DEPARTMENTS IN A NEWSPAPER

 In weekly and small daily newspaper plants the two general divisions are usually referred to as the office and the shop. The news and the ads are received in the office, where the copy in written and all general business connected with the newspaper is transacted. All the mechanical work pertaining to the newspaper is carried on in the shop. The paper is composed and printed and, in most weekly newspaper shops, considerable job printing is done as well.

In plants of medium size and for large city dailies, six general departments are set up, each requiring persons specially trained by education or experience. They are: editorial-news, business, promotion, mechanical, data processing and administrative. Except for data processing, which has evolved during the 1960’s and 1970’s, these departments have been traditional with newspapers over a very long period of development.

EDITORIAL-NEWS DEPARTMENT

All reading material (except advertising) is assembled in the editorial department. This may call for severall divisions, the number depending on the size of the newspaper. A large newspaper’s editorial news department will have five general divisions. 

a)      Newsroom – All general news in either prepared or processed in the newsroom. The world, national, and state news in brought in by wire for editing either by hand or through electronic editing terminals. The city editor assigns reporters to cover local news stories. News is received by telephone, telegraph and through personal interview. This room is a busy place from early in the day until press time, the intensity increasing as the deadline for copy approaches.

The large city newspaper also may have several specialized news departments – music, art, finance, agriculture, movies, radio, television. Nearly all newspapers have columns devoted exclusively to society and sports, the latter a major division on large newspapers

b)      Copy desk – Located in the newsroom but almost a separate division is the copy desk, where the stories turned in by reporters and checked by the city editor are examined by experienced copyreaders. They eliminate unnecessary and inappropriate words and phrases, correct spelling and punctuation, check facts, indicate paragraphs, and write headlines. When all the copy has been processed for the composing room, page layouts are made showing where stories are to be placed.

c)      Editorial room – In another section of the news department or in a room to themselves are the editors of the editorial pages and the editorial writers. They handle the material that goes on the editorial page, including feature stories, book reviews, and letters from readers; they write the editorial comment reflecting the newspaper’s opinion on important issues.

d)      Picture Division – Metropolitan newspapers each have a large staff of photographers who receive assignments from the picture editor, city editor or managing director. Space must be provided for photographic supplies and darkroom work. This division works closely with the newsroom.

e)      Library – Connected with the news department, particularly in larger newspaper plants, is a library, popularly called the morgue. The library contains material that is considered ‘dead copy’ but may be used again to ‘background’ or fill out current stories. Filed here are clippings from past issues of the paper – stories of local history and of persons prominent in the community; facts about the city and county government and the city, county and state budgets; and the financial statements of banks and savings and loan associations. These facts are clipped as they appear and catalogued alphabetically so that they may be found easily.

During a war many pictures of martial activities, of soldiers in camp or in action, and of important officers are filed. Mats and cuts of people involved in national affairs and in local community also are filed in the morgue. Pictures of churches, school buildings, public buildings of every sort, bridges, important highways, parks, and the like are all subject to repeated use and must be preserved.

In the library there are reference books – an encyclopedia, a complete history of  the country, states and local community if available, maps of the world, ocean charts, a globe, a book of quotations, an up-to-date dictionary, books pertaining to military operations, reference magazines, and trade journals. The larger the newspaper, the greater the demand for precise, diversified information, making the need for an adequate library imperative.

In the library also are bound files of the newspaper, files of competing papers, or microfilms of each. These will be consulted constantly not only by the editorial staff but by people of the community and visiting newspaper and magazine writers.

 

BUSINESS DEPARTMENT

The business department is responsible for the efficient operation of all the newspapers revenue producing stages. It directs sales and collections. It receives, expends and invests money. It supervises everything pertaining to the business side of the newspaper, including advertising, circulation and job printing.

a)      Advertising division: This is the most important section of the business department and is divided according to the types of advertising produced.

First, there is the group that prepares copy and sells space to local advertisers. This must be a smoothly organized sales staff because it has all local merchants, manufacturers and service institutions as prospective customers.

Second, there is the department of general advertising, sometimes called foreign or national advertising. This department looks after advertising form outside sources, usually the advertising of distant manufacturers and jobbers who have a product sold by local dealers or for which the company wishes to find a dealer.

A third essential department deals with the smallest ads – the classifieds – and requires capable direction. The classified ad department brings in valuable revenue and at the same time builds much good will for the newspaper.

Some newspapers have still another division to handle legal advertising – publication of official notices that must be run in connection with settlements brings in valuable revenue and at the same time builds records of all kinds from city, state, etc.

 

b)      Circulation division: Circulation is the lifeblood of the newspaper. Without it the newspaper would carry no advertising and without advertising the newspaper could not survive.

To perform its important selling, delivering and collecting duties effectively, the circulation division is split into several units. The largest is the group that handles the city circulation. Making the paper a welcome daily visitor to every home is a task that requires careful supervision, a large staff and hard work. On the large city newspapers hundreds of carriers and other employees are used in distribution, while many serve as salespeople and collectors.

Because the publisher normally likes to extend the influence of the newspaper as far into the surrounding territory as possible, the circulation division is organized to obtain subscribers in other towns. Papers are sold through carriers, usually boys residing in the towns.

One of the continuing problems of the circulation division is to find suitable transportation for long distances. Newspapers must be on their way while the news is still fresh. Consequently, large city newspapers have a transportation or traffic department that provides trucks, cars and motorcycles for delivery to distant points and also keeps close check on airline, train and bus service.

 

c)      Job printing division: Smaller newspapers often do job printing in a separate department in their plants. Business houses want stationary, forms, statements, catalogs, circulars and broadsides printed. The public wants wedding announcements, invitations, birth announcements, club programs and other items.

 

PROMOTION DEPARTMENT

Newspapers sometimes are accused of not taking their own medicine. It is said that they urge others to advertise but seldom make use of advertising themselves. This may have been true in earlier days, but it is not so in the majority of newspaper plants today.

Most newspaper managers realize the value of promoting their own wares, telling readers how well the classified ads pull, showing merchants how to increase sales and turnover, calling readers attention to outstanding features in the news columns, and urging subscribers to send the paper to relatives and friends. Promotion has become a specialized business. The person who can produce attractive promotion material and organize campaigns is valuable on the newspaper staff.

 MECHANICAL DEPARTMENT

 Marvelous machinery today does much of the work that was done by hand years ago. New devices are continuously being developed to save time and labor and to improve the quality of the mechanical departments work. Plants using the newer cold type or phototype processes, instead of the traditional hot metal method of setting type embody the following functions: composing, makeup, photographic plate making, and press work. In the few plants that still depend on the hot metal processes; this department has four main divisions: composing room, stereotyping room, engraving room and pressroom.

In traditional hot metal plants, the copy sent down by the news and advertising departments goes first to the composing room. News copy or straight matter is ‘set’ by operators at typesetting machines. Pictures and other illustrations are sent to the engraving room where cuts are made. Advertising copy is set by machine and by hand, and everything is then assembled in steel chases, page size.

These chases are sent to the stereotyping room, where plates are cast from molten metal for the press. If the press is a flatbed press instead of a rotary, the forms are sent to the press without being stereotyped.

DATA PROCESSING DEPARTMENT 

The addition of the computer to newspaper operations has necessitated the development of an entirely new section of highly trained personnel and sophisticated equipment. From the smallest publications to the largest some degree of reliance on data processing methods is becoming generally standardized. All departments are affected by the application of the ‘new technology’ and are thus closely interrelated with the data processing department. The nature of this interaction is made clear in ensuing portions of the text.

ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENT

 In a properly functioning newspaper, the many independent operations must be coordinated by a strong administrative unit. This unit is made up of the owners and executives whose duty is to establish and direct consistent, uniform policies.

The administrative department exercises authority over all other departments of the newspaper. Directly responsible to it are the editor in chief and the business manager, who in turn exercise full control over the ‘news side’ and the ‘business side’. The mechanical superintendent, while in complete charge of the production department, is in most cases responsible to the business manager, not directly to the administrative department.

One of the important responsibilities of the administration is to see that efficiency is maintained and that each department understands the close relationship it has with all the others.