One thing became especially clear for the Biddeford Gazette last week:
Its editor – me – needs better time management skills.
When you’re running a small operation on a shoe-string budget with an all-volunteer staff, it becomes quickly obvious that there’s just not enough time in the day.
For example, our weekly newsletters are supposed to go out on Saturdays. Our EVENTS calendar had not been updated since last week, same for our PET OF THE WEEK updates.
I suppose it’s okay to put those things off for a bit in order to address more pressing issues such as our current backlog of news and feature stories. The interviews are done. The research is completed. It’s just a matter of getting it pushed out.
Beyond ferreting and scrounging for local news, I also have behind-the-scenes business responsibilities that include tracking expenses, donations and other administrative tasks, not to mention professional development and community meetings.
That’s exactly why I am so happy that Craig Pendleton decided to step it up a notch and join our board of directors as our CFO and financial manager. Craig has tons of business, management and financial experience. READ MORE ABOUT CRAIG
Back to the news. We have some great stories that we’re planning to release this week, including finally publishing a fascinating in-depth profile of Biddeford’s Chuck Cote, a man who has made it his mission to preserve some of the city’s historical artifacts.
We’re also going to be taking a deep dive into this year’s municipal and school budget proposals. I encourage you to get involved and stay informed for that process.
At the Gazette, our focus remains on quality versus quantity or worrying about getting the story out first.
Too often, haste makes waste. You might have noticed that we had three stories last week that required corrections.
We’re going to rely much more on the volunteer services of our copy editor, Gail Toussaint of Biddeford.
I need to stop rushing to get things done and out the door without first running the stories past Gail’s careful eyes.
Another big change. I will no longer be able to publish op-eds or editorials without prior approval from our board of directors. If they say ‘NO,” the potential editorial is scrapped or perhaps revised to meet their concerns.
It’s all part of commitment to you and a reflection of our core values. Checks and balances.
We embrace transparency and accountability in everything we publish, but we also have to be accountable and transparent in how we publish it!
A lot of people ask me why I work so hard on this endeavor. I assure you, it’s not for the money or the glory. This is the Biddeford Gazette, not the New York Times.
Unlike other media outlets, we are focused on just one community, a community that I love, a community that is part of my DNA and connected to every other aspect of my life, including my family, my home and my friends.
Beyond my love for Biddeford, I really love telling the stories that are so often left ignored, forgotten or overlooked by news outlets that are busy scrambling for ad revenue and trying to cover several communities at once.
I get to tell Biddeford stories. I get to give a voice to you and your neighbors, whether it’s our free OBITUARIES or LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A few weeks ago, I thought the coach of Biddeford’s Unified Basketball Team was going to fall over when she saw me approaching the player bench. “You’re going to cover this?”
“You bet your bootie,” I replied. “These kids put their hearts and souls into the game. They deserve their own opportunity to “be in the paper.”
This week, I had the honor of telling some other great stories including a feature story about my good friend Jessica Johnson who will once again be running in the Boston Marathon to honor her mother and raise money for cancer.
I also had a blast talking with Doug Sanford, a fascinating and howling-fun story about a man who risked so much to help put Biddeford on a new trajectory.
That’s more than enough. Once again, my apologies for being long-winded.
Stay tuned! The best is yet to come!
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