What follows is a simple roundup of the various things I do in a day as an online producer at spokesman.com. I’ve been thinking of posting something like this for a long time. Say, maybe the two years I’ve been at it. Not to brag but to illustrate what someone in my position, at a regional newspaper in 2010, can expect to do. Maybe it will be useful for those thinking of entering the field and vying for a job at a newspaper.
Here’s my take from Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010:
- Rewrote headlines for the web and tagged stories that exported from our print edition.
- Posted breaking news to Twitter ahead of local competitors.
- Edited and uploaded audio clips for a story that runs next week.
- Created a slide show for a story running Friday: Operation Lake Pend Oreille Trout Catcher.
- Posted breaking news about Bill Clinton’s arteries.
- Brainstormed a strategy for news expected to break in the next couple days.
- Posted more stories to the Web with excellent headlines.
- Added addresses to approximately 100 stories from the past two weeks to feed a great new feature on the The Spokesman-Review’s mobile site.
That filled more than eight hours, especially the last one. Things not included that I regularly do: shooting and editing video; coding and visualizing data; posting content to our Facebook page; training colleagues in our content management system and other online tools.
Hope this was illustrative.