ISSUE AND ANSWERS
Where we pick an important topic and hear from professionals in the field.
What are some ways that you make your department and your work more widely known and better understood by the rest of the newspaper?
Keep Them Informed
I am fortunate in that The Edge is a new product for The Roanoke Times (16 months old!), and therefore people are still instinctively interested in what it has to say. But as that newness wears off, I think the best way to maintain the newsroom’s interest is to keep metro editors informed about our weekly budget.
To do this, I suggest youth editors attend morning budget meetings the day or week before their sections appear. As a reporter/Edge editor, my editor took it upon himself to regularly ask me for The Edge budget so he can mention our stories at Tuesday morning meetings, the day before The Edge publishes.
Now, in my new role as Neighbors/Edge editor, I plan on going to the budget meetings myself. This way, I feel everyone wins. The Edge gets a voice among newsroom managers, and they, in turn, realize that the teen page is not some mysterious machine that magically pumps out pages every week.
Kathy Lu
Neighbors Editor
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
(540) 981-3430
kathy.lu@roanoke.com
Walking the Walk
Here’s the easy thing we do: We make sure we submit one or two paragraphs of NIE info for our newspaper’s monthly newsletter. This newsletter is attached to all paychecks–it’s a guaranteed audience. We keep our submissions short and funny–sometimes we ask questions or invite visits to our NIE corner.
Here are the hard things we do: We talk, walk and read–seriously.
Talk: We make sure we keep up a running dialogue with colleagues in all of the departments our newspaper supports, from editorial to pressroom. We thank folks for helping us when our tours pass by; we ask questions when something new is happening in another part of the building.
Walk: We walk the building, not just when we do tours, but in the in-between times when we want to check on a page, compliment the pressroom on the color in one of our tabs, check out a display in the photo department.
Lastly, we read the newspaper. I’m always surprised by how many folks who work at newspapers don’t read the actual product. If I expect my colleagues to know what NIE is doing, I need to know what my colleagues are doing, writing and thinking.
This last one sounds automatic, doesn’t it? But take a poll at your newspaper or in your NIE department and consider the results. Then encourage everyone to read the whole newspaper every day.
Deborah Doulette
NIE Manager
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Northampton, Mass.
(413) 585-5289
ddoulette@gazettenet.com
Get in the Loop
Here are suggestions from my experience to make sure that your NIE program is known, understood and appreciated at your newspaper.
First, knowledge is power.
Make sure you know as much about your newspaper as you can. Learn the facts about your newspaper. Read your newspaper. If you are seen as knowledgeable, your NIE image will reflect that.
Work to have an entry point into the newsroom. Get to know one friend in the newsroom and expand from there. NIE has much in common with the newsroom that reporters and editors often overlook.
NIE is more than circulation and numbers.
We both have common goals; we both want to educate readers. We both have an educational mission, and we both want to expand readership by extending the audience and content. Tell them. NIE also needs to be aware of newsroom concerns. Respecting their deadlines is critical.
Get into the loop of information. That might mean volunteering on committees. Do some of your own PR. If you receive a letter from a teacher or student, show it to as many people as you can, without being obnoxious.
Finally, manners! Compliment people whenever you can. Be available and helpful. Say thank you.
Give feedback, nicely, of course.
Be friendly. Listen.
Paul Crowner
NIE Manager
The Chronicle, Centralia, Wash.
(360) 807-8236
pcrowner@chronline.com
Get the Words Out
Two years ago, we developed a one-third page ROP feature that runs three times a week with a complementing feature on the NIE Web site. This brings editorial, graphics and new media on board each week and gives readers a fresh look at what we ask them to support.
The paper employs a reader/employee reward program called TIPS: Together In Promoting Sales. Last year, the “S” was expanded to include “Student Readership.” Now the giveaway cards that explain the program include a section called “Support Newspaper In Education.” Employees add their names to the cards before giving them to the public. If someone redeems the card in any defined category, the employee gets to spin a prize wheel.
Marketing included NIE in the first set of promotional banners ordered last year. These are 2-by- 6-foot verticals that promote various repeating community activities sponsored by the paper. The brightly colored NIE banner is displayed in the office lobby all day when community groups are scheduled to visit the building.
In August and January, a companywide e-mail asks employees with children to talk to their students’ teachers about using the paper in the classroom. They are reminded that they can get a spin of the TIPS wheel for turning in a teacher’s name that generates an order.
More than 40 circulation branch managers supervise delivery to NIE schools. E-mails are routinely sent to them about school delivery issues, and a point is made to praise good work, with a copy to the supervising division manager.
A selection of compelling teacher comments, compiled from year-end surveys, is posted annually on the paper’s internal Web site.
As of this year, NIE program teachers may bring small groups to the office center for 15-minute “conversations” with representatives from each department, provided they agree that the students will take notes and write a brief report of their visit. The best of these reports is circulated to each participating department to remind employees how valuable their input can be in the life of a student.
At least once a year, a brief article is included in our in-house publication reminding active and retired employees of NIE’s impact on the community.
One NIE sponsor produces lithographic prints of professional athletic stadiums and then donates 50 percent of the profits to our program. Each time a new poster is offered, it’s displayed at our six office locations, reminding employees that everyone scores with NIE.
Diane Ackerman
NIE Coordinator
Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Ill.
(847) 427-4729
dackerman@dailyherald.com
‘Your Mom’ Knows Best
Although we are very much a separate publication, our teen section, Your Mom, tries to market internally to the Quad-City Times and work with it when appropriate.
As editor, I have a separate office with funky decorations and an open-door policy for the teen-agers who work here. But the office is right in the newsroom, and the teens have to traipse past the reporters’ desks before arriving at my office. That alone helps the newspaper staff become comfortable with, and somewhat aware of, the goings-on at Your Mom.
I am also often marching teens through the newsroom in order to get to the photo studio for our weekly cover shoots. Again, curiosity is piqued. I hang up every weekly issue of Your Mom in the windows of my office, so people in the newsroom can see what we’re up to.
There have been opportunities to work directly with the daily newspaper, too. Recently, a 16-year-old girl in the community was brutally murdered. Three other local teens were arrested in connection with the incident.
I helped the Quad-City Times with its coverage by providing good teen contacts and pounding the pavement a bit myself. In return, the paper provided me valuable content for Your Mom. It was a great example of a teen publication and its parent daily working to benefit each other.
Hillary Rhodes
Editor, Your Mom
Quad-City Times
Davenport, Iowa
hrhodes@qctimes.com
Published Apr 25, 2005
