Teach Your Children Well
I’m excited – my daughter’s journalism class has invited me to talk with them tomorrow. The teacher wants me to tell them what a journalist’s life is like. It should be fun, despite the hour (7:30? Do people dress that early?).

One thing I have to address is deadlines. In fact, if it weren’t for the topic of deadlines, I wouldn’t have been invited to speak. My daughter is in charge of the school newspaper layout. On more than one occasion, she’s lamented that some students are not getting their copy to her by the deadline. Sadly, this doesn’t change in the adult world all that much. Still, I saw it as an opportunity to talk to them about integrity and reliability – while they’re young enough to make it a habit.

Having sat on the editorial side of things, I know what missed deadlines can do. Usually, deadlines are set with very little room to breathe. We had a number of deadlines within a two-week span. Editorial, advertising, graphics, first pages, final pages, printer. Miss a single beat and things can unravel quickly. If a writer misses a deadline, it then becomes a scramble for copy. I remember all too well (and all too often) chasing down or even writing myself copy for a magazine that had to go to the graphics department ASAP.

It’s there that I first began to understand the value of a reliable writer. There were a number of great writers we rarely worked with because they couldn’t be bothered working under deadlines. The mediocre to good writers got the lion’s share of the work. It didn’t matter if we had to perform heavy edits – the copy was there. And if a great writer was handing in compelling copy on deadline? Oh, the work that person would have!

We all miss deadlines occasionally for one reason or another. It happens. The key is to make it the exception and not the rule. Your integrity is only as good as your actions. That could mean the difference between working hard or hardly working.