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How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. What other topics should I cover?

* Role models * The editor’s blog * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Teamwork * Hiring * Firing * Fun Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: leadership, Nancy March, personal life

Advice for editors: Communicate face to face

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

Shooting e-mails, texts or social messages back and forth is tempting, easy and sometimes necessary, especially for busy editors with large and moving staffs working different shifts. You want your content-gathering staff to be out of the office covering the community and sometimes an email, text or message on Twitter or Facebook is the best way to communicate quickly.

But you should communicate important messages and many lesser ones face to face. If you have criticism, look the staff member in the eye and state the problem. If you have praise, go to the staff member's desk, smile and deliver your praise.

Never send an email to a staff member when you’re angry. Written messages last longer than your anger. Physical presence, eye contact and a demonstration that you care are important parts of effective communication. The first two are lacking in an email message. And the third is weak (your words may say that you care, but your actions say this one isn't worth getting out of your chair). You might want to calm down before talking face to face, but a personal conversation about something that made you angry might be the best way to prevent a repeat.

After you communicate face-to-face, maybe you should follow up with an e-mail, to spell out a goal clearly, to reinforce a message or to document your conversation. But deliver the news, good or bad, eyeball to eyeball.

As important as face-to-face communication is, if you keep missing connections, send praise by e-mail rather than risk forgetting to praise. Or better yet, if it's praise for something really special, send a hand-written note. That's a form of communication that was always effective for praise and has grown more so as more of our routine communication is digital. In particularly outstanding cases, I know of editors who have rewarded reporters with a handwritten letter or card sent by old-fashioned U.S. mail to home or even with dinner or a bottle of champagne.

If you can’t talk face to face in a timely fashion because of conflicting schedules or because you work in different offices, consider whether a phone call, Skype call or Hangout might be more effective than exchanging written messages.

If you haven't tried Skype or Hangout yet, and if you have remote staff working in bureaus or sister newsrooms, consider video chats rather than phone calls for your routine and special conversations. And make the time to get to the bureau or remote newsroom now and then for a face-to-face conversation. Even in a Digital First newsroom, you can't digitally simulate eye contact and a warm handshake.

HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) USED FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVELY TO CONVEY DIFFICULT OR PLEASANT MESSAGES?

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Respect authorship

Ask, don't tell

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Personal life * Role models * The editor’s blog * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Teamwork * Hiring * Firing * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. Sue Burzynski Bullard provided such a post on organizational tools.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: leadership

Advice for editors: Respect authorship

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

An effective newsroom leader understands how much creative control and authorship means to journalists.

My grandmother, Francena H. Arnold, was a novelist who once rejected a publisher’s suggested story line, saying, “I could no more write someone else’s story than I could birth someone else’s baby.” Journalists don’t have quite the freedom Grandma did to choose their own stories, but they share her parental and possessive feelings about their work. Good editors respect and nurture this sense of authorship even while they have to provide more direction to their staff’s work than Grandma allowed.

Ask reporters to come up with Digital First beat coverage plans. Some will come up with ideas you wouldn’t have thought to suggest (though you might suggest them to other reporters). Some won’t go far enough and you’ll need to ask them how they plan to use some digital tool or technique they overlooked, such as curation, liveblogging, video, data or social media. Either way, you can work with them to set priorities and plans, prodding where you need to but respecting the desire (and the responsibility) to be the authors of their own work.

You need to continue this respect for authorship in carrying out daily work. Where time permits, identify problems with a story and give it back to the reporter for rewriting rather than rewriting yourself, whether it’s the lead or the whole story that needs rewriting. When you do rewrite and the reporter doesn’t like your version, don’t insist on your approach. Explain clearly what was flawed in the original draft and challenge the writer try to improve it herself.

On a day-to-day basis, it might feel easier to just fix a story yourself. But you will save time in the long run (and develop a better staff) if you expect people to improve their own stories and help them set higher standards. You also will earn their respect as you show respect while upholding high standards.

HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) SHOWN RESPECT FOR A JOURNALIST’S PRIDE OF AUTHORSHIP?

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Ask, don't tell

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Face-to-face communication * Personal life * The editor’s blog * Role models * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Teamwork * Hiring * Firing * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. Sue Burzynski Bullard provided such a post on organizational tools.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: Francena H. Arnold, leadership, respect

Advice for editors: Ask, don’t tell

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

Sometimes a new editor inadvertently squelches staff creativity and initiative by telling staff members what they should be doing and how. An editor can communicate priorities and stimulate staff creativity by asking, rather than telling.

Whether you’re asking about general staff performance or specific stories, good questions are effective leadership tools.

If you tell a reporter she needs to crowdsource this story and she’s already planning to do that, the reaction might be dismissive and disrespectful (or convey that she doesn’t think you respect her). If you tell a reporter to crowdsource and she wasn’t planning to, maybe you set off a power tussle unnecessarily. If you ask _how_ she’s going to crowdsource, you are saying crowdsourcing is important to you. But you also show respect that you understand she knows this is a crowdsourcing opportunity (whether that is reinforcement to a reporter heading in the right direction or a prod to the resisting reporter). Whatever the reporter’s crowdsourcing plans, the resulting discussion is likely to be more positive: a briefing on effective crowdsourcing plans or some brainstorming on how crowdsourcing might be helpful.

Don’t drive this principle to extremes. Sometimes you will have to tell your staff what to do (especially if the answers to your questions show the staff member is headed in the wrong direction).

But keep this in mind: When you tell, your staff gets the benefit of only your ideas and creativity. When you ask, you unlock the creativity of your staff.

HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) USED EFFECTIVE QUESTIONS TO GUIDE JOURNALISTS TO CREATIVE SOLUTIONS?

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post on a particular leadership topic. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered, but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice. I will invite a few editors I respect to write posts.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: leadership

Advice for editors: Make training a priority

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

A Digital First editor leads a lot of change in a newsroom. So you need to be sure that your staff receives the training to execute the changes you are leading.

I help with this in my visits to the newsrooms of new editors for Digital First Media, but the need for training continues and the editor should make training part of the newsroom’s culture and routines:

* Join the Digital First Media Journalism Careers Facebook group, and encourage staff members to join, so you and they will know about opportunities for webinars or regional training. * When staff members master skills you want their colleagues to learn, ask them to lead workshops and/or coach their colleagues in developing those skills. * Lead some workshops yourself, where you have mastered the skills your staff needs to learn. When the busy editor takes the time to prepare and deliver training, that underscores the importance of that particular skill and of training in general. I made the time to lead workshops for the newsrooms I led in Minot and Cedar Rapids. * If no one on your staff has a particular skill, invite a colleague from a nearby newsroom to lead a workshop for your staff. Or perhaps someone from your community who is not a journalist might be able to teach a skill that would be helpful. For instance, a local librarian might be able to teach some digital research skills your staff needs. * Check out the training resources at the Digital Ninja School and pass the appropriate links along to staff members who are trying to develop new skills (or need to start trying). * Make sure that your staff members working in engagement, data or video belong to the DFM engagement groups on each of those topics. These are great resources for learning from colleagues, either by asking your own questions or just by reading discussions among your colleagues. (These are internal DFM discussion groups, but I encourage developing similar groups among your colleagues if you’re a non-DFM staffer reading this.) * Give some staff members time to learn new digital tools and then to teach their colleagues. Tools such as Storify, Tout and RebelMouse are fairly easy to use. If you encourage an interested staff member to spend a few hours exploring a tool and to use it in a few upcoming stories, you quickly develop a staff expert who can teach colleagues pretty quickly. * Seek out other opportunities for your staff to learn from colleagues, such as the NICAR-L or IRE-L email discussion lists and services offered by beat-focused organizations such as the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Society of Environmental Journalists, Education Writers Association or Religion Newswriters Association. * Watch for low-cost online or regional training opportunities through News University, the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, Online News Association, state press associations and journalism organizations. * In planning your budgets in coming years, advocate for increased money for training, so you can send staff members to such important training opportunities as Poynter seminars, IRE and NICAR conferences and Knight Digital Media Center programs. When staff members return from such seminars, they should lead workshops back in your newsroom for their colleagues to spread the learning. HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) PROVIDED EFFECTIVE TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE NEWSROOM STAFF?

RELATED READING Newsroom Training: Where's the Investment?

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Do what you say you’ll do — by being organized

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* The power of questions * Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series (as Sue Burzynski Bullard did), email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post on a particular leadership topic. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered, but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice. I will invite a few editors I respect to write posts.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership, Training Tagged: Digital Ninja School, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Knight Digital Media Center, leadership, NICAR, Online News Association, Poynter, Training

Sue Burzynski Bullard’s advice for editors: Do what you say you’ll do — by being organized

_This guest post by Sue Burzynski Bullard continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

Sue Burzynski Bullard

A piece of advice someone once gave me became my rule to live by as an editor: “Always do what you say you’ll do.”

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the transition from being responsible only for you to being responsible for others – reporters, copy editors, and photographers – isn’t simple. Suddenly, the demands on your already packed schedule get even crazier. Everyone wants you. Everyone needs you. Right now.

And you want your team to be able to depend on you.

So “do what you say you’ll do,” or to “be where you say you’ll be” means getting organized. And if your idea of organized is smacking Post-it notes all over your computer, you’ll quickly discover you need a better way.

Here are a few digital tools that may help you:

* Use a calendar. I prefer Google calendar because it’s simple to use and it connects with my Gmail account, contacts and other Google apps. Google has a slew of training videos on how to get the most out of your calendar. One of my favorite features is setting up text message alerts for events in my Google calendar. Check out these tips for using Google calendar from BetterCloud. * Set up a to-do list using Remember the Milk. It’s a free Web app that allows you to create multiple task lists. Create due dates, and Remember the Milk will send you reminders. Choose how often and which way you’ll get reminders. Organize tasks by using lists, separating personal chores from work. Or perhaps set up a to-do-list of things you need to do for each of the people you supervise. Access Remember the Milk on your phone and connect it with your Google calendar. * Can’t give up the Post-it notes? Create a virtual corkboard with NoteApp, formerly corkboard.me. It’s essentially a bulletin board with sticky notes without the paper. Color-code your notes to stay organized. Share them with your team. * Reading a lot on the Web? Having trouble remembering where you saw that story you want to pass on to a reporter? Frustrated trying to find the Web site again? Social bookmarking sites can save you time and can help you share information with your team. Save and tag (you can use multiple tags) items in either Diigo or Delicious. Both are a great way to save, find and share resources. You also can find others with expertise in the area your team is covering and follow those sources if they’re using either site. And best of all, you can access your bookmarks from any device or computer. * Need to share files, photos or even videos? Create a Dropbox account now. The best part: You can share Dropbox folders with members of your team. And you can access files from any computer or device. You’ll never have to search through that email inbox you haven’t cleaned out again. Instead of emailing your team, start sharing on Dropbox. For me, Dropbox is indispensable. I use all of these digital tools to stay organized.

Here’s one I haven’t tried yet, but a colleague says it’s fun. You may want to try it if you need a little push to get organized. Carrot is a to-do App with attitude. It rewards you for good behavior. And if you fail to complete tasks or ignore reminders, an angry Carrot doesn’t tolerate laziness. It might be what you need.

Bottom line: The hardest part of becoming an editor is realizing your success depends on many other people. And all of those people are depending on you. Let’s face it — you don’t have time to be disorganized these days. Use digital tools to stay on track. Do what you say you’ll do – when you said you’d do it.

WHAT TOOLS HELP YOU STAY ORGANIZED AND DO WHAT YOU SAID YOU'D DO?

_Sue Burzynski Bullard teaches editing, reporting and multimedia classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln._

_Before joining academia, Sue held a variety of editing positions at The Detroit News, including three years as managing editor. During her career, she worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Michigan and New York. In 2011, Sue wrote “Everybody’s an Editor: Navigating Journalism’s Changing Landscape,” an e-textbook. She’s won numerous awards for teaching and for her journalism. In 2010, she won the Promising Professor Award from the Mass Communication and Society division of AEJMC. The Society of Professional Journalists, Detroit chapter, gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. She serves on the executive committee of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES). Sue has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University and master's degree in administration from Central Michigan University._

Thanks to Sue for this guest post. If you’d like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post addressing a particular leadership topic, as Sue did here. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered (or am planning to cover), but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice.

_EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS_ Lead Digital First meetings

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Training * The power of questions * Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: Carrot, Delicious, Diigo, Dropbox, Google calendar, leadership, NoteApp, organizational tools, Remember the Milk

Advice for editors: Lead Digital First meetings

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

Daily news meetings are an important place for editors to emphasize priorities.

If a morning meeting focuses on the next day’s newspaper, that will be the focus of the staff’s energies. A Digital First editor should place the focus, especially in a morning meeting, on plans and results for digital content. Don’t critique the morning paper (or, if you must, critique it briefly at the end of the meeting). Instead, you should discuss what’s resonating this morning with your digital audience: What’s getting strong traffic? What’s generating comments on your site or your Facebook page or on Twitter? Do you have plans (or should you make them) for advancing those stories through the day?

If you have projection capability in your conference room, show the site and/or your Facebook page and/or your analytics page(s) on the screen to aid in the discussions.

Discuss digital coverage plans for the day: What video are you shooting? What stories might you be able to supplement with YouTube videos? What stories provide good crowdsourcing opportunities and how should you pitch them to the community? What are photo gallery opportunities, and are you planning to shoot them (and/or to seek community photos)? What events will you be covering live this day (and the next)? Will you be livetweeting them, liveblogging, livestreaming or some combination? Are you planning a live chat about an event or timely issue (or should you?)? Discuss what you’re promoting (or will promote later in the day) on social media.

The meeting also should reflect that mobile content and audience are growing in importance (more than one-third of Digital First newsrooms get half or more of their digital audience on mobile platforms). Look at your tablet and phone apps during the meeting to see whether the right stories are featured and how your content is displaying. If you can project a laptop or phone screen, that would be great, but holding a device up or passing it around will work. (At a recent meeting of Digital First senior editors, one editor showed that a photo was displaying improperly on his newsroom’s iPad app and quickly messaged back to his newsroom to get it fixed.) Discuss opportunities for engaging with your mobile community.

For the morning meeting, the print product should be an afterthought: Perhaps a brief mention of which stories have page-one potential or of any graphic elements for print that will need attention early in the day.

Two Digital First newsrooms that have an excellent digital focus to their morning meetings are the York Daily Record and Salt Lake Tribune. The Bay Area News Group, which has a morning conference call of editors from multiple newsrooms, has dramatically changed the focus of its morning meetings in the past couple years from print to digital.

If you have a late-afternoon meeting, that can focus appropriately more on print. Most of your day’s digital news traffic and coverage is behind you and the print deadlines are approaching. Go ahead and make your page-one plans. But even here, you need to mix in some digital discussion. If you have some evening events, discuss your live coverage plans. If you have an afternoon or evening iPad edition, discuss which stories will be ready and how they will be played. Facebook use gets a boost in the evening, so you should also plan some evening posts.

Maybe you should overhaul your meeting(s) in other ways. Should you scrap them altogether and communicate through a shared Google doc or gchat and/or smaller conversations with one or a few staff members at a time? Should you invite all staffers into a meeting that’s now just for the editors? Or should you invite staffers from remote bureaus or sister newsrooms to join by conference call or Google Hangout? Should you meet in the middle of the newsroom instead of a conference room?

Should you livestream the meeting or invite the public to attend in person, as the Register Citizen does in Torrington, Conn.? If you do, you might want to tell staff to tone down foul language or edgy sarcasm, if your meetings tend to be foul or sarcastic. And you certainly need to tell staffers to be careful not to mention details that shouldn’t be public, such as confidential sources, juveniles whose names you won’t be publishing and speculation about people who might be charged with crimes.

In some posts in this series, I have discussed examples where my leadership was successful, which can come off as boasting. So I should acknowledge here that I was not successful in significantly changing how we conducted meetings when I was editor at the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I did not want to take over running the meetings, so I mentioned to an editor who led most of the meetings how I would like the meetings to change. I would often (if I attended a meeting) ask some questions about live coverage, video or other digital aspects of our coverage, but the focus of the meetings did not change as strongly as it needed to.

At one point when I engaged the staff in working on several aspects of change, a couple of staff members were going to study our meetings and make some recommendations about how to change them. I moved on from the editor’s role before we made those changes, and I don’t know whether or how they changed their meetings.

I think I directed my energies to important areas and made significant changes. But meetings are an important – if often boring and ridiculed – part of newsroom culture. I did not sufficiently change the strong print focus of our meetings at the Gazette. Five years deeper into the digital age, an editor with print-focused meetings needs to take charge of the meetings and ensure that they reflect and guide your newsroom’s digital focus.

HOW DO YOUR NEWSROOM PLANNING MEETINGS REFLECT YOUR DIGITAL PRIORITIES?

THIS SERIES CONTINUES WEDNESDAY WITH A GUEST POST BY UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA JOURNALISM PROFESSOR SUE BURZYNSKI BULLARD.

RELATED READING Jill Geisler's What Great Bosses Know about Managing Meetings

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Lead and stimulate discussions of ethics

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

Suggestions for new guiding principles for the journalist

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Organization * Training * The power of questions * Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks, though I got busy yesterday and didn't post one. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post on a particular leadership topic. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered, but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice. I will invite a few editors I respect to write posts.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: Bay Area News Group, leadership, meetings, Salt Lake Tribune, York Daily Record

Advice for editors: Lead and stimulate discussions of ethics

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

Journalism ethics should be a topic of frequent discussions in a Digital First newsroom. I’ve already mentioned the importance of stressing and upholding accuracy in your newsroom. The editor needs to make standards clear to the staff. Even if you have a written ethics policy, your newsroom ethics need to be shaped by frequent discussions that the editor leads, joins, stimulates and guides.

I have frequently criticized newsroom social-media policies for being rooted too often in fear and ignorance. Editors who aren’t using social tools much, if any, dictate rules based on their fears that someone on their staff is going to make bad decisions.

Your staff is going to make better decisions in using social media if they’ve discussed with you (or with their direct editors, or, ideally both) how they should use social media: What’s the appropriate place (if any) for opinion in their social media use; how much they should or should not mix personal and professional social media use. You can hear their what-ifs and respond before something becomes a problem. If you’re still learning social media yourself (and we all are), discussing the ethical issues with staff members more experienced in social media use will advance your education.

Where ethical principles remain unchanged, your staff is still applying those principles in unfamiliar circumstances, so you should lead the discussion of how to apply those principles in day-to-day practice. For instance, your principles regarding confidential sources may not have changed. But you might discuss whether a reporter should be Facebook friends with a confidential source (or should at least discuss with the source whether that’s acceptable). You might discuss what electronic communications might show up on a source’s work computer or cell phone and be something to avoid, unless the source agrees.

To the extent that technology and changes in the news business change journalism ethics, you want to be discussing those changes with your staff regularly, so they understand the values you want to uphold in your newsroom. For instance, you may be rethinking the traditional notion of objectivity, so you should be leading newsroom discussions about when and where it might be appropriate for staff members to express opinions.

One significant way that I think technology has changed ethics is that linking has changed how we can and should attribute. I recommend reading my post on a show-your-work culture and leading such a culture change in your newsroom.

These ethics discussions need to be a mix of spoken and written discussions in staff meetings, smaller conversations and emails to the staff or Google docs shared with the staff. If an important topic comes up in the industry or in your staff, you might want to call an all-hands staff meeting and discuss it in person with as many staff members as possible (and follow up in writing to the full staff, since some people invariably miss even an all-hands meeting). But address the routine daily ethics decisions in your routine daily meetings and in informal daily conversations with staff (following up in writing to the individuals and/or the whole staff as needed).

In addition to providing guidance on the individual ethical questions, regular conversations about ethics in your newsroom underscore your commitment to ethical journalism.

If your newsroom has a serious breach of ethics, confer with your human resources department about how public you can be with the community and the newsroom about the offense and about your standards for staff behavior. You might consider an explicit statement in your employee handbook and/or ethics policy, stating that serious ethical violations such as plagiarism or fabrication will be explained in detail to the community.

Speaking of plagiarism and fabrication, be sure that you and your staff read Telling the Truth and Nothing But, the free ebook produced earlier this year by a committee (including me) representing a broad range of journalism groups. The book has advice for newsrooms and individual journalists on best practices to detect and prevent plagiarism and fabrication (and respond to offenses when they occur). The blog post on linking that I mentioned above comes from my contribution to the book.

As I explained in the post, I consider linking to be an important matter of journalism ethics today: the best form of attribution, an excellent defense against plagiarism and fabrication and a way to provide depth and context.

WHAT HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) DONE TO SET HIGH ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR YOUR NEWSROOM?

RELATED READING Jill Geisler's What Great Bosses Know about Ethics Traps

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Stand up for your staff

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Meetings * Training * The power of questions * Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post on a particular leadership topic. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered, but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice. I will invite a few editors I respect to write posts.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, Ethics, leadership Tagged: Ethics, fabrication, leadership, linking, plagiarism

Advice for editors: Stand up for your staff

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

An editor must stand up for your staff.

This is one of an editor’s most important duties (and one you usually should avoid delegating because no one can do it as well as the editor).

Listen earnestly to critics. When your newsroom has made errors you need to correct and apologize. The obligation to stand up for your staff is not more important than your obligation to be accurate and accountable. But when you have not made errors and just have honest disagreements with critics, respectfully stand your ground and stand up for your staff. When news sources and public officials are restricting your staff's access to records and events, you have to stand up for your staff.

I got a gift from the University of Iowa Athletic Department when I was advocating liveblogging as editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Some staff members responded enthusiastically to my initial call for liveblogging, which was a pretty new technique at the time. Others resisted. Some weren’t sure but gave it a try.

In our first Hawkeye game, we showed our inexperience at liveblogging. We covered the Hawks with two reporters and a columnist, so each had his own liveblog. That left them all competing for attention on our website and gave each of them the pressure of blogging through the whole game and fielding questions and comments from fans. We got good traffic, though. So it was kind of a mixed experience. We quickly recognized the need to have all the staffers working out of one liveblog for the second game, but the chaotic first game hadn’t really energized the sports staff about liveblogging.

At the coach’s press conference the following Tuesday, the Athletic Department passed out copies of the NCAA blogging policy (it has been updated, so the link isn't exactly what our sportswriters received), which limited posts to five per half (we had posted dozens of times each half). If we continued liveblogging, our journalists could lose their credentials and be expelled from the press box.

Suddenly we had an access fight on our hands. Journalists rally to an access fight. I fired off a letter to the university’s athletic department and the NCAA, challenging their limits on every grounds that I could think of (the First Amendment, the stadium was state property, it was bad business to disrespect a media partner and avid Hawkeye fans that way). I noted that it was clear from the comments and questions of fans on the liveblog that many were watching TV, so the liveblog didn’t interfere with broadcast rights. I even invoked American troops serving abroad, saying Hawkeye fans serving overseas in the military couldn’t watch the games on TV, but they could follow our liveblog. Iowa backed down quickly (the NCAA said its policy applied only to NCAA events) and the liveblogging continued.

Sports departments often feel like Rodney Dangerfield in a newsroom, disrespected as the “toy department.” But when the editor has your back in an access battle, respect becomes mutual.

The sports staff became regular and effective livebloggers. One was ready to defy the limit if it hadn’t been rescinded, getting tossed from the press box if it came to that. We had enthusiastic liveblogging not just for football games but for the state volleyball tournament and into the winter sports season.

It wasn’t just because I’d stood up to the Hawkeyes. The sports staff enjoyed the community’s response to liveblogging and enjoyed doing something new and being ahead of the curve in the news business. But I could see that the access fight and my swift response helped galvanize the staff about liveblogging.

And when I blogged recently about the Gazette CEO’s suggestion (much later) that I had “lost” my staff, I got a nice personal message from a sports staffer, assuring me that I didn’t lose the staff.

HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) STOOD UP FOR THE STAFF?

SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSE Lex Alexander provides this response on Facebook:

Countless times through my 22 years at the News & Record, John Robinson stood behind me and my colleagues on stories that took time, cost money, made lawyers nervous and made subjects furious. When I took him out to lunch after he quit and thanked him for it, he basically said, "Look, I asked y'all to go out and do awful [stuff] sometimes for low pay and in lousy conditions. The least I could do was stand behind you." And when my dad was dying, and when chronic, severe depression rendered me unable to work to anywhere near my capabilities, he hung right in there with me and so did the editors between him and me, particularly Ann Morris, Mark Sutter and Teresa Bailey Prout. And they could do it because JR set the tone.

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Stand for accuracy and accountability

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

UPCOMING TOPICS

Here are topics I am planning on covering in this series (the order is tentative). What other topics should I cover?

* Ethics * Meetings * Training * The power of questions * Respecting authorship * Teamwork * Face-to-face communication * Personal life * Time management * Mobile * Developing new leaders * Diversity * Hiring * Firing * The editor’s blog * Role models * Fun The posts probably will run daily Monday-Friday for the next few weeks. If you’re another Digital First editor (or a leader or former leader in another organization) and would like to propose a guest post as part of the series, email me at sbuttry (at) digitalfirstmedia (dot) com and we’ll discuss. I'm not interested in a post of general leadership tips. I'd rather have a post on a particular leadership topic. Feel free to suggest a post that might address a topic I've already covered, but from a different perspective. I welcome posts that disagree with my advice. I will invite a few editors I respect to write posts.

Filed under: Advice for new Digital First editors, leadership Tagged: leadership, liveblogging, sports, University of Iowa

Advice for editors: Stand for accuracy and accountability

_This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms._

The Digital First editor needs to lead the staff in mastering the art of reporting the unfolding story accurately.

Your staff needs to understand that getting-it-first and getting-it-right are not conflicting choices but essential dual priorities. If you don’t have it right, you don’t have it first – you don’t have it at all. But you work to get it right quickly. Your staff needs to work urgently to report news as you verify facts.

Demand verification. Ask frequently, “How do you know that?” Then ask, “How _else_ do you know that?” (I’m not sure which journalist first started stressing the first question, but I first heard the “How else …” question from Rosalie Stemer.)

Much attention lately has been paid to the importance of verifying information from social media. You need to demand verification in all situations: not just information reported in tweets, but information from routine sources and from unnamed sources. You don't just accept the he-said-she-said story from reporters; you insist that they dig past the conflicting stories and report the truth.

Encourage or require your staff to use an accuracy checklist. Craig Silverman has developed a good checklist and it inspired mine. Maybe you should appoint a staff committee to develop a checklist for your newsroom, paying special attention to breaking and unfolding stories. Maybe you share your draft of a checklist with the staff in a Google doc and invite everyone to edit.

Maybe you designate staff members to lead workshops on using the checklist, verifying information from social media and other accuracy topics.

When you and your staff make errors, be transparent in acknowledging and correcting them. Make sure corrections run in whichever platform the error appeared in.

I think that means checking to see who retweeted an erroneous tweet or a tweet linking to a post or story with a major error and tweeting at those people to ask them to also retweet the correction. Accountability means a posting the correction in comments on reposts where people have shared your post on their Facebook pages. (If you’re developing a large Twitter or Facebook following, that can be time-consuming, but you benefit from the traffic those people steer your way; you should reach out to correct major errors in social media. The work of correcting the error will underscore the importance of accuracy and of getting your facts right in the first place.)

Editors need to discuss errors with the staff members who made them, usually not punitively but prescriptively: Ask what the staff member is going to do to ensure that this error is not repeated (and, if it is, the discussion becomes more stern).

An editor who shows a commitment to accuracy sets an important tone for the newsroom. You will lead many changes in your newsroom, but if the commitment to accuracy changes at all, you must make it stronger.

HOW HAVE YOU (OR AN EDITOR YOU WORKED FOR) UNDERSCORED THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY TO YOUR NEWSROOM?

TWITTER RESPONSES

@stevebuttry Thanks. I needed that. I'm really feeling like the enforcer today
— Wanda Murren (@wmurren) May 8, 2013

I swear you've quoted conversations between @petebannan and I. MT @stevebuttry: Stand for accuracy, accountability: stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/adv…
— AndyStettler (@AndyStettler) May 8, 2013

You are, @stevebuttry! If @petebannan and I had a word cloud of our conversations, "how do you know that" would be the largest words.
— AndyStettler (@AndyStettler) May 8, 2013

"If you don’t have it right, you don’t have it first – you don’t have it at all." MT @stevebuttry #advice4editors goo.gl/jDQMn
— Michelle Karas (@bannereditor) May 8, 2013

RELATED READING Craig Silverman's Regret the Error blog

My list of resources to help with accuracy and verification

EARLIER POSTS WITH ADVICE FOR EDITORS Admit your mistakes

How do your daily budgets reflect multi-platform planning needs?

Listen

What new beats would help newsrooms cover local news better?

The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors