How newsroom managers can invest more time developing their staff — and why it matters

One of my most consistently rewarding professional tasks is recruiting good writers and helping them develop the managerial skills they need in order to be good editors. It’s faster and easier, in the short term, for experienced student journos to do all the work themselves, but far better in the long run to train up a community of assistant editors and pinch-hitters and polymaths.

My editor stood in my doorway. “How did your first day go?” he asked.

“I didn’t get anything done,” I said, holding out the list. “All I did was talk to people.”

“That’s your job!” he shouted at me, laughing. “That’s what I need you to do!”

Call me slow. But what I began to realize on that March evening in 1981 is that managers who take responsibility for a staff and its work have two primary jobs:

Product and People.

And here’s the important part: They are equally important, but rarely treated that way. —Poynter..