It seems so practical now that I look back. But half-way through the second semester of my senior year in college, while listening to Chris Krewson of Philly.com, I remember thinking it would take years to be a Web editor.
At the time I did not think I knew enough about building a website or maintaining a publication’s website. However, while I was telling myself I knew nothing about Web, I was maintaining my own blog which was getting at least 20 hits each day (Even when I didn’t post anything new), I was doing most of the story posting at CampusPhilly.com and I was using Wordpress.com to develop a place to archive CP multimedia. All while using hyper-text to gain page views.
I remember having my first meeting with the big guys at Montgomery Media. This was Mike Morsch, Executive Editor at Montey, Betsy Wilson, Publisher, two of our editors, the Executive Editor at Mainline Media News Tom Murray and Jabari Young, Online Editor at Mainline Media News.
The meeting was to talk about how well Mainline was doing with their website and hopefully, to give some tips to our guys about how to make our website better.
Immediately, Mike started asking how Mainline, being that both of our publications are in chapter 11, was able to afford an Online editor. He exclaimed that I could do what Jabari was doing but he needed me to write because that was the area where we were needed more people.
I’m getting off track here but that was what set the idea in motion, at least in Mike’s mind, that we needed a Web editor and that I could be that person.
At the time, I didn’t know how to post using our system, TownNews.com. This is where opportunity kicked in. I asked a few editors to show me the basics and they did. A few weeks past and still nothing was happening. Until one day, Mike stopped by my desk and we talked a little. He asked if I still had interest in playing a larger role in the web publication and I excitedly answered, “YES! That’s exactly what I want to do!”
“Good,” he said. “Maybe I can get the ball rolling a little faster then.”
For you young people out there (like me), listen up. This is how you get the position that you want.
I looked at our website immediately. What could we use...I wondered. “Hmm, we have a lot of graduation stories and a lot of photos/sound slides/videos....” The wheels were turning. “If I were Web editor,” I thought, “I would put all of the graduation stuff onto one page. Not an article but a feature page where parents, students, friends and family could visit and find everything they needed. One click leading to several clicks leading to several hits leading to more advertisers.” HAHA!
That was the break through. Suddenly, everything was “what can I do differently on web.”
I made a graduation slide-show on Friday and I didn’t want to wait until Wednesday to post it. Another idea: I was eating at a lot of family run (non-chain) restaurants. Maybe we could put together a summer dining guide.
I collected all of these ideas and put them into a list which I then emailed to Mike under the subject. “Ideas for Web.”
I’ve recently realized that everything I send to Mike, he sends to Betsy the publisher and together they go through my ideas and figure out what they like and what they don’t.
So one day, I was suddenly called into a meeting to talk about the dining guide idea. We talked about how we could possibly find ways to bring in some money if we used the guide as a form of advertising.
After that meeting, I was asked to stay and speak with Mike and Betsy. They wanted to talk about a few of my ideas for the website. After I told them a couple of ideas involving Twitter, Facebook, story rotation and blogging, They told me that I would be the new Web and Video editor. I would maintain the website while continuing to build a multimedia section for the company.
If you check out
http://www.montgomerynews.com/ you will notice that a large part of our stories have some form of multimedia incorporated within them to add another dimension. This is a month and a half after my employment. The website is also looking better already.
This is an abrupt ending but I will post more in later weeks. Stay tuned.
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