The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Vol. Demand More Time. Agitate for More Space. And Revisit the Subject Often. By Martha Shirk Newsroom clashes over time and space are laughably predict-able.
Editors complain that reporters want too much time to write and space to fill.
After 22 years of meeting daily deadlines at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I undertook a complex reporting project last year that promised the twin luxuries of time and space. I collaborated with researchers at the National Center for Children in Poverty on a book that aims to put a human face on the numbing statistics of child poverty. The goal of the project was to help Americans more completely understand the daily struggles of the poor, the impact on their children, and what might be done about these conditions. This was the same goal to which I aspired throughout my newspaper career as I wrote hundreds of stories about this or that problem of the poor. Sometime the issue involved the difficulty poor parents had finding affordable, quality childcare.