How-To Guide: Questions to align your business and editorial team

In the rush of a new semester, it’s easy for the business and editorial teams to immediately start planning for their goals with their respective teams without ever consulting each other. While there is a tradition of business and editorial teams keeping a level of separation to preserve journalistic integrity in the face of financial incentives, aligning on logistics early can minimize some of the inherent friction.

By sitting down for a dedicated leadership meeting at the beginning of each term, your new advertising manager and editor-in-chief can build a unified strategy that sets your student media organization up for success.

During the meeting, use these guiding questions: 

1. What’s the big goal?
2. How are we reaching our audience?
3. When are we publishing?
4. What are we selling?
5. What type of ads will we accept?
6. How are we handling ad logistics?
7. How and how often should we communicate with each other?

In this guide, we’ll share recommendations for addressing each question to increase collaboration between the two teams.

What’s the big goal?

During the hiring process, candidates for leadership roles often make big promises and share their vision for what they would accomplish in a role. Finding alignment and anticipating friction with these goals early will help find solutions before the problems arise.

• Share your values: What do you want to achieve? How will you measure success in your position? How do you plan to reach your goals?
• Find overlap: How do your goals work together? For example, the editorial team wanting to grow their newsletter list size could help the advertising team sell more ads.
• Anticipate friction: How could the goals conflict? For example, if the advertising manager wants to expand website advertising and the editor-in-chief wants to redesign the website, how can you reach a solution before each team starts working towards their goal?

‍How are we reaching our audience?

The editor-in-chief should lead the conversation on how the newsroom plans to publish its stories. The advertising manager should advocate for where and how advertisers can reach their target audience.

• Channels: How do we plan to distribute stories? What combination of channels, such as email and print, does the newsroom plan to use? What outside products does the advertising team plan to activate for advertisers, such as street team or out-of-home advertising?
• Responsibilities: What desk or person is responsible for each type of distribution? Who has the Instagram login? Who sends the weekly newsletter? Who handles print layout? 
• Additions/Subtractions: Are you adding or subtracting any channels from the previous year?

When are we publishing?

Aligning on the publication calendar early allows the editorial team to plan their resources and helps the advertising team better pitch to clients with exact dates and the number of editions available.

• Review last year’s publication calendar: Is there anything you would like to change about the cadence? What last-minute editions could you add to the calendar now? Will you continue to publish in all of the channels listed?
• Pick your weekly cadence: What day will you print? When will newsletters go out? Do you plan on publishing stories daily on the website?
• Look at the university calendar: When will the newsroom start and stop publishing for the semester? When are the academic calendar breaks, and will you stop publishing over them? Should you plan any special editions around important university milestones such as back-to-school, homecoming, the start of the basketball season, or graduation?
• Plan for edits: How will the editorial and the advertising team communicate about a change to the publication calendar? Where does the most up-to-date calendar get stored? How much notice does each team expect to be successful in producing or selling for an extra edition?

‍What are we selling?

The advertising manager and editor-in-chief should review the media kit together so the editor-in-chief is aware of what types of ads clients can purchase in the publication.

• Metrics: Are the circulation and subscriber counts accurate? With accurate audience metrics, the advertising team can adjust their rates and provide a data-backed pitch to potential clients.
• Products to add: Is there any product you would be willing to add advertising to that's not currently listed in the media kit? For example, if the editorial team is sending a weekly newsletter, you could add newsletter advertising to your media kit.
• Products to subtract: Is there any product in the media kit that is no longer produced? Take this time to remove it.

What type of ads will we accept?

The advertising manager should bring the current written advertising policy. An advertising policy is an important tool for protecting your news organization from legal and reputational harm. Review these points to ensure your standards align with your goals.

• University policies and state laws: Student publications may have unique constraints depending on their relationship to and funding from their university. Check for restrictions on advertising for sports betting, alcohol, or cannabis. Even if these are legal in your state, your university may have specific rules you must follow to stay in good standing.
• Political advertising: Will you accept political advertisements? Will you only accept partisan, candidate-specific advertising, or will you only accept non-partisan advertising? Explore flytedesk’s Political Advertising Policy 101 for in-depth guidance.
• Veto power: Clarify if the editor-in-chief has the right to refuse an ad that conflicts with the publication's mission or ethics, and establish a process for how that "veto" is communicated to the business team. A robust advertising policy minimizes the risk of this issue arising, but it’s important to discuss a process for ads that might appear controversial to your audience.

For more in-depth guidance on creating an advertising policy, review flytedesk’s guide to creating an ad policy.

How are we handling ad logistics?

Establish your daily, weekly, and monthly workflows to make sure all advertisements get placed properly, and editorial can plan their content accordingly.

• Advertising calendar: Where can a list of booked ads be found, and when should they run? 
• Deadlines: What is the deadline for booking ads and receiving the creative?
• Points of contact: Who on each team should communicate about upcoming advertisements? Designate one person on each team, for example, the managing editor and advertising manager, to communicate about upcoming ads, and who will be responsible for “handing off” the ad to production.
• Final check: Who has responsibility for ensuring the ads in the advertising calendar run? Is it the managing editor who sends proofs to the advertising manager to ensure all the print ads are in their proper places?
• Missed ads: What happens when an ad doesn’t run as scheduled or isn’t in the right spot? Discussed the established make-good policy to ensure the advertisers get what they paid for, and both teams are aware.

How and how often should the EIC and ad manager communicate?

• Communication channels: What’s the best way to communicate? Can you use your newsroom's Slack channel, email, or text? Do you have similar schedules?
• Meetings: Decide now if you will meet weekly or bi-weekly to stay aligned as the semester picks up speed. (We recommend a regular leadership meeting.)

After-meeting checklist

For the ad manager:

• Update the media kit: Implement changes in the media kit discussed during this meeting. Revise circulation numbers and newsletter subscriber counts. Add new products discussed and remove any defunct channels.
• Circulate the ad policy: Ensure the editor-in-chief has a finalized copy of the policy, including any new updates discussed in the meeting.
• Set the "source of truth": Share the live advertising calendar (ex. Google sheet or dashboard) with the editor-in-chief and managing editor.

For the editor-in-chief:

• Finalize the publication calendar: Finalize the dates for special editions and weekly cadences in the staff-wide calendar.
• Update style guides: Ensure the "Advertisement" labeling and disclosure standards are added to the newsroom's production handbook.
• Brief the production team: Introduce the designated advertising point of contact to the layout/web editors to clarify how you expect ads to be handed off.

Joint actions:

• Calendar invitations: Schedule your recurring weekly or bi-weekly check-ins for the semester.
• Exchange contact information: Confirm everyone has the phone numbers or Slack handles needed for both routine and urgent communication.
• Organization-wide announcement: Send a joint memo to both the editorial and advertising teams about what you discussed and how things will impact newsroom operations for the next year.

What’s next?

Now that your business and editorial teams have planned together, channel this momentum into the year ahead by implementing the plan in your team’s workflows. You have what you need to start reaching out to potential clients for the following year.

Did this meeting uncover other friction points in your newsroom? Check out flytedesk’s Resource Hub for articles on common problems student media organizations face, from client visits to hiring and retaining staff. 

If you can’t find the answer here, reach out to your flytedesk account manager for some help. Don’t forget to send your flytedesk account manager a copy of the updated media kit and publication calendar.