Meetings, meetings, meetings ...

After reading some of the comments, let me ammend something I said earlier.

I think short, daily planning meetings solely to decide what goes on what page that day are essential at anything more than a tiny shop. Now, these can be quite informal, just 3-4 people sitting at their desks and asking "what have you got today?" or "How do you want to play such-and-such story?" That kind of feedback is important and helps everyone putting out the paper feel like their input is valued. There are few things I hate worse in life than top-down decisions, where I felt cut out of the decision-making process.

As a sports slot editor, one of the first things I did every day was find out what each writer was working on and also solicit feedback on wire stories, etc. I tried to keep things balanced, so we didn't have to bury a good local story inside one day and then have absolutely nothing the next day.

But I wasn't really counting those as meetings. I was only counting the ones where everyone leaves their desk and goes to the conference room --- and maybe, well, at least in the old days, the boss orders in pizza.

 

We don't have many editorial meetings, but every now and then the people running the company come in for a "state-of-the-company" meeting. The question and answer session usually takes as long as the presentation part of the meeting. Many of the questions serve no purpose other than to prolong the meeting and call attention to the person asking the question.
The guy answering the questions usually gives a rather lengthy answer to each question and it seems to me, the answers are unnecessarily long in many cases. It once took the guy 10 minutes to answer two questions.
My advice to anyone scheduling a meeting is that if it's a mandatory meeting, make the question-and-answer session voluntary and allow anyone who doesn't want to stick around for it to leave.

 

Our meeting schedule at my old rag went something like this
Meeting would be at 10
-Everyone would show up between 10-1040
-Editor would roll in at 1045
-We would sit and wait for him in the meeting room and wait for another 15 minutes
- Finally meet and repeat the same stuff we did every week, blah blah blah.
-Editor would see some of his superiors getting ready to go to lunch and would then rush us through so he could go schmooze.

God I'm glad I'm out of there.

 

Hate them. Hate the bullshit. Hate the lies. More importantly, I just hate not being able to do what I'm paid to do. Worst of all, after all the planning, shit STILL gets fucked up.

 

That's why I quit going. "If you need me, I'll be there." I am needed about three times a year.

 

Meetings can serve a purpose, the problem is most people don't know how to run one


Crucial to any meeting is to have an agenda: bullet points of subjects to be covered

Send it out prior to the meeting - the morning of can be good enough - so that people know where they might be expected to contribute.
Also, let people know that the meeting is the place to bring up issues - not personal issues - but stuff particular to the job (When are we getting the new computers / Team X new PR guy says we can't ... / any other challenges)

Chair the meeting - cut off rambling discussions, determine actions to be taken from any discussion, and begin and, even more importantly, END on schedule

Take minutes, or have someone there to take minutes

Follow up by sending out the minutes, with the ACTION points specified

Follow up on the action points, either during the intervals between meetings or at the next meeting depending on the action

Make the meetings regular enough that they become engrained in your department's culture

 

So were the management meetings at my old shop. They mostly consisted of the 90-year-old publisher simply sitting there, pontificating and complaining. His 70-year-old wife (who is the CEO) actually looked at me and rolled her eyes when he was off on yet another tangent.

I did story assignment meetings that ranged from one full-time reporter and one part-time photographer to having a bunch of student writers. The thing that was most useful was being able to assign stories to the students. I also did the same thing when I sent out mass e-mails to the students (and they were mass e-mails since I had as many as 40 on my e-mail lists).

I fucking hate meetings with a passion.