The Red Pen Diaries #2

(This is the second installment of a slightly fictionalized account of my adventure as the temporary editor of an employee newsletter. Names have been changed but not much else.)

Meatgrinder indeed.

I’m in the final stages of putting together my first edition of Plant Site News. Now that I’m totally immersed in editing the publication, I can easily see how my predecessor was driven batty after just a year in the job. It’s a big hairy monster of a newsletter with a constant rain, no, hail of material coming in from all directions, and with everyone expecting their stuff to go in the next issue. 

The range of content is huge, reflecting what goes in most employee periodicals: production numbers, share price performance, updates on construction and maintenance projects, benefits information, service anniversaries, retirements, new hires, United Way stuff, conference and meeting promos, little reports with photos of various events (like last week’s firefighter training session), safety tips, environmental news, promos for concerts and trips coming up from the social club, changes to the plant’s bus schedule,  photos of retirement parties….and that’s just the current issue. And it’s a weekly. Sheesh.

The previous editor not only edited and desktopped every edition, she also wrote a lot of the material, and took photos, and had to deal with a last-minute culture where contributors expected her to accept submissions as late as the morning the publication is printed. There’s also lots of pressure from an employee readership that has come to expect the Plant Site News in their hands every Thursday afternoon, without fail. The newsletter hasn’t missed a week in five years.

When I think of all the idiotic companies that have eliminated print publications over the last five or ten years, I wonder what they were thinking – especially those organizations who, like Big Division, have large numbers of front line employees who have no access to computers. Do they really expect that people will stop and stand at a bulletin board and read the company bumf? Or visit a ‘kiosk’ so they can read the intranet? Or, crack open a beer, log on at home, and enjoy a thorough browse of online company information? NOT.

Plant Site News is a healthy, dynamic publication that is valued both by its readers and its contributors. But it has some problems. Deadlines have been too short. With the support of the communications director at Big Division, I’m pushing back and insisting that all material that’s not time sensitive be submitted one full week before the next publication date. I’m also getting freelancers and other communications staffers to write most of the material and I’m getting a photographer to come in to take pictures every week.

There’s much more to do, including developing a decent rolling story lineup (the last editor was in too much of a scramble to pull one together) and putting some solid processes in place to help Plant Site News run better. For example, right now there aren’t any written guidelines for what the newsletter is meant to cover, so all content is considered fair game. I got a submission this week from a guy who wants me to share a funny moment that happened in a meeting, and another from someone who tripped on his way to the bus who wants to share a lesson about safety. I’ll probably run the safety story because safety is a ‘core value’ at BigCo, but the funny story, not so much.

For the next three weeks I’m going to have little time to do anything else but keep this thing going, but a job offer is in to the replacement editor and she’s expected to start in the next three or four weeks.

Until then, the meatgrinder won’t stop for me.