Role as Activate Deputy Editor (to be read in conjunction with the Editor’s duties)

The role of deputy editor is a demanding and immensely rewarding. It will take up a large portion of your time and you need to manage your time as productively as possible.

Your duties are divided into two. On one hand you have a number of similar duties as the editor and on the other you have a number of duties specific to you position to fulfil. A number of these fall into the category of support and ensuring that there are areas of concern the editor has not missed out on.

As editors you are the leaders of the group and the rest of the staff will look to you for advice, guidance and re-assurance. It is important to maintain a calm front despite how you feel. You represent the paper and need to conduct yourself in a professional manner with the staff, the student body, administration and the rest of the Grahamstown community.

Meetings: As Editors you must facilitate a weekly meeting, which has been held on a Monday evening for the past few years. In this meeting you must cover all issues pertaining to the paper as well as run through content. It is a good idea to prepare an agenda for each meeting in order to make meetings succinct and successful. Also have each meeting minuted so that you can keep records of what has been discussed and achieved. As editors, you chair the meeting and must maintain decorum. You can devise your own system for the running of meetings. Perhaps all questions should be kept till after the agenda or perhaps you would rather allow people to debate an issue as you go through the agenda. The important thing is for you to maintain control of the meetings at all times and not allow them to turn into an open forum for debate – this is not the time for an open forum – it is a weekly content meeting. You must also facilitate a weekly executive meeting where issues such as the paper’s finances and staff matters are raised. I would suggest that at the beginning of each staff meeting, you run through what was discussed in the exec meeting to allow for transparency with the rest of the staff. It is also important to keep a record of meeting attendance. People need to excuse themselves from a meeting before the time and need to have a valid excuse. “I was tired” is not good enough as everyone has other commitments. See the Activate File for occasions on issuing warnings.

Paper cycle: Week one begins with the Monday night meeting where content is first discussed. The content must be in by the Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week depending on whether it is news, sports or the rest. Sports and news and pics have an extra day to the rest of the content. Subbing takes place on the Wednesday and Thursday evening so that designing can start on the Friday. The paper is collected on the Monday morning around 10 am and returned on the Thursday around 11am to be distributed at lunch time on the Thursday. The dining halls should be targeted first. They are busiest at 12:15. The rest of distribution occurs once the dining halls have received their papers. This is obviously a blue print and does not always go according to plan. At times, the paper may be delivered late or content may arrive late. In such cases, the necessary people need to be disciplined or in the case of a late delivery, it must be taken up with Goshawk. Each case is different and must be dealt with accordingly. Distribution in the dining halls works best when the paper is handed out to people at tables and in queues. This is more interactive. People can see who Activate members are and you will know that they actually received the paper. The dining halls differ in size. With regards to distribution the numbers of papers that go to which areas, are really up to your discretion. We have always targeted large numbers of papers at the library and the larger dinning halls. Distribution works best in groups of three where one person drives and two people go along to help distribute. It is also a good idea to let two groups of three deal with the dining halls as one group of three may struggle to do all the dining halls and still catch the majority of people. One of the weak areas around distribution is the oppidans. A new method of delivery for the oppidans needs to be devised.

You also need to ensure that outside publications receive copies of the paper. This is doen to ensure they know who their competition is and furthermore in sending it to publications to SL you establish a good name and contacts for the future of the paper.

Public interaction: As Editors you will receive a lot of mail, both complaints and criticisms. I have replied to every e-mail received as this is an indication that people on campus care about the paper and have concerns. Make time to reply to these e-mails or phone-calls and be open to criticism. People may even stop you on the street to talk to you about something they liked or did not like – make time for these people. Never be too good to deal with people who have something to say about the paper but at the same time there is a limit to explaining. Some of the decisions you make do not need to be explained – i.e running with a controversial story. If the story is in the best interest of the student body then who do not owe any other explanations. You will also need to be accountable for your staff. When one of your staff members behaves in an unprofessional manner you must deal with the situation. ALWAYS listen to your staff first and hear their side of the story before disciplining them. The customer is not always right when it comes to the media and while you must take complaints into account, it is important to back and support your staff too.

Never forget you and editor are the face of the newspaper, people are always watching and unfortunately often judging.

Deputy Editor Specific duties:

As previously stated your duties are very similar to those of the editor, it is often up to the two of you to decide on what each is best on and find away to utilise each others strong points. The editor is one person and can not think of everything and do everything your major job is to ensure all areas are covered. You will often be the person who has greater contact with the staff and production end of the paper, while the editor deals with finance, business decisions and various contacts in and outside the university.

You need to be the co pilot of a common vision. You are the eyes the editor can not have elsewhere.

Number one piece of advice:

Try work as equals, do your bit, be willing to have a point understand that your point will be taken into consideration but the editor does not have to utilise it. Argue if need be but always come back with an understanding you are on the same team.

Most of all between the two of you find out who is good at what and handle those areas i.e. if you are better at handling complaints and dealing with irritating people then do it, people see the paper as you.