From the newsroom: Doing my old job for a day

Next, I went online and cleaned out my email inbox and the metrodesk@columbian.com inbox. There were already several dozen emails. Most went promptly into the trash folder. Sorting email — what’s immediate news, what’s news for later and what’s not news — is a major part of the metro editor’s day.

I arrived in the office around 8:30 a.m. and chatted with Web Editor Amy Libby, who starts her day by putting out the Morning Briefing newsletter and had already looked at the wire news. She didn’t have anything urgent for me.

Next, I launched our story management software to see what was planned for the Tuesday print edition. Although we increasingly focus our attention online, we are proud to put out a newspaper, and to do that, we need at least five local stories. At that moment we had two.

OK, time to grow the budget. We have a 9 a.m. daily check-in online chat amongst the metro team. That added a story or two, and my next email check brought us another. Then, I visited with the reporters. By 10 a.m. I had a pretty solid plan for Tuesday.

Good thing, too, as that’s when the editors meet to talk about stories going into the next day’s paper.

By then, some of the first stories were ready for editing. I gave them a read, looking particularly at the content and whether the story was complete. Then, I moved them along to the copy desk, where stories get read with special attention to details, such as grammar, punctuation and adherence to Columbian and Associated Press style rules.

After lunch, I had a cursory look at the “wire budgets,” which tell us what the Associated Press and other wire services are covering that day. I’m looking for two things: stories that can be localized (recent stories about airlines canceling flights is a perfect example) and the strength of the national and international news. If there’s a lot of strong stories, I might dial back the local offerings. If the wire is weak, I’ll try to offer more local news.

It was a weak wire day, so I ended up pitching two stories at the 2 p.m. front page meeting: a story on local real estate sales, which are finally cooling a tiny bit after months of being red hot, and an update on a June 25 murder/arson in Vancouver. Neither had fresh photos, but staff photographer Taylor Balkom had snapped a pretty image of Mount St. Helens while he was at the Ridgefield Raptors game Friday. It would work as a standalone photo. A wire story completed the front page.

For the local “cover,” we had a feature about a local author’s new pain management book, with good art from Photo Editor Amanda Cowan. Breaking news reporter Becca Robbins had been busy and now had two court items. While Becca was occupied, Amy stepped in and wrote a story about a fatal crash on Interstate 5 that had snarled traffic for hours.

I would have edited those stories next but got called into an editorial board meeting to interview legislative candidates. Thankfully, Features Editor Erin Middlewood stepped in so we could make deadline.

I got home around 6 p.m. I was tired and ready for some supper. I don’t miss my old job, but I did enjoy the chance to work with so many people to produce Tuesday’s Columbian.