Tips from a newsroom survivor

Linda Grist Cunningham closed out the New Editors' Survival Guide with some valuable advice on time management and perspective: You don't have to work 12, 15 or 18 hours a day to succeed as an editor.

"If I am the first in and the last to leave, the message I'm sending to my staff is, 'You can't do it without me,'" said Linda, executive editor of the Rockford Register Star.

She gave the new editors tips on managing their time so they could cut their days down to 10 hours or maybe even eight:

* When staff members (or you boss) ask "Do you have a minute?" answer, "If you mean a minute, yes, I have a minute. If you mean five, let's put it on my schedule."

* There is never enough time.

* Don't spend time with idiots. Instead, "spend time with the best and brightest on your staff."

* Coach up front. Bad coaches spend 10 percent of their time working at the beginning of a story or challenge, 30 percent in the middle and 60 percent at the end. Good coaches reverse that, spending 60 percent of their time on the front end and only 10 percent on the end.

Linda's session, "Above and Below: Thriving in the Middle" provided "survivor tips" on managing staff, peers and bosses as well:

* Choose your battles. "Not everything is worth a freaking war."

* Never put in writing something that you wouldn't want to see in Romenesko.

* Do not surprise the boss.

* Dress the part. (Linda praised the choice of an editor who hired an image consultant to help her dress more professionally.)

* Celebrate success in some visible way. Hand-written notes are especially powerful in this age of e-mails and computer-generated letters.

"Sometimes, it's not nice to be nice"

The new editors gathered at API this week were considering one of the toughest challenges new editors face: That difficult moment when you have to tell a staff member honestly what's wrong.

One of the more experienced editors attending the New Editors' Survival Guide seminar shared a success story. A staff member he had hired wasn't working out. Not only was he doing his job poorly, he was annoying colleagues at every turn. After some more gentle exhortations to do better and work better with colleagues, the editor told him bluntly: You're never going to reach your goals with this newspaper the way you've been performing. The editor told the staff member he would be gone in a few months if he didn't turn his performance around completely.

The editor ended with a challenge: "Prove me wrong."

The staff member did. "He changed everything."

The staff member not only started doing his job well. He started working well with colleagues. He even went on a diet and slimmed down. The editor's tough honesty helped this person change his life, in addition to his work. And, of course, his work was suffering because of the problems in his life, which went beyond the weight problem.

The story illustrated a lesson shared with the new editors by Deborah Gump, Knight Professor of News Editing at Ohio University: "Sometimes, it's not nice to be nice." Journalists count on their editors for honesty, Gump told the editors, and the "nice" editor deprives staff members of the honest advice they need to improve professionally.

Gump was one of more than 20 veteran editors who shared with the new editors important lessons they had learned in their early days as editors. I will pass those lessons along in the coming weeks in my API "Leadership Tips" blog. Tina May, senior editor for national affairs at the Arizona Republic, shared some of the lessons with the editors Thursday as well as drawing some related lessons from the editors themselves.

Another editor told of a time she was a reporter and was not assigned to a big story she wanted to help cover. She asked an editor to tell her honestly why she didn't get the assignment. The editor told her what she had not accomplished yet that the other reporter had. She made a point of working on those areas and had accomplished all of those things by the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States. Her editors assigned her to the paper's terrorism reporting team.

Other important lessons Tina shared with the editors:

• Edit stories in the reporter's voice, rather than editing as you would have written it.


• Know your priorities because you don't have time to do everything.

Tamara listed questions she asks on behalf of readers in meetings with colleagues to plan the story package:

• What is the story about?


• How do I tell this story?


• Why should I care?


• What does this story say about life or the times we live in?


• How does this affect me?

Thursday morning's session was led by Tom Linthicum, a former Baltimore Sun editor who now heads the TDL Group. Tom provided advice on performance management, noting that it must be based on "specific, measurable standards," not "hunches and guesses."

He also provided advice for managing and motivating employees, citing Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman's book, First, Break All the Rules. Tom shared six important questions that managers need to answer for employees:

• Do I know what is expected of me?


• Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?


• Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?


• In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?


• Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?


• Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

Usually when I take one of those tests that are supposed to describe your personality or style and place you in particular categories, the results don't ring true.

Maybe it's denial on my part, but usually the results remind me of a horoscope - a few general statements that are vaguely accurate, so you're supposed to ignore the stuff that completely misses the target.

Wednesday as I read the description of my personality type, I squirmed a bit. This one might have missed in a few details, but most of the description was right on the mark. Reactions were similar as editors in API's New Editors' Survival Guide read their own results.

"Oh, this is true, too!" one editor said.

Another said, "My wife cannot get ahold of this."

"What happens at API stays at API," came one reply.

"She already knows," came another.

Mine did. "Oh, yeah," Mimi said as I started reading it at home in the evening. "That's you." She even confirmed a few of the details I thought didn't apply.

So what does a personality analysis have to do with surviving as an editor? Stephen Rice, discussion leader for the session, explained that if we understand ourselves, we are better able to maximize our strengths and address our weaknesses.

Steve confessed to being a "High I" on the DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness, compliance) scale. He explained that I's are easy-going and friendly, traits that keep them from leaving on time to get where they need to go. With understanding and discipline, though, we can address the weaknesses in our personalities.

Steve, president of PerforMax Inc., showed up an hour early for Wednesday's discussion and wrapped up right on time.

We didn't plunge right into the personality assessment. We started out with the most pressing challenge facing most of these editors: getting the most out of their staffs. Steve set up a grid, showing that the company seeks maximum contribution from workers, while workers seek maximum satisfaction in their lives.

A worker who's highly satisfied but not contributing causes resentment among other workers who are contributing more. But, Steve noted, the worker who is making a great contribution but gets little satisfaction can be even more dangerous. That's the high performer who's always complaining, "This place sucks," and poisoning the attitudes of others who aren't performing as well.

To succeed, an editor needs to connect with each staff member wherever he is on the grid and help him move toward greater contribution and satisfaction. That requires understanding yourself and the people who work for you. "I'm passionate about capitalizing on someone's strengths," Steve said.

Roy Wenzl with some reflections after Monday's dinner:

I received some feedback from the group about my talk. A common theme I heard was how troublesome it is for them to deal with chronically troublesome reporters ... including older reporters who dig in and fight or bitch or resist in some fashion or another. (One member of the group also pointed out that I would probably be the new editor's worst nightmare: an experienced older reporter, prone to act in a prickly manner.)

Touche! But I can play the double agent: here's how to out-maneuver your prickly older reporter:

1. Reporters will test you, just like your children test you as a parent. They manipulate; they fight with you for the sole purpose of making you feel bad so that maybe you'll be more reluctant to give them these assignments they don't want to do. Or, if you want them to change directions in how they cover a beat, if you want them to do a new way of thinking, they will do the passive/aggressive thing, or bitch about you behind your back, or fight you to your face.

   Do not rise to their bait. Do not engage emotionally with these annoying behaviors. (I know, it's hard). But their emotional reaction is THEIR problem, not yours. Most of them are professionals, and unless they are crazy, they will eventually go do the job. Especially if you remain professional, courteous ... and firm.



2. The reason a reporter starts throwing jabs is often not because of the assignment but because of HOW it's sometimes presented. Nothing upsets me more than to see a group of desk-bound editors at the morning meeting cook up an idea (often a somewhat shallow, predictable idea), and then present it to me as an assignment hardened in concrete. In other words, I had NO SAY in how this story assignment was constructed. If you include me in the story formation, I will be more inclined to be helpful. So will most of the bad-ass reporters I've supervised. Ask for my help. Don't force me.


3. Still, there are reporters I've supervised who are genetically inclined to be buttheads. They wear you out; they wore me out too.

   Again, this is THEIR problem. You can't stop them from trying to fight you, but you can stop yourself from being emotionally manipulated by these reporters. Tell yourself that it's not your problem. Look these reporters right in the eye, and tell them that you are listening to them, but you need them to carry out their instructions. Teach them, in a polite but businesslike way, that you are the boss.



4. Devise and write newsroom personnel evaluations that actually mean something. At many newspapers, written annual evaluations, tied directly to salaries, are not taken seriously by upper and middle management. Evaluations are written as pro-forma puff pieces.

   This is a very serious problem created not by the new editors but by the executive editors, who ought to know better. It is absolutely important in a newsroom to do meaningful written evaluations. For you, as a new editor, it gives you real power: If you write them correctly, in a measured but firm tone, laying out their flaws and your expectations, you can literally set the blueprint for what your expectations are for an employee. And once you write them, spelling out both the employee's strengths and weaknesses, you have a written record showing what your expectations are, and ... later ... how your troublesome employee did not meet these expectations.
   There is no more effective tool than this for dealing with a chronically troublesome employee. They can bitch all they want to their friends, but when you give them fair warning that you're in charge (somewhat) of their future raises, or future employment, it tends to diminish the childish nature of some of those pissy conversations.

   Moreover, a really thoughtful written evaluation like this is designed to HELP emloyees, not hurt them.

   And guess what? This is how most effective businesses in the real world deal with troublesome employees.



5. Cut short these unhelpful and circular conversations. Sometimes the best way to deal with these employees on a daily basis is to just look at your watch and say, in a firm and pleasant manner, that you have a meeting to attend or two important emails to address. One characteristic of bitchy reporters is that they like to keep talking. So you look at your watch, and tell them that "You've made your point, but I have to go now ... and while I think I see what you're saying, I hope you see what I'm saying. And ... I need that assignment done. Period."


6. NO ONE in a newsroom, including your boss, expects you to sit there and take abuse, even passive/aggressive abuse, from someone, especially if it is day after day. So if push comes to shove, escalate. Do it in a controlled manner.

   Do it almost as a staged, choreographed thing, so that you are keeping your head. But don't let someone push you around. Stand up out of your chair, give them a cold look, and invite them into YOUR supervisor's office if you have to.

   Do not let people bully you. A little staged-theater-anger can sometimes bring a focus to a troublesome emlpoyee's unfocused mind.

Editors need to interview reporters
Posted March 28
Editors need to interview their reporters, as if working on a profile, Peter Perl told a group of new editors Monday.

Peter, director of newsroom training and professional development at the Washington Post, was one of four discussion leaders in the opening day of the New Editors' Survival Guide seminar at API this week. His session, "You're the Boss Now," covered some basics, such as the importance of listening and feedback.

In one important exercise, Peter divided the editors into pairs, giving each person eight minutes to interview her partner. Peter gave them basic questions to ask, about their upbringing, education, family, interests, heroes (personally and journalistically). Then each person was given one minute to summarize the findings about her partner. We heard about a marathoner, a grandmother, a luger, an Elvis fan.

Then Peter asked a couple of revealing questions: How many knew this much about someone on their staff? Most of the hands went up. Then came the tougher question: How many knew this much about everyone on their staff? Only a couple hands went up.

The editors knew what they needed to do. When they return to their newsrooms next week, the editors will be learning about the background, interests and heroes of each of their reporters.

"Knowing your staff is absolutely crucial to everything you're going to do," Peter said. Editing, he noted, is much like parenting - not that reporters are children, but that editors, like parents, need to know what motivates each reporter or child, how the reporter or child responds in different situations.

In an evening session, Roy Wenzl, a veteran editor now working as a reporter for the Wichita Eagle, urged the new editors to avoid the "cliché thinking" that afflicts too much of the newspaper industry. We're not losing readers because we're biased, Wenzl said, but "because we're boring."

When Roy tries a particularly creative approach to a story, he said, it flummoxes some editors. They wonder if they can do that, how they would illustrate it and so on. Narrative journalism especially engages readers but makes too many editors uncomfortable. "It forces them to think differently," Roy said.

But the same editors, he said, don't notice when their own front page has a headline, deck, lead and cutline that all say essentially the same thing.

The best editors, Roy said, avoid automatic pilot. They stimulate the creativity of their reporters. "Project curiosity about the tasks and work at hand," he exhorted.

Stephen Gray, managing director of API's Newspaper Next project, led the editors in a morning discussion of this important project to develop a new business model for the newspaper industry.

Steve introduced the editors to the concept of disruptive innovation, explaining how Western Union turned down an opportunity to buy the patent for the telephone. Because telephones initially could be used only within three miles of the other party, the product seemed inadequate to a company used to sending signals across the country. Similarly, when the telephone business had long since taken most of the telecommunication business away from the telegraph, AT&T didn't initially recognize the threat that cell phones posed. After all, those first cell phones were huge, expensive and unreliable.

Successful executives in mature industries are handicapped in assessing opportunities for innovation, Steve said, because their perspective is guided by their success. "To see the opportunity you have to look at it from a different angle."

The newspaper industry, he said, faces disruption from several sources - free newspapers, free classified ads, internet news sources. "We're being disrupted in every part of our business model."

Steve noted the huge opportunity represented by non-readers and non-advertisers. Newspaper Next, he said, hopes to help the industry identify jobs that newspapers can do for those potential consumers and advertisers.

He led the editors in a brainstorming session about what jobs newspapers might be able to perform to help two non-readers - Anna, a 36-year-old working mother who's too busy for the newspaper, and Carlos, a 19-year-old student who spends lots of time online.

I led an afternoon session on coaching writers. Afterward, the editors practiced their coaching skills with some reporter volunteers from Washington area newspapers. The coaching practice sessions continue today with more volunteers.

The seminar continues Tuesday with Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute, leading a morning session called "Diversity in 3-D." Newsroom coach Rosalie Stemer will lead an afternoon session on "Skeptical Editing." (Unfortunately, another seminar forced me to miss Rosalie's and Keith's sessions, so I could not include them in this report.)