News editor Merridee Hanson, clockwise from top left, joins innovation editor Will Campbell, web editor Amy Libby and metro editor Mark Bowder in the daily morning news meeting via Microsoft Teams on Wednesday morning. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)
I was on vacation this week, so I missed a lot of meetings. As you can probably guess, most of them were news meetings of one sort or another.
In fact, if this week was typical, I probably missed 18 news meetings!
Now, before you question my sanity (if you hadn’t already), let me explain that none of these meetings last more than 30 minutes, and they all have different purposes. But the goal is the same: to identify news and features that are important and interesting to Clark County residents, and to present stories in the best way possible.
Story planning varies by department. Our Features Editor Erin Middlewood holds a Thursday afternoon meeting with her staff and the page designers to discuss ideas and come up with a plan for Life and Home & Garden cover stories at least a week ahead. I don’t generally go to these, although I am tempted when food writer Monika Spykerman brings treats.
Instead, I spend a lot of my time with the metro news team, which is the largest at The Columbian and includes reporters covering beats like courts, education, environment, government and housing and homelessness.
For Metro, the planning cycle starts on Thursdays, when Metro Editor Mark Bowder asks each of his reporters to submit story budgets for the coming week.
Reporters generally keep an eye on news events that are happening, such as Monday’s visit by Sen. Maria Cantwell, and put coverage of those on their budget. They’ll also watch for government meetings and budget stories that come from those. For example, a meeting of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program group would make transportation reporter William Seekamp’s story budget.
Reporters also consider what follow-up stories will be needed about items that have been in the news. (The courts beat is full of these as criminal defendants move through the judicial process.)
Finally, the reporters will list the stories that they have been wanting to work on as time permits. These enterprise stories are often the most important, most interesting and most read, so it’s our job as editors to help reporters manage their beats to get time to work on them.
After the story budgets are submitted, Mark assembles them into a tentative framework for the week. What is available for Tuesday A1? What needs to be budgeted for later in the week? What stories will have good opportunities for photos? It’s a complex task.
On Friday mornings, after Mark has assembled his weekly plan and shared it with the metro reporters, we’ll have a group discussion among the editors. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss art opportunities, including photo and graphic needs, and potential story placement. Photo Editor Amanda Cowan, News Editor Merridee Hanson and Web Editor Amy Libby are important members of this group.
Mark also holds weekly meetings with each of the reporters to go over their plans and discuss their story ideas in depth, particularly for enterprise stories. I try to sit in on all of these meetings. My goal is to help the reporters sharpen their story ideas by suggesting sources, offering background (I’ve lived in Clark County since before most of our reporters were born) and offer general encouragement.
That pretty much wraps up the advance planning. Because the nature of news is that you can’t tell what is going to happen, these plans only take us so far. So that’s why we hold morning and afternoon interdepartmental news meetings to discuss what we are going to present online and in print over the next 12-18 hours. We pick the front-page stories at the 2 p.m. meeting.
So if I tell you I go to a lot of meetings, I am not kidding. But, it is a system that seems to work for us.
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