Sudden change comes slowly
Associate editor Kelly Rempel is consulting calendars and creating schedules. This is a typical summer exercise, but it's a bigger job than usual this time around.
For the past eight years or so we've patterned our schedules on a 20-Day cycle (four five-day weeks) that plots the details required to send three different editions of ChristianWeek off to the print shop on time. This blueprint works very well to get print copies to press with the latest news and comment for readers. But times are changing, and we're suddenly about to adjust our schedule to reflect our reality.
Business guru Steven Covey is famous for defining seven habits of highly effective people. Habit number two is to “begin with the end in mind." Our 20-Day cycle did exactly that and served us very well as long as the date with the printer was the end from which we worked. All the details that go into newspaper making were calibrated in the schedule to that end.
These days, our publishing priorities are no longer so tightly bound to the print edition. One ramification of our existing template is that articles arrive in a couple of clusters each month, and then work their way through production like a lump down your throat. Every two weeks we pump out a national edition; every four weeks we gave birth to triplets - National, Ontario and Manitoba in one long labour. After press, we post a selection of stories onto our web site.
Two years ago we upgraded our web site and began posting twice a week. Since then our print frequency has declined and our digital reach is growing. And now it's time to re-adjust our production schedule to address these new realities. That's what Kelly is detailing for us.
In brief, we are moving from a 20-Day cycle to a calendar month paradigm. We are moving from a bulk dump of articles to a steady stream. We are evening out the workflow in the design department and will be producing the Ontario and Manitoba editions in separate weeks.
The other major change this new schedule facilitates is a stronger news presence on the web. Instead of updating twice a week, we can update daily (five days a week). With articles slated to arrive on twice-a-week deadlines rather than in twice-a-month clumps, we guarantee a steady supply of fresh material and a more vibrant, news-and-comment oriented web presence. The print editions are then able to draw on material that may or may not have already appeared on the web.
Such sudden change snuck up on us slowly. We're now busy formalizing a shift that's been coming our way for some time. We've inverted our operating assumption. When it comes to news, digital comes first. Print follows.
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