Worldwide Editing

Holiday labors

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:13:33 +0000

When my wife and I left the house on Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend to visit a neighbor in a rehab center and then go to a BBQ at a friend’s house, a thought occurred as we walked out the door. I was carrying my cell phone because I wanted to, not because I was on call during the holiday weekend.
As managing editor of Cox News Service I was on call 24/7/365. In that role, I was responsible for managing the relationship among 44 newspapers in six states and the relationship of those newspapers with the New York Times News Service. Always being available on short notice went with the territory – New Year’s, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and weekends. We never planned an event or a night out when I wasn’t concerned about having to suddenly go to work.
The policy at the news service, which was part of the newspaper division of Cox (i.e., corporate), was the same as it was at the AJC, where I worked for 25 years. Because we produce a perishable product, you are expected to come to work even when it is difficult or inconvenient to do so. Yes, sometimes that meant working on holidays. Two holiday news events that interrupted plans with friends stand out.
One was Labor Day weekend 2004. Hurricane Frances hit Florida not once but twice. Cox has four papers in South Florida. Then she took aim at Georgia. The AJC in Atlanta is the company’s flagship paper. A group of us hardly left the office from Friday through Monday.
Then there was Memorial Day 2007. About 5 p.m., shortly before a groupof friends were to arrive for ribs I was supposed to barbecue, I received a call that Barbara Cox Anthony had died. Barbara and her sister, Anne Cox Chambers, had inherited control of Cox Enterprises. Barbara’s net worth was estimated at $12 billion, based principally on her equity interest in Cox Enterprises, which made her one of the richest women in the United States. I told my wife I was going into my home office to work the story and to pour drinks for our friends as soons as they arrivedwhile I worked the story. I finished sooner than I thought and offered apologies to our now somewhat sloshed friends as I poured my own drink. “Oh, that’s OK, Tom,” one said. “We’re all so sorry to hear about your aunt.” I made my drink a double.
I like to remember moments like those as a newspaper retiree. One of the advantages of my new working life as a “counsel” to a corporate consultancy is that there is precious little chance of getting an emergency call to work on a holiday weekend. It could happen. I do manage an account that involves crisis planning response. Still, the chances are small, and I like my odds.
I continue to think of those on the firing lines every holiday. On those occasions when news does break out and you have to rush away from the barbecue, the lake or the Thanksgiving table, know that there are those who’ve been in your shoes. And also know that as I follow events on my iPhone I’ll hoist a toast to your fine work.

Holding newspapers in your hands

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:40:27 +0000

At a recent dinner party, the conversation turned to the demise of print newspapers and the move to online publishing. A woman sitting next to me in our girl-boy-girl seating arrangement lamented that she wanted to be able to hold a newspaper in her hands. I gave her my iphone. You are now holding the AJC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and several other newspapers in your hands, I told her. Not only that, the pictures move, there’s audio and you can even write comments about the stories or the reporting if you want. She wasn’t swayed. I wonder what she thought about a blog in Monday’s Baltimore Sun that the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary might appear in digital form only. I read that piece with great interest while beginning to write a plan for a national seminar for a major Southern University. The thought occurred: how can we incorporate technology into the seminar to enhance not only the experience of those attending but to bring the seminar to people around the world in real time. The possibilities are numerous. And exciting. I’m also sure that we’ll give attendees material they can hold in their hands and take home. It just may not be in print.

Journalism experience pays off

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:46:07 +0000

Today was a cool day. The highlight: Writing a speech for a wealth adviser to give to give to civic clubs.
I was told I had two hours to write it. I took two and a half. As fate would have it, there was surprise I could turn it that fast. I guess that’s the journalistic experience paying off, a person in the office remarked.
I”ve found the experience of having worked in newspapers pays off in many ways. Turning content quickly and accurately is just one.
Being able to concentrate in the midst of turmoil is another. We just moved offices. It went extremely well. But even the best of moves is disruptive — and noisy.
For ex-journalists who might read this, how has journalism paid off for you in your life after newspapers … or TV, or radio … or …?
Other fun things that are going on in our corporate consultancy:
– we responded to an RFP to lead a PR campaign in favor of a trauma care amendment that will be on the November ballot.
– I’m leading an effort to help a scientist present a CLE through a bar association.
– I’m partnering with a colleague in the office on several business development initiatives.
Darn hard work, this retirement thing. But it’s been a cool post-newspaper ride, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
And as we head to the weekend I’m looking forward to enjoying Saturday and a day off. With any luck, the toughest call then will be … wet fly or dry.
For those souls pulling the weekend shift on a print or web news desk, remember … 55.
Cheers …

Thank God it’s Friday

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:11:06 +0000

Back in the day when there were afternoon newspapers like The Atlanta Journal, we used to come to work in the middle of the night to write, edit and produce them. Some people adjusted to the hours better than others. Some never adjusted at all. Amanda was the poster child for the never-adjusted types.
Even though that was many years ago, at the end of every week I still think about the morning (OK, middle of the night) when the wire editor, Tyrone Terry, and I watched her walk slowly across the newsroom to the copy desk and collapse into her chair. We weren’t sure she was actually awake until she turned her head, looked at us and said, “Thank God it’s Friday. I’m so tired I don’t think I could do this another day this week.”
I looked at Tyrone and asked, “Who’s going to tell her?”
“Well,” he replied, “we’re the only ones in the newsroom and you’re the news editor.”
After a very pregnant pause, I said, “Amanda.”
“What?” she responded in a voice that was barely audible.
“It’s actually Thursday.”
She slumped head first into her computer with such a thud I thought she might have hurt herself and burst into shoulder-heaving sobbing.
Tyrone then leaned over to me and said, “You brute. I’m going to get a cup of coffee.”
About the time Tyrone got back with his coffee, the next person on the copy desk came in. When he saw how distraught Amanda was, he came over and asked us, “What’s wrong with Amanda?”
“Tom made her cry,” Tyrone said.
“What did you do that for?” he demanded to know!
Somehow, we got the paper out. We always did.

The other side

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:04:41 +0000

I called a former colleague who is a mid-level editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently to pitch a story. As part of our conversation he asked me how I liked life “on the other side.”
By the “other side” he meant public relations. I’m contracting for The Ledlie Group and working on several accounts. My answer is that I am liking this life just fine. One of the things I’ve learned about PR in my life after newspapers is that stories PR types pitch bring value to readers. Like my friend at the AJC, when I was an editor there and for Cox I didn’t fully appreciate the role PR agencies can play in sharing information with the media. Now, in an era when newspaper/TV staffs have downsized and many of the most experienced reporters and editors have taken buyouts, the value of PR agencies as a source of information for reporters/editors has never been greater.
I saw the value of PR agencies in another more recent situation when I was checking out a report I thought was false but needed to be sure. I e-mailed the beat reporter who confirmed my suspicions that the rumor I had heard was just that — a rumor. I thanked him for his help and offered to let him know of anything of value I might hear about his beat. He graciously said he appreciated the offer and looked forward to staying in touch.
Several other aspects of PR fascinate me. One is the online world and increasing client interest in the flow of information on the Web. For instance, I’m tracking social media chatter for a company that distributes its products nationwide. They want to know of any negative chatter about their products so they can respond very quickly. Immediacy is another fascinating aspect of PR. It gives business clients a way to stay competitive much in the same way it gives an edge to news companies.
Perhaps the most enjoyable part of PR is that it has kept me in the information business at a time in which technology keeps extending the horizons on the ways in which we can deliver and receive information and the role it plays in our lives. That’s something I find exciting. In many ways it’s like being on the old A1 desk, which was the center of the storm. I’m not sure where “the other side” is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go there.

Life is full of deadlines

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:01:17 +0000

A client called today to ask about a rumor involving a competitor that, if true, could impact the client’s business. The client was going into a meeting and needed answers when the meeting ended. The answers needed to be forwarded to the organization’s president.
The query set off a flurry of investigative, reporting and writing activity that brought back memories of deadline on an afternoon newspaper (anybody remember those?). In a word, it was fun — the rush of deadline and the memories.
As a journalist, one of the things that always impressed me the most about reporting on breaking news was how fast a group of reporters, editors and a good re-write person could put a story together.
One of the last breaking stories I worked on before my position as managing editor of Cox News Service was eliminated in November of 2008 was the March 2, 2007 Bluffton University bus crash in Atlanta. Seven people, including five students, were killed when a bus carrying the university baseball team from Bluffton, Ohio crashed shortly after 5:30 a.m. on I-75 on the edge of downtown Atlanta. Many of the players were from Cox markets in the Dayton area.
I saw the story on CNN as I was getting dressed to go to work. A quick call to Dayton set the content priorities. “We need pictures! As many as you can get as fast as you can get them to us.” I alerted the early morning team already in the office, Tyrone Terry and Tom Hallman. By the time I got to work an hour later, they had already sent 10 AJC images to Dayton and the Dayton editors had posted a photo gallery. Many more images and quite a bit of text soon followed.
Today when the client emerged from the meeting, we had a complete report waiting in the inbox. After a phone call about our findings, it was on its way to senior leadership.
The client looked good, and so did we.
Nearly 40 years of deadline experience, many of them on PM papers, is paying off in the PR world in my life after newspapers.
For those still on news desks and others reporting and shooting images in the field, keep up the good work. It will pay off now and reward you in years to come. 55.

Blog it or bag it

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:59:51 +0000

My pal Perry called today and yelled at me. Sad to say, I deserved it.
He said it had been 100 years since I wrote on my blog. Blog it or bag it is the kind and short version of his message. Truth to tell, I’ve been feeling guilty about not blogging. A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the hundred years since the last post. So here’s a quick recap of how the waters have been flowing.
— I didn ‘t find the ESL business I was hoping for when I left Cox.
— So, I contracted with a Decatur PR agency for a little less than a year. I wrote business proposals for prospective clients, strategized on social media, wrote FaceBook fan page content for a client and had other writing assignments.
— Then Joe Ledlie, a friend I worked with at the AJC before either of us had children, offered me a contract position at The Ledlie Group. It was a fabulous opportunity to work on some challenging projects. I’m working there 8-10 hours a day and loving it. A current project involves a seminal moment from the Civil Rights movement.
— I also continue to pursue writing opportunities through my Worldwide Editing company. Something I didn’t see coming are ghost writing possibilities. I’ve written a mainbar and a side on outsourcing for an HR specialist (while with the Decatur firm), am hoping to work with a property management specialist on a piece on green buildings and have a current book project that may go from ghost writing into a double credit.
A dream is to find garden writing gigs. Upcoming trips are to the mountains of NC for the annual Cullowhee Native Plant Conference and to Dallas for the annual Garden Writers Association national conference.
I feel fortunate. Many former colleagues who took buyouts tell me they are having trouble getting any traction at all.
Whether you’ve found traction or not, if you’ve got survival tips for people building a new career in their life after newspapers, please share them in the comments section.
And, if you’re still employed think of something I include in every note with my pal Perry. 55.
Meanwhile, I thank the sisters everyday for a great career, a nice pension, full medical and a wealth of experience on which I can build my life after newspapers.
Stay tuned. I won’t wait another hundred years for the next post.

Brick by brick

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:09:47 +0000

A friend who owns a travel agency once told me that she was building her company one vacation plan at a time. Or, as she put it, brick by brick.

I thought about that comment last week when I wrote an insert for an Olympic legacy story for EXTRA, a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. My contribution was about the impact of the Olympics on Atlanta – development in the inner city, the phenomenal growth in business, increase in international consulates, surge in tourism, etc. It was just 356 words. But, my contact at EXTRA put my company’s name, Worldwide Editing, on journalism Web sites in Brazil. He’s also helping me gain additional exposure for an international business consultant I am representing with Pearlman Associates, a Decatur, Ga., public relations and marketing firm I recently joined as a senior associate.

Brick by brick.

Projects for this week include:

Reconnecting with several businesses who have expressed interest in writing and editing services but who haven’t had the budget to move forward on their projects.
Having coffee and lunch with former colleagues.
Attending a meeting for health care communicators with Marilyn Pearlman, who has been very sensitive about wanting to make sure that I keep my identity with Worldwide Editing while also working for her. This, by the way, is how I see the new business landscape working: alliances and partnerships to combine skills and experience to make individuals and companies stronger and more effective.

Brick by brick.

Also on the agenda this week: Staying in touch with an associate in Taiwan who is representing my writing/editing interests in Asia and who arrived in Los Angeles today. He is in the United States to open the U.S. office of a foundation that is an innovator in Earth-friendly agribusiness production systems and global health initiatives.

Brick by brick.

Last, but not least, I’ll be contacting vendors I met in Raleigh at the recent Garden Writers Association Symposium. Several suppliers of garden-related products want to expand into the Southeast and may need branding help. I also want to write about the “peony lady” I met who grew up in Taiwan who now produces exquisite peonies at a nursery in New Jersey.

Brick by brick.

As I go through the week, I’ll also be thinking about people at the company where I used to work. They are facing the next stage in their lives as the newspaper industry continues to restructure. Some are wondering what the future holds if they leave their familiar surroundings and try to build a new life in a still-unsettled economy. Several have asked me for advice. I tell them everyone has different circumstances and it’s an individual choice. But, if you do leave to build a new life or your own business, make sure you have a plan. And then build it … brick by brick.

Back to the future in America

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:03:11 +0000

Dr. Lowell Catlett

However passionate you might be about the “green” and “sustainable” movement, Dr. Lowell Catlett can help you understand it in a way that will touch your soul.

Dr. Catlett, a professor at New Mexico State University who is an exciting futurist with a deep knowledge of technologies and their implications on the way we live and work, gave the keynote address at the 61^st Garden Writers Association Symposium in Raleigh today.

Standing beside the podium and speaking without notes or PowerPoint and in a rising and falling voice punctuated with exaggerated gestures to emphasize his points, Catlett took his audience back to the future to understand how got America got where it is environmentally and where it is going.

Catlett told the 600-plus garden writers, the second largest gathering in the group’s history, that he grew up on a dirt ranch in the Panhandle of Texas where there were no trees and it was so flat you could see your dog running away for three days. Whenever he would complain about ranch chores, he said his father would tell him, “Lowell, when you get through whining, the cows need feeding.” He said he was so different that his mother once told him that “from the day he was born he was weird as hell.”

When his dad died, he said his mom asked him if he wanted the ranch. He said he told all he wanted was to get out of the dust bowl. Now, he says, the man who owns the ranch next to his has wind turbines on the property to generate energy and is making a tidy sum. I guess I’m not very smart, either, he said with a laugh.

This was a time when many American families didn’t have a lot. His father, he recalled, was proud he could put meat on the table every day. People’s lives at that time were about trying to make a living and just survive. It was a time he said when survival wasn’t predicated on a working spouse because it was a time when women did not have traditional careers. Then the men of that generation went off to war and saw real poverty. When they came home, those who did, they wanted concrete roads because they had never had them. His parents’ generation lived in real spaces. Today’s generation, he said, wants to live in a dream space. They can do that, he said, because we get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

The Baby Boom generation he says, is not about a vocation but an avocation. It’s not about making a living, but about creating a lifestyle. It’s a generation that wants love and acceptance and is the first generation ever in the United States that has no concept of retirement, he said.

He told the audience about the the time they took his grandmother to a retirement home. She brought her cats, but they wouldn’t accept them. Lowell had to take them in. Now he says there are assisted living facilities that take pets. There’s even one he knows of where there are stables close by so the residents can touch the horses. “You cannot have healthy humans,” he said, “separate from plants and animals.” He said he loves his dog, a Chesapeake retriever, so much that if the dog needed a kidney he’d give it one of his if it would fit.

Where his parents’ generation built concrete medians, we’re ripping the concrete out and planting flowers and trees. Once people are used to flowers in the median, they’ll never let anyone rip them out. And once they hear a chicken crow in a backyard coop in the garden or can pet a horse in retirement they’ll never live without them. “Folks,” he said, “that’s the greening of America.”

Do not sell people a product or a service he urged the garden writers. Give them their dreams. And after a pause and a slow look around the room, he closed by saying ….. “I’m bringing my dog.”

Hydrangeas and snow cones

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:55:02 +0000

Day One at the 61^st Garden Writers Association Symposium in Raleigh got off to a humiliating start in Atlanta when I had to borrow a phone at the Medical Center MARTA station and call my bride to tell her I left my phone at home. She and Louie had just dropped me off. Neither was amused at having to turn around and come right back. You know you’re in trouble when your dog gives you a “didn’t-we-just-do-this” look. I will probably never hear the end of this.

The highlight of the day was an inspiring talk by a John Bartram impersonator at the First Timers meeting. Bartram was an 18^th century plant collector from Pennsylvania who counted Benjamin Franklin among his friends. My favorite Bartram story is about his discovery of a camellia-type flower he found along the banks of the Altamaha River on the Georgia coast. This was in the early 1800s. He found it again on a second trip, made collections and named the plant Franklinia Altamaha after Franklin and the river where he found it. It’s never been seen in nature again and all the plants in cultivation today are from Bartram’s discovery. It’s also a very difficult plant to grow in a garden setting. Today’s take away from “John Bratram”: fall is the time to collect seeds to plant in the garden.

The many vendors here in Raleigh love to give away plants. What they are hoping for is a homerun (remember Hydrangea Endless Summer? It blooms – you guessed it – all summer!). My favorite so far at this symposium is a paniculata-type hydrangea, “Vanilla Strawberry.” The panicles of blooms open white and then fade to a bright strawberry red beginning with the bottom flowers. The effect in the display photos (the blooms on the display plants hadn’t begun turning red yet) reminded me of a strawberry snow cone.