An Average Day

I keep on meaning to get started on a post I had planned today to track everything I do in an average day, but I've been too swamped to do it. So it goes. (mark, is that one of your hated phrases?)

So here on my 10 minute lunch break I'll give it a stab.

8:20
Wake up. Reset the alarm to wake me up later.

8:50
Mark announces that it's time to get the hell up.

9:15
Morning news meeting in the sunroom

9:45
Grab a banana and go


View from my office

10 a.m.
Email the lady I was supposed to meet at 11 today at the Seattle Times Agency to see if we're still on. She replies yes, want to do it on the phone though?

10:30
Phone conference with Seattle Times lady. We discuss the nuances of the Quigo ad product, which we're redesigning. I promise to get back to her with final changes today if possible.

10:45
One of the guys who works for me comes in to tell me that the staff is upset that the interns will be running a new product we're launching in a few weeks, and is upset that the interns will have titles.

10:47
Call in the morning news editor to ask her what she's heard of the Title Upset. She tells me she gets it -- it doesn't seem right for interns to run the product and to have titles. Why? I ask a couple of times. Each time she says "Titles mean a lot." I don't get it. We go back and forth. She seems pretty upset.

10:50
Talk to the managing editor about the Title Upset. We agree not to give them the titles we'd been considering, but to give them different, less exciting titles.

10:55
Email back and forth with Vikki and Amy about the conference coming up next week.

10:56
Email back and forth with Patti and Deb at corporate about a conference call to discuss the social media guidelines we drafted, and also to discuss our privacy policy.

10:57
Meet with Rose the intern to tell her that she is going to be Executive Producer of SPI, our new online only page for the young reader. She is excited! I give her a bunch of assignments, she thanks me for everything.

10:58
Call up the program that counts our traffic to try to put together the traffic report for the 11:15 news meeting. It's in the middle of processing, so final numbers aren't ready.

10:59
Hungry. Eat two hard boiled eggs (whites only) and a banana.

11 a.m.
Email Elana my designer about the Quigo ads. Tell her we need to talk.

The Quigo ads are the text ads in the right column and at the bottom of the page:

11:01
Read the paper. Check again for traffic figures. Still churning. Read the weekend Web report to see how we did over the weekend. Here's the report for Sunday:

SUNDAY
PAGE VIEWS:
804,506
TOP CLICKS:
- Ron Paul brings presidential campaign to Seattle (Gregory Roberts; 3,615)
- O.J. Simpson ordered held without bail (AP Online; 2,795)
- Huskies can't hold halftime lead, fall to Buckeyes (Molly Yanity; 2,737)
- Huskies Notebook: Locker shines, struggles against tough defense (Molly Yanity; 2,512)
- 'Silent' Windows update raises issues (Todd Bishop; 2,384)
- Inexperience is the culprit, and that's hard to swallow (Ted Miller; 2,225)
- Man stabbed Saturday night in Skyway hospitalized (Levi Pulkkinen; 2,140)
- Black boxes found in Thai plane crash (AP Online; 2,106)
- Huskies Report Card (Molly Yanity; 1,966)
- Furious clubs fight 'political agenda' (Scott Gutierrez, Angela Galloway and Casey McNerthney; 1,801)

PHOTO GALLERIES:
- Emmy Awards - Red Carpet (Wire; 27,744)
- Day in Pictures (Wire; 25,574)
- Pre-Emmy Festivities (Wire; 22,859)
- Emmy Awards - Red Carpet II (Wire; 13,440)
- Week in Review (Staff; 9,062)
(the numbers are how many times a page was viewed)

11:09
Email the lady at the agency to ask her if we can run a promotional ad campaign for the launch of SPI

11:14
Check the numbers again. Finally, they're ready. Take a few notes. Head into the morning news meeting.

11:15-11:45
Morning news meeting

11:46
Hungry. Eat egg. White only. Read report from engineer about changes to how Google links to news web sites. Read ranking reports. Write back with a few questions.

11:49
Talk to the graphics editor to get an artist assigned to the job of designing SPI promotional material

11:51
Ask the news assistant to get me a new printer carteridge

11:52
Woman who works for me wants to talk about a thing. Do I have a sec? I promise her a time slot after 2.

11:53
More back and forth with Patti and Vikki and Deb and Amy about the thing and the other thing

Noon
Meet with the designer and the engineer about the Quiqo ads. We go through about 16 designs and decide how to approach each.

12:43
More back and forth with Mike about the Google, and how we can fix our SEO so we can rank better

12: 45
Blog.

Now I have to go write to the lady at agency about the Quigo ads.
sheesh.

1:05 -1:24
Fiddle around trying to upload a photo of the view from my office. Machine has no driver. Try to download. Fail. Go ask designer if she has her disk. No she doesn't but she wants a few tips on how to use her camera, the Canon d30.

1:50
Finish memo about Quigo. Here's a scintillating excerpt:

"1. The quigo ads need to have the same box and same margins on every ad. The designs they sent over had the box on some and not on others.

2. Their text changes are okay with us. We had verdana, they use arial, no problem. They've decided not to use blue to indicate that they are links -- that's fine but my guess is they'll confuse the reader. They might want to reconsider. You can't tell that the ad has links this way.

3. They want to do away with the reverse bar "buy and ad" link. That's fine with us. The new design with the buy and ad link on a new line though add depth to the design. Please ask them to tighten the air they've got in their design and to give us a design that is the same depth as the one we gave them."

Wow, a quiet moment. I think I'll go to the bathroom.

1:55
Update the morning news editor on the decision to change the titles. She thinks that sounds better. Chat for a long while about general problems with the interns.

2:10
Lady from the business office with a quetion about why one of the producers had overtime last week.
Don and Monica
2:11
Meet with Monica and Don about a new feature Monica wants to put on The Big Blog. She wants to feature essays from a lady involved in non-profits around here -- one a week for six weeks. Don -- he's in charge of blogs around here -- is afraid it will look like a weird disconnect to have some lady send Monica an email and to have Monica simply post it. What sense will that make for the reader?

I suggest they imitate the Slate's conversations: Pick a person to have a conversation with for a week. The subject writes to you in the morning, and you post it, then you answer that post with a response in the evening. Do that for a week.

They liked it. Done and done my friend.

2:23
Update Don on the Title Upset. He was the one who brought it up in the first place.

2:29
Hungry. Make oatmeal -- low-sugar Maple flavor. Don says "mmm, oatmeal." Over at the oatmeal making station across the room, news editor Bill Miller remarks "That's a big bowl you got there." People seem critical of my lunching choices.

2:35
Message David Medzerian at the OC Register to see if he'll show me their new CCI system when I'm in town.

2:36
Write a note to the panelists for the event next Monday, giving them the script and asking if they have powerpoint slides to contribute.

4 p.m.
Email tinkered with, edited and sent. Time for the news meeting.

4:24
News meeting over. Calls for tomorrow's front page made. Have a little sidebar with one of the sports editors to find out why our story about the Sonics lawsuit was posted a full half hour after the Times story. Computer problems, he says. The writer had to drive back from the press conference to file the story. I tell him that on breaking news you don't use computers, you use the phone. Okay, he says. That makes sense.

4:44
Send a note to new media staff telling them what was discussed in the news meeting.

4:44-5:09
Meeting with the associate publisher. Sweet! Scored a $1,500 promotion budget for SPI. We're having a launch party on Oct. 26 at the Showbox. Also promised to set up an Ebay account for him so we can more easily sell a book by our Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.

5:10
Study the traffic and revenue numbers I received this morning from The Seattle Times Agency. Top secret!

5:25
Google Mutiny on the Bounty

5:30
Arrange for coverage of the Halo release. Talk with another AME about traffic numbers. Try to get my printer to work. It's humming a lot but not printing.

5:44
Took apart and put back together printer. Prints now. Thanks for the cool new printer, baby!

5:46
Sent the associate publisher an email telling him how to sign up for PayPal.

5:47
Ask the engineer to replace the old Law Info ad banner with a new one.

5:48
Write up an analysis of AvantGo for the publisher. He wants to know what content we offer through the service, how many people use it, how it works and etc.

6:07
Got an update from the copy desk chief explaining changes that are coming to the Wheels section, and explaining how that will all work for the online content. I say to him thanks for the info, Bill, and forward it along to the producers.

6:09
Write to one of the directors of the AP Video product and ask why we haven't heard back from them in a couple of weeks on a contract we're trying to finalize.

Hmm. 6:10. Martini's sounding pretty good right now.

6:15
Emailed the artist who will be designing our promotional stuff to see when he can meet

6:17
Write back to the new Senior Producer for NWclassifieds to set up a meet and greet with him later this week. He's "particularly interested to hear your vision on how the seattlepi.com and NWclassifieds verticals should interact and collaborate in the future and what I can do to better support your team.

6:20
Do a byline analysis for one of our reporters, who wanted to know which of her stories do best online

6:30
Hear back from the AP Video lady. She's sorry, she doesn't remember hearing from the Hearst Attorney. She promises not to miss it this time if he'll contact her again.

6:31
Email Hearst attorney guy. Note to self: Time to get a martini, ya'll. Thanks for hanging out with me all day. It's been fun. :)

m