“The buck ends here”, Chief sub

Ali Balunywa in Kampala, Uganda

Ben Opolot is the New Vision’s chief sub editor. He joined the New Vision in 1994

Interview

Ali: What does your job involve?

Ben: My job is basically a quality control job here. I am responsible for maintaining the New Vision house style, which includes the visual, photos, grammar, language, content, and accuracy and general standards. My job cuts across all sections; sports, supplements, magazines and the like. Though my major focus is on the daily, I also offer supervisory and monetary oversight for the Saturday and Sunday editions. I do this through a weekly review postmortem with the staff. 

What does the staff under you do?

There are 35 subeditors. On average each subeditor lays out 2 pages per day. They receive stories from the editors through the intranet and depending on what pages they are doing follow an established layout format. After laying out the pages they physically print out the pages and pass them on to me. Currently after all corrections are made, I send them to pre press department through the network to the computer to plate process. We have been promised in the near future to get technology, which will eliminate prepress and transmit files from editorial direct to the press. 

We have however, not harnessed the available ICTs to create efficiency and a better product. There is a lack of managerial focus and drive to effect this change. We require new software to solve some few editorial snags especially automating the uploading of the website. We should be in a position to send data to the press at the same time automatically uploading the website.

Where does the buck end?

The editor in chief delegated the responsibility of the final product to the chief subeditor. So, well as the buck should end at the editor in chief’s desk, in reality it ends here.

What role does the New Media play in your day-to-day work? 

I can’t imagine the days before the advent of the computer. Editing used to be done on paper. Reporters wrote their stories by hand and used typewriters to type. Layout used to be done by cutting and pasting physically. Today, the computer does the whole process; inputting, editing, typesetting, designing, photos are all PDF-ed and sent by mail to the pre press to ready for printing without going through the darkroom!

The computer and Internet are powerful tools for grammar, spell check, Google; for verification, searches, historical context and research. Email too, has eased communication. A few years ago, information from the field used to take days to arrive at the news editor’s desk. Today, files are instantly forwarded electronically. Personally, I completed my Masters degree online. I took off just a few weeks to interact with my professors in South Africa. Other young people are also doing the same. The computer has enabled us to perform multiple tasks at the same time. It has therefore helped to retain staff that would have had to resign in order to pursue further studies.

We now have a better skilled staff that learns more about journalism online. The computer is a knowledge and resource centre. It provides us with wired news from agencies. This keeps the cost minimal. It also provides graphic services important for the design of the papers. Uganda has no libraries, so the computer/Internet is the point of reference. 

Mobile telephony cuts costs, is efficient and easy to use. We can access reporters and editors anytime while working on their stories.

As for blogging, I don’t individually blog or even read them. I feel blogs lack peer review and therefore are too opinioned. However, we can use them as sources of news stories and tips. 

Like the blogs, I find the Social Networking Sites (SNS) just exhibitionist. I know it is a tool of communication and it encourages citizen journalism. People are allowed to explore themselves and to listen to what others are saying. It is here that you get the pulse of the people without the rigid structures of newspapers. It liberates to reader.

Any other New Media tools you use? 

We also have the discussion board on our website. It is very important to the New Vision and we periodically run it in the newspaper. It is one of the places where our readers interact with the writers and also give us their opinions on contemporary issues.

The organization is in the process of developing a Short Message Service (SMS), which will integrate all our products. A significant amount of people’s lives is shifting to the mobile phone and as a leading newspaper, we must take advantage of the mobile phone especially the SMS technology to reach out to our readers and also get new ones. We therefore have to find new ways of delivering our content particularly the young people and women. Traditionally, newspapers are for men who decide when to buy it. But now with the mobile phone the woman can now enjoy the benefits through it. So the mobile especially the SMS will help to keep readers and even get many more if we can deliver the content in a way that is convenient to them. This means the business must be rearranged and skills and processes must be tailored to fit the new technologies.