Steve Buttry, Director of Tailored Programs - American Press Institute (API), www.notrain-nogain.org, July 30, 2006
- Manage your time. Cut down on the distractions, on the things that waste time, or take up too much time in your day. It requires discipline, but it will pay off in more time to produce enterprise stories.
- Manage the size of your daily load. Daily news will expand to fill up all day every day if you let it. Ask which stories can be dropped or cut down to briefs to provide more time to pursue better enterprise stories. Don't sacrifice important news. You shouldn't have to choose between enterprise stories and important news. Consider whether incremental advancements on continuing stories can be handled with briefs or phone calls or not at all. Can a meeting of marginal news value be ignored or handled with a phone call or two before or after the fact?
- Manage the scope and pace of your enterprise load. Map out your plan early, spelling out goals, avenues of inquiry, possible timetables for steady progress. But realize you have to be flexible. You'll find angles you didn't anticipate. Breaking news will intrude more than you had hoped. Some tasks will take longer than you had anticipated. Set goals for completion of key tasks, and update those goals as delays occur. Don't look at the long-term story as one huge daunting task, but as a series of feasible tasks. Decide whether you should cut the job down to a more reasonable size.
- Communicate with your editors about your management plans. Let the editors know which daily stories you propose letting slide and what the trade-off is. Negotiate the enterprise plan and timetable with your editors and let them know as adjustments are necessary.
- Sell your editors on your enterprise stories. Write a detailed proposal telling the editor what you will be pursuing and what you expect or hope to find. Keep the editor posted on your findings and changes in your plans. If your editor knows specifically what you're pursuing and finding, she will be more helpful in giving you time to work on the enterprise story.
- Make your enterprise stories newsy and specific. Look for matters in your daily coverage that need deeper examination. If you tell your editor you want to take a look at state road contracts, he might tell you that's an interesting story that maybe you should pursue someday. If you tell the editor you want to look into the bid that was awarded this week to a contractor who made huge contributions to the governor's campaign, the editor might help you clear some time to pursue the story now.
- Stay flexible. A big breaking news story will and should throw your enterprise plan out of whack. That's OK. You're in the news business and that's an important part (and usually a fun part) of the business. Adjust the plan and keep pursuing the enterprise goals.
- Stay firm. Whenever possible, don't let the marginal stories throw your enterprise plan out of whack. Seek permission from your editors to let low-priority stories slide. Become efficient at dealing quickly with the low-priority stories. And return ASAP to the enterprise story.
- Spend at least an hour each day on enterprise. Do your enterprise work early in the day when possible, before daily demands become too pushy. If your deadlines come early in your day, plan to spend at least an hour on enterprise right after deadline. An hour a day gives you a chance to make steady progress on the long-term goal. It also will give the enterprise story momentum that sometimes will help you demand more time for it.
- Be realistic. Don't take on a project that you'll never have time to complete. Cut it down to size. Do it in phases. Do part of the grand project this year, another part next year if it's still as pressing.
- Don't get discouraged. Working on long-range stories is always frustrating. It's doubly so when you have to juggle a project with daily duties. It's also rewarding. Persist until you reach the reward.
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