A day in the life
No day is ordinary at ChristianWeek. Okay, only rarely does chaos reign, and we do settle into a lot of routines. In fact, we structure our work according to a 20-day cycle into which all our recurring tasks are slotted. This system marches us through the production of two regional and two national editions in a fairly orderly manner every four weeks.
If every department—advertising, editorial, design, administration, distribution—meets each day's benchmarks, we get a quality issue printed and delivered on time without undue stress. Occasionally that happens.
But not usually. Routine and regularity do not necessarily add up to ordinary. The nature of the newsgathering business exposes us to a wide range of interruptions. By way of example, let's take a slice of one of my recent workdays—an ordinary day, with nothing extraordinary scheduled.
It began with a pile of manuscripts to read and revise before we put them in the paper. (I do like to know what we're writing about before it gets published.) But a phone call that lasted 45 minutes interrupted that task; a long-distance concern which turned out to be more pastoral than editorial. People need to be heard, and listening is part of my job.
I did have to cut that call a bit short for a scheduled conference call with an agency that generates both news and advertising. Most readers of ChristianWeek pick up their copy for free. This newspaper relies on advertising revenue. Without it, we disappear. To secure good advertisers while providing ongoing, appropriate coverage of their activities is one of the tensions constantly at play in our business. To deliver fair and accurate reporting is a responsibility we take seriously. Telling the stories of God and His people in Canada includes the work of many of our advertisers. It was a productive conversation.
After lunch, just before a regularly scheduled editors' meeting to determine key content for an upcoming issue, I took another call from a would-be newsmaker. But since self-proclaimed prophets rarely have their end times warning dates reliably verified, you won't be reading about this as an article in ChristianWeek.
As a person who sees his primary identity as a writer, I'm sometimes troubled by the fact that a relatively small portion of my time is actually spent putting words to paper. That's when I liken myself to a pastor who thinks he's called to preach. Well, brother, you got an hour on Sunday and I know that the rest of your week is full to overflowing. So it is.
As minutes add up to hours and hours run quickly through the day, so words add up to column inches, and inches rapidly fill up pages. And every two weeks we send an issue off to readers. Such are the days of our lives.
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