How to Save America's Editors   

Mike Phillips, editor of the Bremerton Sun in Washington, learned an unexpected lesson about journalism when he began studying with a master wood carver. The craftsman spent painstaking time making his own tools before he ever started carving.

For Phillips, "being in control of my own tools" has become more than a tenet of his hobby. It's also a metaphor for empowering editors.

In a program to retrain his paper's editors and designers, Phillips has pushed them to design their own pagination system, handle training and perform their own system maintenance. A huge stress factor in his newsroom, he is convinced, involves equipment and control. The more editors can control their tools, he believes, the more they, like other artists, will thrive.

Other editors endorse the need for control, as well as greater respect and appreciation for their expanding roles.

Below are some recommendations for helping editors cope:

Hire more editors. No one I asked could answer the simple question: How many editors should a newsroom have? Though most newsrooms follow a rough formula of one staff person for each 1,000 subscribers, I could find no consensus on what percentage of the total staff should be editors. Many do agree that, as editing duties have piled up (including the assumption of tasks once handled by composing rooms), newspapers have not commensurately increased the number of desk people.

As Steve Shender, a former editor at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, points out, being stretched too thin can be exhausting. "There's no relief," Shender says. "Somebody gets sick or goes on vacation, and everybody else has to scramble. It becomes really stressful for everybody else."

Perhaps it's time to re-examine whether adding editors would reduce turnover, improve quality and save money in the long run.

Pay editors better. The average salary for city and metro editors last year was $37,673, just over the starting salary for engineers fresh out of college and about a fourth of the average physician's salary. Low pay is a chronic issue, and most journalists resign themselves early to modest incomes. But the issue re-emerges for many 40-something editors who see their peers from college cracking into the top ranks as partners in law firms, vice presidents of banks, and surgeons with beach cottages. It's hard enough to face the Saturday night slot without having to brood that your friends are cruising around on their sailboats.

Build in escape valves. For editors who work very hard, a natural counterpoint is to play hard. But because newspapers come out every day, many editors find little slack time for such diversions. In many newsrooms, the senior editor routinely works 15-hour days, and junior editors feel they must outlast the boss. Yet driving people to their limits every day, without relief, can be brutally destructive.

Managers can intervene by insisting that editors take time off every week, not letting them skip vacations, scheduling so that an editor can follow a long day with a short one, and going easy on the guilt trips and smart remarks when editors do take down time.

More ambitiously, several editors recommended rotating editors every six months or so and encouraging more editors to take mid-career breaks through fellowships and sabbaticals.

Develop flexible schedules. Perhaps the nature of the news business and the pride of journalists make it impractical to expect routine seven- or eight-hour work days. Establishing three- or four-day work weeks for editors might work better. Long weekends can prove magically rejuvenating.

Two years ago, for example, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer in Kentucky switched its copy desk from five eight-hour days a week to four 10-hour days. The paper then went 18 months, an unusual period, with no copy desk turnover. "It's created a better environment," Managing Editor Ben Sheroan reports. "They were able to consolidate time off and just get away from things."

Select editors more carefully, and improve training and support. "As the screws started to tighten in the industry," says former Houston editor Fred Blevens, "a lot of responsibility started coming down on department heads. But you didn't promote people because they were good managers, but because they were good journalists." Indeed, editors tend to be chosen because, as good reporters, they have strong basic skills. More attention should go to their temperament, conceptual thinking and, particularly, people skills.

For instance, at the Chattanooga Times, Managing Editor Ron Smith has recruited a local management professor to run monthly seminars for seven key editors. Topics include motivation techniques, conflict resolution and creative problem solving.

David Brace, vice president/news for Ottaway Newspapers, tries to allay editors' fears and help them manage group anxiety.

"We're dealing with people who came into this business for its creative nature," Brace says. "Then we basically do everything we can to dampen that instinct. I don't think we have to operate that way."

Try not to meddle. Most senior editors are hard chargers who can't resist a hands-on approach. That's good leadership. But be wary of a tendency toward whimsical, eleventh-hour overturning of reasonable decisions middle editors made much earlier in the process. Few things sap editors' spirits more. I can't tell you the number of editors who confide to me they have largely given up on trying anything unusual because the price – in time, interference by bosses, and resistance throughout the process – has become too high.

Stress teamwork . I often observe entire staffs demoralized by the jaded, manipulative posturing of one or two newsroom sourpusses. In addition, the intensifying competition for resources (such as space, hiring slots and travel money) can generate poisonous rivalries. Newsrooms probably need some tough cookies and some healthy competitiveness. But when these conditions spiral out of hand, they leave too many mid-level editors isolated and embittered.

To me, the best barometer of this issue is the daily news meeting. I've attended many where one or two sullen colleagues regularly intimidate other editors into defensively and hastily reciting their offerings, hoping only to finish without a scarring remark. And I've attended others where editors discuss ideas animatedly and enthusiastically, working together constructively and appearing to have much more fun.

Praise. Editors seldom get credit lines, and their work tends to be invisible. But over and over again, middle editors tell me how much they cherish praise from managers who make it a practice to understand what line editors really do.

"People only know when you make a mistake," says Steve Shender. "They don't know all the mistakes I caught. You do 20 things right and if there's one thing wrong, you come in the next day and everybody's all over you... You have to make an effort to say, 'That was a great layout' or 'That story came out very clean.' "

Free editors to edit. In these meeting-crazy times, editors everywhere complain that what gets squeezed out is actually working with writers on stories. That is the essence of editing, what most editors do best and like best. Managers should foster a newsroom climate where this kind of editing is expected and rewarded.

Give middle editors some real control. This point strikes the tenderest nerve. Nearly unanimously, middle editors say they often feel stranded in roiling newsrooms without adequate clout.

Radical management changes have begun at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, where Tim McGuire now has the title "editor/general manager of the reader customer unit." The paper intends to renew its focus on customer needs and to revitalize internal leadership. Part of the effort, McGuire says, will reduce the number of layers (there's no managing editor, for instance) and give newsroom department heads more control over space, spending and other matters.

As professor Betsy Cook says, "If you hire people, for heaven's sake give them some responsibility and control over their jobs." l