Get Working, People!
It’s August and that means one thing: Washingtonians get lazy. The Hill newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Hugo Gurdon, did his part to keep his sun-drenched journos motivated and on task with a “reminder” email to staffers last week that “these weeks leading up to the conventions are not downtime.”
“Unless you are taking vacation, you are at work,” says Gurdon.
The full email, obtained by FishbowlDC, after the jump…
We have one paper next week, one the week after, and none the week after that. But there is much to do so please remember that these weeks leading up to the conventions are not downtime.
You will each be expected to produce one substantial story for each Monday convention issue and should submit ideas to Bob so he and I can commission them by next Wednesday. In addition you may find yourselves asked to write another story for those issues — on the platform, for example, or on convention procedures etc etc.
You will also work on stories for the two Wednesday papers. I would like you, however, to treat each week not as a one-paper week but as a two paper week — Wednesday and Saturday. This will allow us to post several strong stories at the weekends and prevent them lying fallow in terms of traffic. When we have few newspapers, the web must work harder to keep The Hill in front of people. You must provide a decent stream of web stories on weekdays.
All this means that your output between now and the conventions will be a little less, but not much less, than during an equivalent period when we are publishing three times a week; you will have two substantial stories to do each week, plus two stories for the convention papers, plus a reasonable quota of web stories in between.
Unless you are taking vacation, you are at work. Please keep this in mind so that we have a strong August.
Thank you, Hugo
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Nadine Cheung
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