In today’s multimedia world, editors must focus on planning

Running your department like a hybrid newsroom will make stories soar — and lessen editing headaches

The editor of yesteryear — green visor, blue pencil, red eyes — has gone away, along with the print-only distribution model.

If you find yourself also coordinating podcasts, videos, photographs, and Web packages all in the name of internal communications, you’re not alone.

The key to juggling a half-dozen multimedia duties is to plan ahead and turn your communications department into a newsroom, says Jim Ylisela, president of Ragan Consulting.

“We have to take the awful stuff that comes out of the executive suite in the form of an issue or an initiative, and we have to translate that,” Ylisela says. “No one in the workforce understands it, so we have to do something about that. We have to create in our own shops what I call a newsroom mentality — which means we’re not just reacting to everything.”

That means being proactive, digging up meaningful stories, finding the best way to tell stories, and communicating all of this in advance to your writers. The work you put in on the front end means that when deadlines loom, the editing itself will be vastly easier and quicker.

Turn your communicators into reporters

Employees want to read about people, not processes.