What we need in an M.E. or organizer:

•   Somebody to help organize meetings, training sessions, and team coverage (i.e. election night coverage, On The Tube episodes, etc.).

•   Somebody who is responsible for coordinating coverage of important events, like New Years, July 4, State Fair, etc.

•   Somebody to act as “quality control,” to make sure that we aren’t getting lax with grammar rules or are putting up false items or half stories/rumors, etc.

•   Somebody to coordinate interns.

•   Somebody to act as a buffer between other departments and editorial, and to represent editorial in managers meetings. Somebody that the editorial staff can gripe to when they have issues whose job it is to try to fix those issues.

•   Somebody to help motivate the group and hold people accountable. Mike or anyone from outside editorial, who is not a part of our day-to-day operations, cannot be the one to hold people accountable for when they miss something that is their responsibility. While we can all hold each other accountable, it’s good to have someone whose job it is for the rare moments when somebody needs a little push.

•   Somebody who is supportive of the staff, has the staff’s backs, and knows when to just let the staff work.

•   Someone who will lead by example and contribute by writing stories, doing homepage and metro shifts, manage a tab and neighborhoods, etc.

•   Content Partners – I think that anyone on staff is capable of picking up content partners. With proper training, the people who are out in the neighborhoods covering stories and who are leading up certain tabs can easily recruit content partners. It would probably be good to have an M.E. who grabs up content partners who fall outside the neighborhoods/tabs, or handles those who submit their own stuff, but the staff knows what they need and enough about the site to get them.