It was brutal and extremely stressful but it helped prepare staff for the real thing
Practice makes perfect. That was the philosophy at the National Post, where simulations were used to train a new workforce brought together to build a national newspaper.
Since the paper was brand new, there was a trial period before its first “real” edition was actually published in 1998. Dozens of employees were being hired at the same time the style and tone of the paper were being decided on. For a few weeks before the newspaper went to press, employees worked on individual sections of the paper and each section produced its own daily “dry run.”
Neil Seeman, a member of the paper’s editorial board, says the staff “basically mocked the reality of a normal paper, with the end goal being that when we actually began, it would be like another day. We ratcheted it up increasingly, in terms of the pace, the seriousness with which we treated the practice right up until the day of the launch.” Seeman says the experience “felt like being in training camp on a football team.
“We didn’t have a full complement of staff, we were still hiring at that time, but there were sufficient numbers of production people so you could actually mock up a page. We’d run different sections on different days so we’d have dry runs for say the life section, the news section on a certain day.
Often the stories that we’d actually run were not actually fully edited stories, they might often be just wire stories duped in, but increasingly, as we got closer to the date, they really were real stories and it was like producing a real paper.”
During this time, employees were treated as if it were a real job. “It was extremely high stress,” says Seeman. “If a deadline came and the page wasn’t ready, literally a blank page had to go off just so you could teach that section a lesson. It was very brutal, extremely stressful. It had to be to get a sense of reality.”
At the end of the day, everyone would meet to look at the final product, and there would be a great deal of discussion and changes. “A lot of different formulas were being bandied about. I did get the sense that it was very productive because everyone was involved in the debate over what worked well and what didn’t work.” It lasted about six weeks, and as the launch date approached, the intensity increased to the point where everything was like a normal news day, they’d have meetings in the morning, and meetings in the afternoon.
“Morale was quite high at the time, because it was such a new event. I think everyone was psyched to be there.”
Rick Morrison, a copy editor in the FP investing section, says “it was basically as we work now, except the presses didn’t run and the paper wasn’t distributed. So in every other way, the deadlines were the same, people were just as eager to get their pages completed on time as they were after the presses ran. There was room for experimentation, layout and design, ideas that didn’t work were corrected.”
Design director Gayle Grin was one of the original designers on the team and was one of the first people hired. “Because it was a new paper, very few of us had ever worked together. Everyone was on equal footing.”
She says that each day, “we’d look at all the proofs and then we’d do the analysis and coaching, how to keep improving the design. The night of the launch we were all quite relaxed because we had done it so many times…. The designers would help copy editors with their layouts and every night I would give little reviews on how they did and explain the spacing between type and pictures and using pictures large. We still police pages — not a single page goes out with a designer’s approval.”
These “dry runs” were a necessity, says Seeman. “I can’t imagine how else they could do it. Inevitably, you’re still experimenting after the fact, but anything you can do to prepare in advance is great.”
Ann Macaulay is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
Since the paper was brand new, there was a trial period before its first “real” edition was actually published in 1998. Dozens of employees were being hired at the same time the style and tone of the paper were being decided on. For a few weeks before the newspaper went to press, employees worked on individual sections of the paper and each section produced its own daily “dry run.”
Neil Seeman, a member of the paper’s editorial board, says the staff “basically mocked the reality of a normal paper, with the end goal being that when we actually began, it would be like another day. We ratcheted it up increasingly, in terms of the pace, the seriousness with which we treated the practice right up until the day of the launch.” Seeman says the experience “felt like being in training camp on a football team.
“We didn’t have a full complement of staff, we were still hiring at that time, but there were sufficient numbers of production people so you could actually mock up a page. We’d run different sections on different days so we’d have dry runs for say the life section, the news section on a certain day.
Often the stories that we’d actually run were not actually fully edited stories, they might often be just wire stories duped in, but increasingly, as we got closer to the date, they really were real stories and it was like producing a real paper.”
During this time, employees were treated as if it were a real job. “It was extremely high stress,” says Seeman. “If a deadline came and the page wasn’t ready, literally a blank page had to go off just so you could teach that section a lesson. It was very brutal, extremely stressful. It had to be to get a sense of reality.”
At the end of the day, everyone would meet to look at the final product, and there would be a great deal of discussion and changes. “A lot of different formulas were being bandied about. I did get the sense that it was very productive because everyone was involved in the debate over what worked well and what didn’t work.” It lasted about six weeks, and as the launch date approached, the intensity increased to the point where everything was like a normal news day, they’d have meetings in the morning, and meetings in the afternoon.
“Morale was quite high at the time, because it was such a new event. I think everyone was psyched to be there.”
Rick Morrison, a copy editor in the FP investing section, says “it was basically as we work now, except the presses didn’t run and the paper wasn’t distributed. So in every other way, the deadlines were the same, people were just as eager to get their pages completed on time as they were after the presses ran. There was room for experimentation, layout and design, ideas that didn’t work were corrected.”
Design director Gayle Grin was one of the original designers on the team and was one of the first people hired. “Because it was a new paper, very few of us had ever worked together. Everyone was on equal footing.”
She says that each day, “we’d look at all the proofs and then we’d do the analysis and coaching, how to keep improving the design. The night of the launch we were all quite relaxed because we had done it so many times…. The designers would help copy editors with their layouts and every night I would give little reviews on how they did and explain the spacing between type and pictures and using pictures large. We still police pages — not a single page goes out with a designer’s approval.”
These “dry runs” were a necessity, says Seeman. “I can’t imagine how else they could do it. Inevitably, you’re still experimenting after the fact, but anything you can do to prepare in advance is great.”
Ann Macaulay is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
