One of my editors, Linda Hasert, took a buyout a few weeks ago, after 31 years at the Inquirer. I sat down with her last week to grab some last-minute wisdom, asking her to boil down four decades of journalism experience to a handful of tips and tricks.
Writing
Her first piece of advice was immediate:
“Respect all departments,” she said. “Respect all qualifications of other people to make suggestions.”
Linda herself had worked in multiple capacities, including spending several years in Features and heading a “Quality of Life” group. As she explained, people jump around in this industry, and someone may very well have more experience than you in doing your job, even if they no longer do it. Plus, she said, people in other positions have important perspectives.
It’s important to be aware of soft deadlines and be in communication with editors. A story may not have to be turned in until 9 p.m., but length, photographs, graphics, &c. are determined long before that final deadline.
“Let editors know that you need new space,” she warned, “especially as you get closer to deadline. … by the end of the night, the whole thing’s like a big jigsaw puzzle and your story is just the final piece.”
(A specific tip for the Inquirer’s CMS, Hermes: try to embed in your mind how wide a column is, because the line counts become inaccurate once the layout’s been set. The only surefire way to check is to copy the story into a junk slug.)
