{"id":2457400,"date":"2020-04-19T23:04:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T05:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/ask-the-publisher-whos-on-first-defining-our-roles-in-the-newsrooms\/"},"modified":"2020-04-19T23:04:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T05:04:00","slug":"ask-the-publisher-whos-on-first-defining-our-roles-in-the-newsrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/ask-the-publisher-whos-on-first-defining-our-roles-in-the-newsrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Publisher: Who\u2019s on first? Defining our roles in the newsrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-683x1024.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620-1366x2048.jpg 1366w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/04\/ATpublisher-atd-031620.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\"><figcaption><strong>Samantha Johnston<\/strong><br \/><em>Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">What does a publisher even do?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The easiest way to think of a publisher is similar to a CEO. My responsibilities include making major decisions on behalf of The Aspen Times, managing our overall operations and resources, developing long-term vision and strategy, ensuring our financial success, human resources, negotiating vendor contracts and, as frequently as the other items on the list, cleaning out the science experiment that is our refrigerator. I like to say that I do whatever needs to be done on any given day; sometimes it\u2019s working on a huge marketing partnership and sometimes it\u2019s running to Paradise Bakery to get coffee when we\u2019re out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In the hierarchy of the operation, the publisher oversees the entire operation while the editor oversees the newsroom, the advertising director oversees the advertising\/marketing department and the circulation director oversees all newspaper distribution operations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">What does the editor do?<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row at-donation at-donation-mobile p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/at-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The editor is the journalist who oversees the day-to-day operations and short-term and long-term planning in the newsroom. He (in our case) is responsible for story and photo assignments, writing and reporting coaching, determining which local stories and photos are placed on what pages throughout the paper, contracting with columnists, managing the editorial board and opinion pages and determining which stories we publish and which ones we don\u2019t. The editor is almost always the first person to read a story before it prints; an editor typically reads the story first for content \u2014 is it coherent, interesting, comprehensive and does it answer more questions than it creates? This is where coaching and writing support happens; it\u2019s the point in the process where the editor asks questions of the reporter and seeks to have the reporter improve the story in any way possible. While the editor clearly looks for grammar and spelling mistakes, his first job is to make sure the reporter wrote a great story. When that is complete, the story moves to a copy editor who reads it thoroughly for punctuation, grammar, spelling and AP Style. The copy editors also are a second check on how clear and compelling the story is; if they don\u2019t understand something, chances are our readers won\u2019t, either.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">He also oversees our digital engagement editor, Aspen Times Weekly and Snowmass Sun editors and is ultimately responsible for the editorial success of our magazine portfolio (though we have a total superstar in Andrew Travers who oversees our magazine editor\/writer teams).<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">Can the publisher keep a story out of the paper or make sure a story gets into the paper?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In theory, yes. The publisher is the leader of the operation. In practice \u2014 at least at The Aspen Times \u2014 the relationship between me and editor David Krause is one of collaboration and communication. I have never directed David and his team to write a specific story or to make sure a specific story didn\u2019t run. Occasionally, readers will comment on social media or in letters to the editor that we do or don\u2019t write stories based on whether the story is about a big advertiser. How easy it would be to determine our news coverage based on what our advertisers wanted. The truth is, it\u2019s simply not the case. The news team determines news coverage in complete independence from the advertising department. It\u2019s not to say that the advertising department doesn\u2019t make story suggestions to the newsroom, but every story is written based on its news value.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Make no mistake, I often suggest story ideas, too. I\u2019m in the community a lot engaging in different organizations and I often have ideas about topics I think will interest our readers. Sometimes my ideas are assigned as stories and sometimes they aren\u2019t. A little fact about me: I love bears. LOVE bears. I pitch a bear story a day to reporter Jason Auslander who mostly rolls his eyes at me, but the days when bears are legitimately newsworthy are my favorite days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">Does the publisher read every story before it publishes?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I am often asked if I read every story before it prints. That\u2019s a firm no. I have a really talented editorial team whom I trust explicitly. However, before we publish stories that we know will be very sensitive, the editor and I review the story, talk about it, and hash through the details to ensure we\u2019re both comfortable with the finished product. I\u2019ll also occasionally be asked to read a story that may have elements whose value we question. An example might be something from a court file that is interesting, but we question if it is necessary. Ultimately, the more we talk through our decisions before they are final, the more confident we are in the decision after it is in print.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Special thanks to our reader who noticed in my last column that I said \u201cless than\u201d when I should have said \u201cfewer than.\u201d For you grammar and AP Style junkies, that\u2019s a painful mistake. And then I\u2019ll be damned if we didn\u2019t make the same mistake in a headline not a week later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">Does the publisher have to have a journalism degree?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">A reader asked me whether it was a requirement of the position that I have a journalism degree. The answer is no. While I have no scientific data to back up what I\u2019m about to say (the reason they don\u2019t let me be a reporter), I would argue that most publishers don\u2019t have a journalism degree; they usually come up through the ranks on the business\/advertising side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I just happen to have a B.A. in technical journalism. I wanted to be a technical writer \u2014 those people who take instructions for how to put a dresser from Ikea together and write them into a way that is actually usable for the poor sot who has to read those instructions to assemble. Thank goodness the first job I got out of college was working for my hometown newspaper, the Steamboat Pilot &amp; Today. There\u2019s no place I\u2019d rather be than in one of the most important industries on Earth \u2014 the news.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Samantha Johnston has been the publisher of The Aspen Times since 2014. If you have a question for her on how our operation works, she can be reached at <a href=\"mailto:sjohnston@aspentimes.com\">sjohnston@aspentimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/ask-the-publisher-whos-on-first-defining-our-roles-in-the-newsrooms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samantha JohnstonKelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times What does a publisher even do? The easiest way to think of a publisher is similar to a CEO. My responsibilities include making major decisions on behalf of The Aspen Times, managing our overall operations and resources, developing long-term vision and strategy, ensuring our financial success, human resources, negotiating vendor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2457400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 02:57:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}