After arriving at the visitor’s entrance to the Orlando Sentinel Newsroom 15 minutes early, I checked in with security and waited until Mark Schlueb arrived at 9:30. We had talked some the day before about arranging all of this, I was only given just enough time to buy myself a handheld voice recorder. When he arrived, we shook hands without introductions, we already knew each other. Although I was here to interview him, I had been promised some time with several other people in the building. I asked him if it was alright if I recorded the day, he said yes.
“It’s not very active at this hour; the deadline crunch comes later in the day, more people come in later. But, here’s our research library over here – they help us find stuff, keep it up to date. It’s a pretty messy place as you can see, so you can sit here.”
The room was so wide that the ceiling, despite the good 4 feet it was held at above us, seemed low in comparison. There were cubicles separating every individual who was working at the moment, and they seemed to outnumber actual workers 6 to 1. He was right about there not being many people early in the day.
“Uh, so, let’s see. I’ll show you around a little bit, actually.”
We left his area to go look around the workplace. You could really see everything from anywhere in the room, and it all looked the same, but different clusters of cubicles were, as I later learned, all dedicated to specific jobs.
“This is where ‘online people’ sit, this is Frank.”
We shook hands.
“This is Brandon, he’s a student at Valencia thinking about Journalism.”
Frank looked back at his computer. “Good luck.”
Mark began to point at things on Frank’s monitor.
“So they’re keeping everything updated on the website – that probably tracks in some way what people are looking at.”
Frank chimed in. “We can see who’s on different stories at the moment so, like, 64, 69 people are looking at this ‘Gators item’, you know, 50 people are looking at this, so these are kind of average numbers. Sometimes you’ll see nice big spikes, like yesterday we had, like, 300 people on a Halloween candy story, other stories will get even higher into the thousands which is pretty great.”
“And you’re able to determine where to place stories on the website based on the tool?”
“Yeah, yeah. So this is our current layout, with this new CMS we can change up the homepage. We can have a big image or video or slideshow; right now we’re going mostly with, like, headlines. It’s a pretty deep site; we just changed it about, 2 months ago?”
“It’s constantly updated. All the time.”
“Yeah, yep. Hey, good luck, have a good day.”
Everyone seemed busy at whatever it was they were doing. Looking around, I thought I could feel the extra stress that Mark and I were placing on employees who wouldn’t know what to say if we came up to them and began asking them questions. It was a kind thing of him to do, but I didn’t expect Mark’s ‘traveling salesman’ technique of pooling in information for me to record to last very much longer, if only out of courtesy to his peers. I walked and said nothing.
“This is our breaking news team, this is where they sit.”
The two of them seated there wasted no time letting us know that they knew we were waiting for them to say something. Extremely brief introductions were made, my hand was the first to rise and the last to fall during.
“This is Dezzarae, one of our breaking news reporters, always running out to crime scenes and murders and robberies and whatever happens. What are you working on now?”
“Um, heh”
“Has anything happened?”
“Um, there was a homicide this morning, I was working on that. Now I’m working on something for next week about a cop who was in a road rage incident and, um. .”
Her phone began to ring
“. .and had been shooting people for years.”
She picked up her headset and answered. No emotion, completely professional. We left them and went down an aisle of cubicles.
“Editors over here. See him? He’s going to be going into the 10-o-clock meeting that we’re going to go to. He’s asking everybody what they’re working on so that when he goes into this meeting he can tell the other editors what’s going on. This is our video and photo area, they take mostly videos, some photos. Here’s Red, our star photographer. This is Brandon Hogan, he’s a student at Valencia, he’s thinking about Journalism.”
The photographer’s eyes looked large in his thick glasses and had a voice to match his smallish and old physical appearance.
“Oh, cool!”
“Everywhere I go with Red, everybody knows him.”
“It’s about your community, you gotta connect. It’s true, that’s true. So are you guys just hanging out for the day or what?”
I explained what I was doing there, and that I should be going to a meeting before I left
“And how’d you guys connect?”
“Katy Miller.”
“Oh! Katy Miller, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Neat! Well, you’re hanging out with one of the best.”
“He’s also an accomplished liar.”
We walked back to Mark’s cubicle. I asked him what his mornings here were routinely like.
“So, I just normally start with checking emails, I check some at home before I get to the office and all the time because there are hundreds and hundreds a day and I can’t keep up with them. There are public relations people and corporations and public bodies and police agencies that are shooting news or what they think is news to you all day long – stuff they want to get in the news or, in the case of cops, stuff that they know we’re going to be asking about anyway, so they’re letting us know what’s happening. Like, UCF’s having a job fair, there’s a news release from a school district about food for poorer families, voter intimidation on Election Day. This is interesting; it’s an internal email about how many views we had on our website yesterday, basically clicks, yesterday we had just over a million, our goal is 1.2 million. We didn’t make it, somebody will hear about that. Here’s how many clicks we had on online videos, just over 10,000. About 61,000 came to us via social media, so it’s different now than when I started this, now we have to promote our stories via social media and any other way we can.”
I asked him what his career path was.
“Well, I originally was thinking about being an architect, but I’m not any good at math, right, and when I was in college I started working on the college paper because I had worked on my high school’s paper, and I really really liked it and realized that that’s what I wanted to do. I went to UCF, majored in Journalism there and minored in Political Science – while I was in college I did an internship as a reporter at the Tampa Tribune, like a three month thing. I think they required that and may still now require internships. So, from there, at that time, the career path was you started at a small newspaper, and then gradually you would go to a bigger and bigger newspaper, so I started at a paper in Ft. Pierce called ‘The Tribune’, I was there for a few years, I went to a paper in Daytona beach, was there for a little while, went up to a paper in Ohio for less than a year, and then came back here. I’ve been here since 2001, but you know that landscape has changed, so the starting off career path might be the same, you know, electing to do that in college, but now there’s any number of media outlets, you can work for tons of online outlets, I’m sure you know.”
I asked him how he felt about one perusing newspaper journalism as a full time career, specifically now.
“Um, I’m not sure. I don’t want to be too negative with you, but, uh, like if I were starting out now I don’t know if I would go towards newspapers unless I was doing it to acquire some skills that would help me in, you know, the overall media field. Print journalism has been sliding for a long time now, and revenue wise continues to slide. More people are getting their news online and fewer of them are paying for it. Somewhere, somebody has to pay for the news, so, if nobody is, that business model is not gonna sustain itself. That’s a long answer to your question, but, as a long term career, starting out now, I don’t see anybody staying in newspapers. They mostly call us at some levels ‘content providers’ now because we provide content for our websites and other platforms.”
I asked him how different working in print journalism was when he started.
“Well, there’s a lot less of us now, when I first started at this newspaper, at the peak, news operations were taken care of by, I think it was 530 employees. Right now, I’d be surprised if it was 150, so there have been a number of layoffs, and that’s not just the Sentinel, that’s every newspaper. So, when you think about that, there’s probably 25% or less people working in newspaper operations now than there were, you know, 10 years ago. There are people who have been in it a long time, like me and Renee and Martin and Leslie, everybody you see here has been at it a long time. Red, the photographer that you met, he’s sort of a legend, in Orlando anyway. He’s probably been here 35 years, but, I mean, Dezzarae’s only been here for a few years, she’s still fairly young, you know we’ve hired some people in the last 6 weeks, a group of them, some of them were right out of college. So what you see are people, like my age maybe, transitioning out into other careers. Some of them are news related, a buddy of mine went to work for Florida Trend magazine, but some of them aren’t.”
He pointed to the cubicle across from his, an empty one that still had some personal notes left tacked to sponge board. Now that I was paying attention, I noticed that Mark was the only reporter left in this aisle.
“The guy who used to sit right there left to work as a campaign spokesman for Congressman Alan Grayson, who was just reelected Tuesday, and now the campaign’s over, so he’ll be the spokesman for his congressional office. And people go into public relations, you know, spokespeople for a local hospital or something like that.”
I asked how work was done socially.
“It’s mostly done individually on the reporter level. We’re divided into beats, right? So mine is City Hall, Martin covers Seminole county, Renee covers courts. Once they assign you to a beat, it’s your job to find out what’s going on in that area and to find stories from that area. Now you’re gonna have an editor that supervises you and will suggest stories, too, but probably 80-85% of the stories that are in the paper come from the reporter level. Reporters do sometimes work together on stories, and now as a reporter, more than ever, you have to work within certain disciplines on stories. We have data people, who will do databases that will go along with your story, and we work with the videographers to go out and take video and still photos for our stories, we work with graphic artists who will do charts and all sorts of things for the web and the print edition. So, you work with a team, but as more of a collaboration of people who go out and get the stories themselves.”
I asked him what the pay was like.
“Um, geez, what are they starting people out at these days? Well you’re not gonna get rich, at all. It’s probably, for somebody starting out at a paper this size, it’s probably 40-something thousand. You know, I make, um, quite a bit more than that, but that’s because I’ve been here a long time and worked at a lot of other papers first. But, like I said, it’s not a super high paying job. Nobody really gets into this job for the money, it’s just something that they want to do. It’s a fun job, you know? You never know what you’re gonna be working on every day, something new can pop up all the time, it keeps it fresh and interesting. It’s not drudgery and you feel like you’re, maybe, doing something good. It’s really more of a draw than the salary is. But the salary’s a big consideration because, you know, sometimes you look around to people who were in college with you, for instance, and took a different career path and are making a lot more money than you, it can make you wonder which one of you made the right choice. Everybody’s treated the same no matter how long they’ve been here and you’ll find, in a newsroom, you work with the smartest people you’re ever gonna meet, fun people, funny people, really dedicated people. So, I think that matters more, the environment you’re in.”
We decided then that it was about time we went to the news meeting. The door was wide open to the rest of the floor, an oval table with 7 people seated at it became 2 seats fuller.
What was to follow was an editor’s meeting that, from start to finish, lasted close to 30 minutes. During this session, the group of editors took turns explaining which stories they believed to be the most presentable, which stories should be headlines, what events should be made into stories for the next paper, and brainstorming. Each time a new person spoke, they said their name and job title before sharing what they had brought to the table that day. Since most of the conversation that I recorded was no more than small talk, I’ll just cut it down to what every editor had to say about themselves, as well as anything else that they directed towards me. Mark never said more than a few words during all of this.
“So you shook hands with Avido Khahaifa, our editor. I’m John Cutter, the associate editor. This is the second news meeting of the day for us, it’s a little bit more digitally focused as a way to kick off what we do online. This meeting is ultimately met to tell us what we’re gonna put on the front pages tomorrow.”
He drew my attention to a large television in the room, on it were titles of stories moving around each other very slowly on a list.
“So what you’re looking at on the TV set is a metrics tool called ‘chartbeat’ that tells us what’s happening at any given moment for any piece of content online. Reporters use it to feed their ego if they want to see how their stories are doing but web producers use it to help them make some decisions on how we change things. So we’re gonna talk other kinds of metrics, we’ll critique the print newspaper and anything for the website and people pitch stories, as they go around they’ll introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about what they do. We’re also gonna talk a bit about Sunday paper when this is done and if you want a few of us can hang around to answer questions.”
Adivo spoke up, then.
“And don’t feel like you have to stay at the table if it’s warmer back outside. You don’t have on sleeves.”
The meeting started. As I explained, rather than make you read dirge for 30 minutes, I’ll make you read summaries of dirge for 3.
“I’m Todd Stewart, I lead our interactive and visuals team and I’m in the meeting to discuss how these things performed over digital platforms, our website, apps, all that good stuff.”
Todd went on to bring up the fact that their website didn’t reach enough page views as what’s referred to as the “gap standard” which, as far as I could tell, meant to reach the goal of 1.2 million clicks. Besides this, he listened to the others for the rest of the meeting and changed the layout of the Sentinel’s website according to real time suggestions from the editors.
“I’m Alfred, I work on the digital platforms team and I talk about what’s trending right now.”
True to his word, Alfred let the others know what, metrically, would be the most popular things to publish stories about.
“I’m Mike Lafferty, my team is the breaking news and communities team, which includes Mark there.”
Mike spent his time pushing a story about beetles that were genetically manufactured to eradicate Florida’s invasive air potatoes, emphasizing that he wanted the Sentinel to be one of the first big newspapers in Central Florida to break the news to the public that the project was currently a huge success. Sure enough, the story was in the paper the very next day.
“I’m Mark Skoneki, I’m here representing the team that covers politics, education, business, and a few other areas, everything that those guys don’t cover, basically, in terms of news.”
What Mark had to say was, in my opinion, a little bit more serious than anything that any of the other editors had to contribute. While the others talked about beetles and Tough Mudders, Skoneki talked about students skipping the FCAT as a form of protest and of more and more businesses in Florida having to shut down because of unprofessional stewardship.
“I’m Paul Owens, I’m in charge of the editorial of economic pages.”
Paul talked simply about Private space accidents, the Orion capsule accident, and the Dr. Phillips opening. He said almost nothing.
“I’m Cassie Armstrong from pictures and video.”
Cassie went over what pictures and video her team had of stories such as the air potato beetles’ success, the Dr. Philips opening, and the opening of new strange restaurants around Orlando. Her piece was just about as short as Paul’s, however she went quickly around and asked who needed pictures and for what stories, as only a few photographers could be spared to take care of the most important jobs.
The rest of the meeting was a long decision making process regarding what story (a car crash, a free concert, or a Tough Mudder competition) should be on the front page of the Sentinel, as well as which stories should be features tomorrow and the next day. After the meeting was finished, I thanked them for their time.
At this point, I pulled aside Mike Lafferty so that I could ask him about his job as an editor.
Specifically, I asked him for more details about what the meeting was about.
“It’s just for the newspaper. What’s on the website changes throughout the day and it gives us an idea of what people are looking at. How things used to happen was you’d research a story and write it during the day and turn it in at the end of the day and it would be in the paper the next day. Now, if someone covers a meeting in the morning, we might give people live updates on the website and, eventually, have a finalized and well constructed article about it in the newspaper the next day. More people read the paper that way if they stay in touch. It’s more writing though, a constant process that builds a good story.”
I asked if there were exceptions to this, if a new paper could be printed on the spot because of a tragedy regardless of final versions or meetings.
“They can change the layout of the paper, certainly. They could pull one of the stories that they said would go out front, push it to the local front, or not run something else entirely and put something else out there. I mean that’s what newspaper’s always been about, reacting to the news quickly. We’re still pretty good at that. It’s rare, but newspapers used to sometimes put out ‘extras’, as in an extra edition of the paper, like in the middle of the day if something really big happened. That rarely happens now, the last time it did was on September 11th. It’d have to be something really big for that to happen.”
He gave me his business card before I went back to find Mark. I asked him if the papers were made in the building.
“Yeah, uh, you want to go see the presses?”
Sure.
We walked down a hallway, talking as we did so.
“They’re probably not running right now, we’re still writing the news. There should be a window we could look down on them from. We can’t go on the floor though, your arm could get caught in the presses, we’d have to pay your family a bunch of money.”
He stopped in the middle of the hallway next to an open door and walked through it. It was a room just as big as the one we had come from. There were no lights on, but you could see that the floor was completely empty save for large piles of chairs, broken desks, and construction materials in three of the four corners of the room, as well as a small box under a flickering set of office type fluorescents.
“Look at this. Used to be full of reporters, then it was full of call center type people. Not as many people work here anymore. This is a two story building; they’re in the process of moving everybody working on the first floor to this room, there isn’t gonna be anybody on the entire first floor after that. This should tell you how much print news is shrinking.”
He looked forlorn, I could see that he hated to see his profession dying out even if the timing was more or less convenient for a man of his age who had been in the business as long. In fact, what little cheerfulness I observed that day was in people reminiscing.
When we visited the presses, he explained to me that what was most likely being printed at that moment were ads to go into the Sunday newspaper, as they were the sort of thing that got printed during the News Center’s least busy morning hours. I should mention that the recordings from this part of the building were drowned out by the churning of two story machinery; we weren’t even supposed to be there, anyway. There weren’t many parting words.
“This is a job where you can’t really fake it. If you’re good at it, people will recognize you, and if you’re bad, people will recognize that. But, if you’re good, you can get hired.”
Editor | Writer 