Can he be any worse?

"Nowadays, an SE's job, in my opinion, is more paper work, networking, corporate schmoozing and caretaker of the playpen."

How about editing, story ideas and mentoring?

 

That's become the ASE's or Assoc. SE's job.

 

There are a lot of papers in the country that don't have ASEs or Assoc. SEs.

 

What is a sports editor's main duties these days?

I would say:

1) To movitate staff to put out the best product possible.

2) To guide coverage and identify key issues important to local readership.

3) To position the section into making a major splash -- nationally or statewide -- at least once a year.

4) To serve as a sounding board for ideas.

5) To be aware of where each staff member wants to be in five years, giving him or her an opportunity to reach that place.

6) To serve as the section's representative at big-shot functions, newsroom meetings, etc.

7) ??


Does such a person exist?

 

Right. I was speaking in terms of a paper like Howard's, which is the paper we're discussing here. Obviously my first paper didn't have one. My second paper did...for a while.

 

The job of any SE, ASE, whatever should depend, in large part, on the size of the staff and what its strengths and weaknesses are.

 

What is are a sports editor's main duties these days?

1. Getting demoralized staffers to grind out ever more content across various platforms, not for more pay but with the understanding that they might be permitted to keep their jobs and do it again tomorrow.

2. Providing topics that can be pilfered and built upon by local broadcast affiliates (TV and radio) as well as bandied about by bloggers and ragged on by commenting readers of the online product.

3. Attending numerous dreary and/or panicky meetings with other embattled newsroom heads about the latest rounds of cutbacks and possible bankruptcy filings by newspaper ownership.

4. Sifting through the remaining staffers in the department to see which ones could be shed without too much loss of value, which ones could be shed to save the most in salary (for a budget-savings gold star from the honchos) and which ones could be reassigned to some lousy new duty with a great likelihood the person will get ticked and quit, thereby saving even more money in severance unpaid.

5. Going home at the end of the day with a job to get out of bed for the next morning, even if it's a lousy, diminishing, degrading role.

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

 

Nice touch on both parts. I've always hated when someone asked me about 5 years from now what I want to be doing. Hell the way this business is going, I want to be employed.

 

not to bring it back to the topic, but isn't this dude the vice president of APSE?

if all this is true, shouldn't he, like, not be? i don't someone with such a lack of ethics as a leader of an organization that i pay dues to.

 

Yes, he is