Just what, exactly, do we do around here? Check in every other week, and I'll let you know

In the year-plus since I changed job titles, I have occasionally felt compelled to let people know:

I have a boss (in addition to my wife.)

Some people see my title, “editor,” and assume I run the newsroom at The Beaufort Gazette and/or The Island Packet. It’s an understandable mistake — not because of my personal attributes, lord knows, but because of the simplicity of the term. It is unadorned and open ended, not narrowed with a long list of qualifiers — as in, “Editor in Charge of Dateline Utilization on Feature Articles Appearing on Page 3.”

No, the real brains of the operation is the executive editor, Fitz McAden. (That probably makes me something like a half-brain, the title by which my wife refers to me whenever I attempt to do laundry.)

Because quite a few job titles have changed around here in the past year or so and because job titles and job descriptions can vary greatly from newsroom to newsroom, I thought it might be helpful to give readers a scorecard of sorts. So every other week for the foreseeable future, I’m going to use this blog to tell you a little about the various newsroom jobs and the people who fill them.

I’ll start by telling you a little about what I do here.

Name: Jeff Kidd

College/degree: University of South Carolina (’92), South Carolina Honors College, BA from College of Journalism and Mass Communications (newspaper emphasis), with a cognate in political science

Current job title, years in it: Editor, 1 year

Previous job titles and working experience: Sports stringer, The (Columbia) State; sports writer, The Beaufort Gazette; sports editor, The Beaufort Gazette; sports editor, The Island Packet; sports editor, combined Gazette and Packet section.

Notable awards and achievements: Has won more than 50 S.C. Press Association writing and page design awards; seven writing awards in the national Associated Press Sports Editors contests; sports section captured 12 APSE awards, including a triple crown in the 20,000-and-under division in 2008; article listed under “notable works” in 2005 edition of Best American Sports Writing.

What do you like most about your job: The sheer variety of my duties. I get to plan coverage, line edit, write, administer, deal with the public ... it is very difficult to get bored doing this because no two days are alike. I’m cheating here by listing more than one thing, but I also love the challenge of doing work that is important to the public, but with the resource limitations intrinsic to small newspapers. And, frankly, if I didn’t love Beaufort, long ago I would have done what the vast majority of people in this business do and move to a larger publication in a larger city.

If you had to do something else for a living, what would you do?: Starve, probably. Seriously, given the state of this industry, I’ve considered other prospects, and although I think there are a few things I could do (except maybe laundry), there isn’t anything else I’d rather do. I’m probably going to ride it out as long as some newspaper will have me.

So what is it, exactly, that you do around here?: My primary focus is on medium- and long-range planning, spurring new coverage initiatives, monitoring quality control of both the print and online products and assisting the executive editor in setting general newsroom policy.

That sounds a lot more high-falutin’ and esoteric than it really is. The fact is, I have a lot of daily and weekly duties, the vast majority of which I find fulfilling though not glamorous:

• I write this regular blog and try to have one entry a week.

• I write one to two editorials per week, usually but not always about subjects pertaining to northern Beaufort County.

• I edit about 90 percent of the local copy that appears in the A section. That could mean I do a line edit after another editor has given a first read, or it could mean I’m the primary editor helping shape the story with the reporter. It depends upon the story and the day.

• I do a final line and page edit of the Gazette’s Neighbors section and compile the “Beaufort Let’s it Rip” feature for that product. I also put together the Neighbors’ trivia questions and time capsule features.

• I help compile The Island Packet Class Notes feature that appears in the Packet each Monday.

• I conduct a weekly staff meeting and attend a weekly editorial board meeting and daily budget meeting. I also meet weekly with two reporters to flesh out ideas for weekend stories, which are designed to be a little more voluminous and in-depth than the “dailies” they file in the course of their beat coverage.

• I spend a lot of my day answering e-mail and phone messages from readers.

• I help manage content on the Web site, help monitor comments and forum sections and tend to The Gazette’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

But enough about me. I’ll tell you more about copy desk chief Liz Farrell in two weeks.

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