Goal-setting is an essential task

People responsible for opinion pages should have two goals in mind. One is to deal promptly and authoritatively with topics in the news.

The other is to deal effectively with everything else, including important matters that simmer rather than boil, features we want to add, skills we want to develop, and new areas we want to explore. These matters don't leap to the top of our daily agenda. To do them requires planning.

Here's how we do that planning at the Observer, Each January we hold a half-day meeting to set our department's goals for the year, Everyone takes part: the four writers and I, the op-ed editor, the letters editor, and the cartoonist. We start the meeting with two questions: What aren't we doing that we want to do? What are we doing that we should stop doing?

Both questions are important. If your department is like ours, everybody has a full-time job. If we want to do something new, we may need to stop doing something old, or figure out a different way to get it done.

Then comes a freewheeling discussion that leads to our setting of goals for the year. We'll make a few specific commitments and assign somebody to make sure we accomplish them. We set numerical goals because, in my experience, you get what you count. Saying we |J| want to do something is an aspiration. Agreeing to do specific things on a specific timetable is a commitment.

Here are some of our goals this year:

1. Start a Viewpoint feature using brief anonymous comments from readers. Start March 15, do at least thirty.

2. Do six special photo-and-editorial pages.

3. To recognize and encourage community leadership, creatlT"W! leadership portrait photo series on Saturday Viewpoint. Start March i, do at least thirty portraits.

4. In editorials and op-ed columns by various experts, explore the state tax system, and recommend reforms. Goal: at least twelve editorials and columns for the year.

5. To help readers understand our pages, publish six staff-written ^, columns explaining what we do and why.

6. Evaluate the status of children in our community and state and? tell what should to be done to improve it. Goal: twenty columns and editorials

That's how we go about it. Over the years I've come to believe that no tool is more valuable in improving the breadth and skill of our department than a planning process that commits us to making changes.

What makes this work isn't the number of people. It's the commitment to make improvements every year. Even if you do just one new thing or one thing better every year, you're moving from where you are to where you want to be.

Ed Williams is editor of the editorial pages of The Charlotte Observer. E-mail ewilliams@ charlotteobserver.com

Copyright MASTHEAD National Conference of Editorial Writers Summer 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved