Editorial management

Editorial management is still a young function in journalism and describes the economically oriented management of an editorial team . The aim is the efficient use of available resources (money, personnel, technology) in order to achieve both journalistic and business goals.

The boss on duty often acts as the editorial manager . In some editorial offices there is a specially created position, the “managing editor”. It is also increasingly common for editors-in-chief to see themselves as results - oriented managers and less as politically oriented publicists.

Since editorial offices are increasingly looking after several output platforms at the same time (cross-media publishing, often supported by an editorial system and / or a content management system ), a permanent change process is necessary. Classic editorial structures, such as the functional structure in departments , are being replaced by interdisciplinary and thematically composed teams and role separation. National newspapers , magazines and radio stations are increasingly working with central large-scale organizations (“newsrooms”, “ news desks ”).

In the German media crisis since 2001, editorial offices were merged, closed and outsourced. Since then, editors have increasingly taken care of editorial management themselves and awarded more jobs to freelance journalists. Communication science indicates that under these developments the quality of media products could decrease.

Editorial management tasks

Organization, procedures and processes within an editorial office
Interface to the commercial and technical departments
Technology and innovation management
Success measurement, quantitative and qualitative evaluation of user behavior, user communication
Human resource management
Budget planning and controlling, active cost management (in the case of profit centers, additional success planning on an editorial and product basis, internal billing)
quality control
Editorial marketing

literature

Saim Rolf Alkan: Online editorial management in companies, quality - processes - organization , 2007, ISBN 978-3-8334-9158-0
Kurt Weichler: editorial management. UVK Verlagsgesellschaft , 2003. ISBN 978-3-89669-356-3
Klaus Meier: Department, division, team . UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003. ISBN 978-3-89669-349-5
Miriam Meckel : editorial management. Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-531-12980-5
Christoph Moss: The organization of the newspaper editorial team . Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-531-13127-3
Susanne Fengler, Stephan Ruß-Mohl : The journalist as 'Homo oeconomicus'. UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2005. ISBN 978-3-89669-466-9 .

Web links

Elz, Alexander C .: Master's thesis on the subject of "Editorial management and contribution realization in the news area of television using information and communication technologies"

European editorial management reporting , collected by the European Journalism Observatory