The first session on Thursday was supposed to be 4 roundtables of 5-8 people each, with varying topics.

Since we’re often the non-conformists, we decided to do ONE roundtable of about 30 people, which spurred lots of comments from everyone in the room (not just the people who were supposed to moderate the topics):

- Hire a photography intern, especially if you don’t have a staff photographer.
Tons of college students with powerful digicams are looking for portfolio pieces and some practical experience. Have them go on the photoshoots your regular staff photographer doesn’t want to do (if you have one) or weed through the hundreds of photos, discarding the blurry or poor shots. Your Art Director will thank you later.

- Do regular post-mortems.
Do ONE for editorial design, so designers and editors can collaborate on if the concept was or was not followed through.
Do another for production & sales (Ad Sales Directors, REQUIRE your sales staff to participate once a month). This is a great way to spec out a lot of the poorly designed camera-ready ads that are being submitted. Personal note: we do this in DC at Washington City Paper, and we have more than an 80% close on print spec ads, and a 90% close on web specs)

- UNPAID interns
Use ‘em, especially for special issues or “best ofs…”. Many interns who are journalism students are also looking to learn the basics of design, simply because it will make them better candidates for a future job, or an editorial position later in life. They also get a chance to build a professional portfolio, giving them a leg up on those students who only have classroom pieces.

- Spec ads
must be sales driven, but compensate the production staff for when the ads sell. Many papers are offering a $10-$25 PER closed spec as compensation for the new business.

- Create a production training manual, especially if you find that you have high turnover.
Include the job descriptions of each title in the department (which encourages entry-level staffers a chance to strive for a “senior” position), and a daily breakdown of “what to do.” Hell, even throw in a glossary for those terms that may not be common to people outside the office like “camera-ready” or “pickup/repeater”. New staffers, primarily those who begin at the start of a production cycle, are not able likely to be trained properly at the beginning, and it gives them something more constructive to do than surf the web or try and “help” other staff out when deadlines are looming.

- ENFORCE strict sales deadlines.
If you find that the sales staff are increasingly missing their deadlines and encroaching on the day where you’re sending pages to the printer, pull back the deadlines or enforce them. The day that pages are sent to the printer SHOULD be the first day of the sales cycle for the next week, giving them more time to sell. If an ad rep is worrying about proofs or getting ads in on the printer deadline day, their selling cycle is a day behind, since everything should already be approved.

- Email or leave a voicemail for late ads
beginning on the day the paper is mapped. There’s nothing wrong with a little public humiliation, especially if it’s the same offenders each week.

- Require signatures for late additions/deletions from the publisher or ad sales director.
They will always sign off on these, but at least they will see which reps are causing problems each week.

- Institute a maximum number of times an advertiser can change an ad during their contract,
especially if your department is designing it. We all know that it takes a few weeks to gain a response, and changing the ads each week won’t necesarily get that response for the client. Help the rep to try and focus NOT on specials that change every week (unless the specials are REALLY good), but focus more on the benefit of the business.

- Institute the “Favor Book.”
If all else fails, and you are swamped each week by late ads and mistakes that are booked, this handly little tool may help. Each ad rep’s name is listed in a ledger in your office. For each late add/delete/change, unnecessary round of corrections, etc, you put a little tally mark next to their name. Once it hits five, the rep owes you doughnuts. If they are very bad in a week, and hit 10, they owe you pizza. Fifteen and they owe you pizza and beer. Once they pay up, remove the appropriate number of tally marks. Once they hit a benchmark (5, 10 or 15), their name goes on a board out in the production dept. and remains there until they pay up. If you get pushback on this, you can remind them that the commission on 5 late ads you got into the paper and the increased revenue for the paper AND the goodwill with the clients will more then make up for $10 worth of doughnuts, or $25 for pizza and beer. And NO CHEATING on the rep’s side by charging it back to the paper!