There’s a question I get asked a lot by friends, colleagues and audience members at conferences.
There are variations, but they all go something like, “How do you find time to do everything that you do?”
I usually just answer with something like, “I never sleep” or “I don’t know. I’ve always done a dozen things at once.”
You might be surprised to know I’m a procrastinator. Not about everything, but if it’s something that can be put off, there’s a good chance I will put it off. That’s been the case for the past year whenever the topic of rearranging my office came up.
Some of you know I moved my office from a tall building in West Knoxville, Tennessee to my home one year ago. I did what most people do when they move offices: I packed and moved everything as quickly as possible, not giving much thought to what would be most conducive to long-term productivity.
My workspace consisted of a desk with a 27-inch iMac, keyboard and mouse. “Not bad,” you might say. But as my workload increased, it quickly became obvious that I needed to give serious thought to ways to increase my efficiency.
Sure, I hired some more folks to help. That was the easy part. But my work requires a lot of attention from me, and if I was going to get everything done required to run three growing businesses, I had to find ways to get more done with less effort.
So, in February (2019), I took some time to give some thought to ways to increase the efficiency of my work. I’d been putting it off for a year, but it was time to put some serious effort into creating a workspace conducive to productivity.
My work is compartmentalized into several areas. I spend a lot of time writing columns and books. I also spend a lot of time overseeing the production of books by other authors. This includes going over the work done by editors and layout staff, going over their work before it is finalized on the page, as well as sometimes doing the layout of a book myself. I also spend a good bit of time creating material for webinars, conferences and marketing.
As I examined my day-to-day workflow, I realized I spent a lot of time moving back and forth from one application to another. When finalizing the pages of a book, I would go between the editor’s notes in Microsoft Word, the text in Adobe InDesign, and the graphics in Photoshop.
If I could have everything on the screen at once, I surmised, I would save a significant amount of time shifting between applications.
I also realized I was spending more time than I should waiting for things to happen on my iMac. They say time is money, and they’re right. It doesn’t take long to make up for the expense of a faster computer. With that in mind, I bought the fastest Macbook Pro available. To deal with the screen space issue, I purchased a wide-screen 33-inch monitor.
For about a week, I worked with the new Macbook, connected to the 33-inch monitor, along with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Things sped up significantly. I could get two InDesign pages side by side on the wide-screen, plus a page from Microsoft Word beside them.
It dawned on me, however, I was still losing productivity because having so many pages on one screen required me to keep them small enough to see everything at once. It worked, but I still had to put out more effort than necessary to work between documents. Sure, I could run Photoshop on the new Macbook Pro monitor, but it was too small for much of the work I was doing.
That’s when it dawned on me. I was just about to order yet another monitor when I realized I had my old iMac sitting on a desk in another room, just taking up space. I moved a second desk into my home office, directly next to the first. This allowed me to use my Macbook Pro, 33-inch monitor, and iMac all at the same time. Everything was coming together.
I began using the 33-inch monitor exclusively for InDesign pages. I could place two pages side by side and see them clearly. On the iMac, directly to the right, I installed Microsoft Word, and use that Monitor almost exclusively for looking over editor’s notes in Word, while editing the InDesign files at the same time. This also left room on the Macbook Pro screen for quick edits in Photoshop or other tasks.
Another area of my work requires me to send out email blasts on a regular basis. These go to webinar attendees, marketing contacts, and publications that carry my syndicated columns. I had used the iMac for email blasts, but I quickly became addicted to having the iMac screen available for editing work. That’s when it hit me: Why not get my old Macbook Pro out of its case and put it to use? It’s now used for email blasts, as well as other tasks that come up from time to time.
How much has my productivity increased since reconfiguring my desktop two weeks ago? I haven’t run any official tests, but I can assure you the answer is, “a lot.”
In the early 90s, when I opened my second business – an ad agency – and computers were much slower, I found myself waiting…a lot. That’s when I got the idea to set up a workspace with three computers. One was on my right, one was directly in front of me, and the third was to my left. I had a chair that would spin around, allowing me to work on one computer while waiting on the other two computers to finish their tasks.
I guess things haven’t changed that much. Sure, computers are a lot faster, but so is the demand for output. If I can increase my productivity by 30 or 40 percent simply by updating or adding hardware or software, you better believe I’m going to do it.
If you’re reading this column, there’s a good chance that you publish a newspaper. Here’s my advice: Don’t skimp on hardware and software. Updated software, more screen area, and faster computers pay for themselves in no time.
No one buys my hardware or software for me. It comes directly out of my pocket. So, when I pay for the latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud for my staff or update equipment, I do it because it more than covers the initial investment in increased efficiency.
Michael J. Lambert and Sheila K. Meagher join the firm’s media law practice and represent a wide range of media clients in prepublication review and other areas. Michael counsels publishers and journalists on access, newsgathering, privacy, defamation, and related issues. Before joining Prince Lobel, he worked with the NBCUniversal News Group in New York City, and served as a judicial clerk to the Hon. Steven M. Wellner of the District of Columbia Superior Court. Michael received his law degree in 2015 from the Paul M. Hebert Center of Louisiana State University.
Sheila focuses on transactional matters for media clients, including contracts, licensing, promotions, native advertising, and intellectual property protection. Before joining Prince Lobel, she was a private equity attorney at a large Boston law firm, where she assisted with a variety of acquisitions and investments. She has particular experience in the sports industry, having worked during law school for the Boston Red Sox, where she assisted in the drafting of sponsorship, licensing, and event agreements for entities under the Fenway Sports Group umbrella. After graduating from Boston College Law School in 2016, she clerked for the Hon. Charles E. Butler of the Delaware Superior Court.
Student Journalism: More Needed Than Ever
In more communities today than ever, student publications are doing double-duty — reporting news of schools and surrounding communities — and doing both well.
As a nation, and for anyone who supports a free press, that dual rule is worthy of notice, honor and support. We take note of the great work being done by journalists who happen to be students as we recognize the 50th anniversary of a major student-First Amendment decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Freedom Forum Institute (FFI), the Newseum and the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) are declaring 2019 the “Year of the Student Journalist.”
As you might expect in today’s world, the life of student journalists and of the student press is not without challenge and obstacle, along with great dollops of good reporting.
As SPLC Executive Director Hadar Harris — with whom, in full disclosure, I and my FFI colleagues are coordinating this declared “Year” — recently wrote: “Student journalists play a key role in the civic life of their community. Not only do they report on important issues in the life of a school or school district, but as the number of professional journalists has dwindled, student journalists often also fill the gap in reporting on county, state and regional issues.”
“In 2014, a Pew research study found that student journalists made up 14 percent of the overall state house reporting corps. That number is certainly higher today. But student journalists and journalism education programs are under pressure. Student journalists have lesser First Amendment protections and are often subject to censorship, prior review, budget battles and other external pressures.”
For many who don’t often see student journalism, at the high school or college levels, the recollections are more likely than not to revolve around stories of “big games,” student elections or such. But in the 21st century, as newspaper circulation nationwide has continued to drop — more than 11 percent last year alone, reports document — more student journalists are reporting on stories and issues outside their school grounds or campuses.
In the past year, SPLC reports, students broke important stories about teacher misconduct (Utah), improper transfer of student athletes (Arkansas) and disciplinary charges by a state agency against an administrator (Vermont). Stories from students about teen pregnancy, drug abuse, mental illness and even how the recent partial federal government affected local businesses are now commonplace.
Sadly, school administrators censored those controversial stories in efforts not to make their schools look bad. In Texas, after students published editorials critical of the school administration, the paper was suspended and the unhappy principal banned all student editorials. In each case, the stories were reinstated, but the framework which allows for such censorship remains.
Just as we have not tolerated government control of what general news outlets can report, but hold them accountable for that reporting, we should adopt that same approach to student journalism. The Year of the Student Journalist will also highlight state-based student-led efforts to protect student press freedom and to prevent retaliation against advisers standing up for the First Amendment rights of their students. Such New Voices protections are in place in 14 states and are currently pending in eight more.
The legislation reflects changes in attitudes among our fellow citizens, according to the Freedom Forum Institute’s annual “State of the First Amendment” national survey. In 2014, the last year in which the direct question was included in the survey, 68 percent agreed that public school students should be allowed to report on controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities, while only 27 percent disagreed. When the question was first asked in 2001, Americans were almost evenly split on the question and those who strongly disagreed with the statement dominated the response.
As we saw demonstrated most tragically in the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., nearly a year ago, student journalists can compete with professionals in reporting on even such horrific news.
As one student editor told me during a podcast interview just days later, the newspaper staff was making coverage plans even as the shots were still being fired, as they huddled in a closet for safety. The thinking: It was a big story, whether a faked attack or a real one.
Such an approach to covering the news — and the quality report that staff produced days later — is a professional approach to news that would bring credit to any newsroom.
In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District that neither “students (n)or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Now, with that admonition in mind, and the realization that for many of us, student journalists will bring us the news of our town, school district or more, it’s time to support these journalists and their publications.
So let’s spend 2019 doing just that — in the “Year of the Student Journalist.”