The York Daily Record’s Night News and Digital Desk — an updated copy desk

Tom Barstow

As I’ve been suggesting new ways for Digital First journalists to work, I’ve been aware that my advice for copy desks has been incomplete. I made some suggestions for copy editors earlier this year, but I’ve been pondering something more meaningful for copy desks. Now I know what to say: Check out what the York Daily Record/Sunday News is doing.

A recent email listed the work done in the past week by the YDR’s Night News and Digital Desk. I asked for some elaboration and received multiple responses (lightly edited) from Tom Barstow, News Editor, Night News and Digital:

As you know, the YDR hasn’t had a copy desk in more than a year now. Instead, we are the Night News and Digital desk with multi-platform journalists on the staff. That nomenclature change has been important to re-define what we do daily beyond traditional page production and copy work.

What you saw in the email is our own internal communication for each night. Whoever is assigned to do wire is the primary person to seed the website, Twitter and Facebook each night. But each of us is responsible to make sure nothing is missed and to create/curate content. This online log allows us to monitor what has been done and what people are working on. So when someone gets a few minutes to jump in, they are not duplicating efforts. So the log includes “Editors Picks,” “Regional wire,” “Crime, “iPad Mobile picks,” etc. because those are our primary areas to create and curate content. Under “Curation” are the things such as Storify or extra-linking or blog posts that we do so we aren’t duplicating efforts there, either. We then send out our internal report to the morning crew so they know what we had worked on and to give them a jump on the day and so they don’t duplicate efforts, either.

As you also know, we produce three newspapers each night — YDR, Hanover Evening Sun and Lebanon Daily News. So we also help them out by posting a few stories each night to their sites. That is what “Sister sites” is about.

The main national/world news and state news feeds on our main sites are auto-fed by AP. The Regional wire is something we handle on our own. But for the big national or state stories, we will post them to each newspapers’ main news feed.

Here is Barstow’s original note to colleagues working the next morning (the times note when something was completed):

Here is a list of the other Digital First efforts from Night News and Digital for the night:

TUESDAY, Oct. 2

CURATION:

1. Updated “Orioles” hot topics for tonights game – Mike Spiro 12:20
2. Tom added two posts to YDR insider, one on Dan Herman’s Top 10 to supplement a post from last week, and one on Kate Harmon‘s election coverage planning for the debate. Tom
3. Pennsylvania man pleads guilty to cross-burning – Mike 5:54 – added crime gray box
4. 10 things to know from AP: moves about 9 p.m.: Dan Herman, assistant news editor
5. Last day of the Orioles season Storify – Dan Herman
6. Added gray linkboxes to assorted stories – Hannah Sawyer
7. Voter ID Storify – Matt Anderson
8. Updated headlines for SEO, Mike
9. 20 & change post scheduled – Dan Herman

REGIONAL WIRE:

1. Johnson trial – Matt 5:48
2. Hanover school fair – Matt 5:57
3. Delone Catholic grad wins Emmy for film on Shippensburg athlete – Mike 6:06
4. Pennsylvania man urinates and runs from party – Mike 6:14
5. Woman charged with leaving two dogs in the house since May – Mike 6;17
6. Fire crews on scene of 2-alarm blaze in Lancaster – Mike 6:21

iPAD/MOBILE PICKS:

1. Pennsylvania voter ID requirement halted by judge – Mike 6:23
2. Stillmeadow pastor resigns after 22 years – Mike 6:24
3. Settlement reached in 2010 Hanover dog bite case – Mike 6:29
4. Cleaned up old stories, Tom

EDITORS PICKS:

Romney says debate isn’t about winning or losing – Mike 5:41

1. McQueary files defamation suit against Penn State – Mike 5:42
2. Johnson trial – Matt 5:48
3. Pennsylvania man pleads guilty to cross-burning – Mike 5:54
4. Fire crews on scene of 2-alarm blaze in Lancaster – Mike 6:21
5. OBIT LIST (under editor’s picks): Mike

CRIME:

1. Johnson trial – Matt 5:48
2. Possible developments in Pennsylvania death-penalty appeal
3. Pennsylvania man pleads guilty to cross-burning – Mike 5:54
4. Pennsylvania man urinates and runs from party- Mike 6:14
5. Woman charged with leaving two dogs in the house since May – Mike 6:18

TWITTER:

1. Most viewed story: posted – Mike
2. Various re-tweets. Tom
3. Top 10 tweeted, Dan H.

FACEBOOK:

Most viewed story: posted – Mike

SISTER SITES: Debate story and year of the Bible added. Mike

PINTEREST:

Thumbnail posted.

EXCHANGE:

McSherrystown website debate, Matt

More on Johnson/Grove case, Matt

SANDUSKY:

McQueary files defamation suit against Penn State – Mike 5:42

For the PAPER:

Sports hit button at 12:01, 9 early

News hit button at 11:22

Other staff members working the Night News and Digital Desk (who might have been mentioned in that note on a different night): Will Hanlon (works in sports and news), Andrea Lazarus (part-time), Abby Rhoad, Dan Rorabaugh, Caryn Rupert and Mark Walters, who just started work this week.

While Tom’s note focused on the digital tasks, I knew that the desk was also producing three print editions that evening, so I asked Tom what that involved:

Each night, we produce the Hanover Evening Sun, The Lebanon Daily News and the York Daily Record/Sunday News, all 7-day dailies. The Evening Sun and Lebanon are afternoon papers Monday through Friday, so they are not live pages on the Sunday through Thursday shifts. The morning crew pushes the button on a couple of those pages, but they are expected to get “camera ready” pages from us. We do not expect the morning crew to catch our errors. They mainly are looking for updates or overnight breaking news.

The production is live with all three papers Friday and Saturday nights for the Saturday and Sunday papers. My folks only handle production of the news pages, but we are responsible for making sure deadlines are met, along with the sports crew. The expectation is that stories come to us clean and with suggested heads and readouts. However, the first person to get the story does a copy edit of it. The editor/designer then places it on the page and writes headlines and readouts that work best/fit etc. with their design.

So we also design the pages. We have a mini-Thunderdome with our wire pages in that we find efficiencies with placing those stories in each of the three papers. But because we are local-centric, we have to design and lay out the three papers individually. The design for YDR involves an A1, a Local and a Business page on most days. For Hanover and Lebanon, it is A1 and Local for each. That means a minimum of four to five pages — two to three section fronts and then a couple of jump pages.

This can only be done if Susan Martin and her metro editors, photo editor Eileen Joyce and Cathy Hirko, the business editor, ensure that the copy is coming over clean. That means going back to the original content producers — the reporters and photographers who are multiplatform journalists now — to make sure they are getting everything right from the start.

That is the magic of the YDR, generally: Everyone is given the same high expectations from the start, so there is little need to re-do work on the back end. That also is true of the editors in Hanover and Lebanon. Without that dedication to getting things right from the start, we would be greatly limited in what we could do digitally at night.

Our proofing process includes big-type proofing, which means that proofers are looking at the design issues, jumplines, headlines, cutlines, readouts and sidebars but not the small type, so they can check to make sure a page is clean relatively quickly. They have to read far enough into the story to make sure the headlines etc. are accurate, but they no longer proof for minor style errors etc. deep into most stories. It was difficult to get people to think about copy editing and proofing as two different tasks. But such efforts are what has helped shave time for more and more digital work.

That pretty much is a typical daily workflow. It doesn’t include special sections and planning ahead for Sunday packages and the beefed-up Sunday business section or the once-a-week pages, such as religion, real estate etc.

I think you know Brad Jennings, our assistant managing editor for visuals. Brad combines a passion for design with an equal passion with all things Digital First. So it is worth mentioning that the YDR just won a first-place design award in the state Newspaper of the Year contest. We won second place last year. That might be worth noting for skeptics who still think it is an either/or proposition with Digital First efforts. Attention to important details and a focus on excellence transcends all journalism platforms, as you know.

Record Editor Jim McClure told me in an email: “I get as much thrill out of seeing a process like this play out as winning some award for some other high-profile journalistic achievement.”