by Staff
Imagine a job where every day you have to become an expert on a topic, person or event and then explain it in a way that every literate member of the general public can understand. If you are wrong, even with one minute detail, your failure is publicly announced the next day.
Imagine cold calling a dozen people in a day, or frantically hunting down busy politicians, lawyers, judges and Jacksonville business leaders that all have better things to do than return your call.
You hit the streets for that perfect photo or a quote scratched in your notebook, but then you get a call. You’ve got to get across town for something else. If you’re late, you can bring your entire company’s operation to a halt.
Think you get a break at home, maybe when you’re asleep? Nah, that’s when you do some of your best work, waking up to write down a story idea or going over the next day’s busy schedule in your mind.
Oh, and then there’s the City meetings. Hours and hours of them.
Welcome to the life of a news reporter, and the editorial staff of the Financial News & Daily Record at Bailey Publishing & Communications wouldn’t have it any other way.
For the first Workspace of 2008, the editorial department decided to cover, well, itself, to give readers an insight into the professional lives of the people behind the bylines they read every day.
It should also help answer some of the questions the reporters hear from the public, like “where do you come up with your story ideas?” and “how do you decide what makes the paper?” and, most commonly, “how do you keep writing day after day?”
Answers to the last question vary from reporter to reporter, although common themes remain.
“It’s not easy,” said Mike Sharkey, the most senior staff writer with seven years at the Daily Record, minus a short stint in PR. “It is stressful, but I believe that there’s an element of fun about not knowing exactly what you got going each day.”
Max Marbut, a Daily Record reporter for two years and a writer for 25, agreed.
“Every day’s different,” he said. “Something new happens every day. That’s why they call it news.”
Caroline Gabsewics, a staff writer for two and a half years, said meeting new people keeps her interested, although keeping it up is something good journalists “have to have in them.”
The staff’s newest writer, David Ball, said the challenge to produce a compelling story each day and the reward to see it in print drives him.
“The creativity of the work combines with the public service of reporting to people the news we think matters,” he said. “That, and it makes me feel like my four years of college weren’t a total waste.”
But it’s not all sweating deadlines and cranking out so many City Notes your head spins. Run-ins with celebrities, like Russell Crowe in town for a rugby match or Kevin Spacey walking downtown between takes of filming “Recount,” are always fun, as are uncovering the hidden stories of Jacksonville law, business, City government and Downtown.
And then there’s the cachet that goes along with being a journalist. You know the town. You know the people, and the people know you. But that potential trap is probably summed up the best by Editorial Director Fred Seely, who guided the Daily Record for more than 10 years before focusing on the company’s other two publications, Realty-Builder Connection and Golf News.
“You have to remember that your popularity isn’t because of your terrific personality,” said Seely. “It’s because the subjects either need you for publicity or don’t want you...for publicity.”
With that in mind, the news-writing process begins early Monday mornings when the staff writers meet with President and Publisher Jim Bailey and Vice President Ted Johnson to go over story ideas. The ideas come from tips from sources, things the reporters see and hear and sometimes a question like, “Have we ever done a workspace on us?”
That discussion continues in the editorial department, where the writers further refine their story concepts. Then it’s up to the writers to collectively guide their ideas from conception to completion.
Every day a new story list is created based on what each writer expects to produce, and Bailey and Johnson use their institutional knowledge to assist the writers in hitting all the right points of many stories.
How do we know how much news we need each day? That’s determined by the amount of advertising sold and the space laid out on each page by the graphics department. Graphics also creates any original images or art readers see.
From a “dummy,” or blank layout of the paper, the writers creates a rough sketch of where each story will go, from the top headline to the last brief. Reporters get their interviews and photos and try to finish the stories between 2-3 p.m. The fun starts when a news story breaks at 2 p.m., and the entire paper has to be reworked.
When the copy (articles) and photos are in, graphics “pours” them onto the page and a final proof is printed and edited again by editorial and Johnson. The following morning, a final “OK” moves the product to the printing process, which takes about an hour and results in what you hold in your hand.
And what’s remarkable is that the news stories make up only about 25 percent of every Daily Record. Advertising and public records are responsible for well over a million specific characters on the pages of the Daily Record each day, and the work done by the staff members to bring those important words to the page could fill up yet another workspace.