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. (more…)
The Buttry Diary 