Dear Readers:
Dr. Ink has been following a conversation on a listserv for newspaper trainers about the problem of deadline busting. An editor wonders what to do about a group of journalists who always seem to be handing stuff in late. The reporters seem immune to either carrots or sticks. They also lack empathy for other journalists (copy editors, headline writers, designers), whose work is rushed or minimized as a result of their delays.
Now the good Doctor is famous for beating his deadlines on books or projects by a matter of weeks or months. So he has little tolerance for the procrastinators. Editors should just hit them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.
But Doc is also wondering whether some editors are making a fetish out of the deadline, as a way of exercising control over those pesky writers. Does meeting deadline really matter that much if the work, when it finally arrives, is really good? Shouldn’t the best journalists have flexible deadlines? And what is the meaning of “deadline” in an era of websites, 24-hour news cycles, convergence, and monopoly newspapers?
Isn’t a slavish attention to deadline little more than journalistic anal retention? Or is Doc wrong? Are all those “scoops” lined up for the “bulldog edition“?
