A week in the life of a publisher

Preparing entries for the Minnesota Newspaper Association writing contest this year, there was a category that stuck out in my mind: “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, I don’t feel done. The next week’s issue is already underway; work on it will be continuing until I hit next week’s button.

So that’s where I’ll start today. When the paper is “put to bed” on Wednesday evening, I typically open all the mail from the week. After that I prepare bank deposits, update subscriptions and plan for our editorial and advertising meetings on Thursday. And sometimes I clean the office after that.

Thursday begins with meetings. I try to make them as short as possible. There are 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.

Oh, also on Thursday we go over advertising plans for the week, who to call, and what special sections we’re considering.

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 sometimes work on the website during this time as well. 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.

On to 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. Also needing attention during this non-deadline time are many emails which have waited until now because they were not central to putting the week’s paper together. So I send invoices, mail missing newspapers, or email a missing statement to an advertiser. Thursday and Friday blend together because, basically, I handle things, answer questions, take care of details and “catch up” beginning after our editorial and advertising meetings 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.

After the game I was too tired to cook. I typically enjoy the creativity of cooking every evening, but Friday I 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 admitted, 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 happenings which my reporters are unable to cover on a Saturday; when that happens, I cover the event.

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 actually begins with putting the list of ads together first. Without the financial input advertisers give the publishing business, there could be no news–at least not a newspaper. Ads go on the pages first, based on where the advertisers want them to be. Once that’s done, I follow up 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 shared online document that all our writers put their finished stories into. We create it each week at the editorial meeting, and discuss which news items belong on the front page–barring, you know, a train wreck or something. With those decisions already addressed, and with (I hope) all the photos already delivered to me, I can start putting news items on the pages, leaving room for headlines and photo “cutlines.”

I focus on the Star Eagle on Sundays, since it has an earlier deadline than the Pioneer. Also part of Sunday’s work is 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. In some cases, I leave space for something about to happen in the (very) near future.

Collecting information and organizing in order to start laying out the newspaper takes anywhere from 1-4 hours.”Laying out,” that is, putting everything in place on each page, is pretty quick work thanks to electronic publishing. The time intensive part is writing headlines and cutlines for all of the stories. This generally requires combing through the written pieces and finding an interesting fact, a catchy phrase, or a succinct summary.

When I’m done with the Star Eagle, I then do the same process for the Waseca paper.

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.