Society of Metro Editors

Many of you are metro editors, city editors or assistants on a city or metro desk. I hope you have joined the Society of Metro Editors, a fledgling group that started this year from discussions that started at API's City and Metro Editors seminar. Here is a column my API colleague, Lisa Rabasca, wrote about SOME. You'll see in the column that SOME also welcomes news editors. A network of colleagues facing similar challenges can be a tremendous resource for ideas and encouragement.

The American Association of Sunday and Features Editors has been providing a similar network since its launch in 1947 following an API seminar. Newsroom trainers don't have a formal organization but we have our own listserv, web site and conference. Other organizations of editors (and in some cases other journalists) who share similar interests are the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Associated Press Sports Editors, Associated Press Photo Managers, Investigative Reporters and Editors, American Copy Editors Society, Society of News Design (also launched from an API seminar), Online News Association, Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

I've found the network of trainers extraordinarily helpful professionally and some good friendships have grown from it. And in my reporting days, I found the Religion Newswriters Association and IRE also quite helpful. I'm glad to see that SOME is forming the same sort of network for editors on metro desks and praise the editors and my API colleague Mary Glick for launching SOME. If you would find such connections helpful, I encourage you to join. Or if one of these other organizations would be more appropriate, I encourage you to check it out. Or maybe you know of an organization for another type of editors. If so, I'd be happy to spread the word about that group. And if your specialty doesn't have a group yet, maybe you can be the one to start forming that network.

API is presenting our City and Metro Editors seminar for editors from metro newspapers again Feb. 19-24. Check it out and register online. Monica Markel of the San Antonio Express-News and president of SOME is among the discussion leaders. If you're the city editor at a community paper, try the Sept. 17-22 version of the seminar. If you are new to editing, or if you have a new editor on your desk, the New Editors' Survival Guide, for which I'm currently planning the program, might be a better fit. I'll tell you more about that shortly, when I've worked out the program details.