, the better you are at what you do, " Roberson says. While Roberson often relies on her colleagues at the Pilot, she says it's nice to have a broader group of people from across the country to use as a resource and sounding board.

Questions might range from how a news desk handles its vacation policy to what type of content is in a paper's metro section. General personnel issues, questions about zoned editions and how papers staff their metro sections are all possible topics, along with more challenging issues such as readership and ethics.

"It doesn't have to be weighty journalist issues, " said Griffin. "Some of the biggest problems managers face can be daily issues such as vacation policies. "

Members of SOME leadership will work closely with API to develop relevant content for editor training seminars, particularly the two City and Metro Editors seminars scheduled for 2006 (Feb. 19-24 for metro markets and Sept. 17-22 for community markets).

In the longer term, SOME would like to set up a job listings exchange on its site, said Markel, because the position of city/metro editor is one of the hardest newsroom jobs to fill with experienced help. SOME also would like to establish awards to recognize outstanding metro section content so editors and newspapers can see how their coverage stacks up.

Anyone who is a city, metro or news editor (including assistant editors) and is responsible for the local news staff of a newspaper or its online counterpart can join by logging onto www.metroeditors.org.