Ka Leo Special Issues

Ka Leo News in 2014 produced special issues every month to supplement their regular weekly paper. The Special Issues desk did not have a dedicated staff, but was responsible for the special themed content for those issues. I was the editor of the Special Issues desk, which had been vacated suddenly. I worked with other desk editors, various staff and guest writers, the production team, the advertising department, and reported directly to the Editor-in-Chief.

The Editor-in-Chief had constant deadlines to worry about, so I was trusted to work very independently up until the final week before the special issue was due. Since I didn’t have a dedicated staff working for me, I had to scrounge from very limited resources over a long period of time to produce a paper. Often I met with my writers personally only twice, once to go over the story with them, and then at the end for revising and editing. As such, must of my organizing was done through emailing and phone conversations, but most of it was done with other department heads.

The Advertising department built many of their outreach campaigns around the special themed issues, and much of their revenue came from businesses that advertised during relevant special issues. As such, I worked closer with them than other desks and had to reconcile many of the different priorities and responsibilities of the two departments.

More than most other leadership roles, this project required me to balance the needs of many different departments. Everyone had deadlines and goals, and anyone else’s needs were someone else’s problems. Each department was focused on meeting its own goals. Since I was a department head that relied on the staff and resources of other departments, I had to learn how to push for the things that I needed so I could meet the deadlines of other people who depended on me. In previous, simpler projects, the focus was on learning how to use your group members effectively and how to organize your responsibilities. In the real world, working on big projects with many different gears turning at once, project leaders need to learn how to communicate and reconcile the needs of different projects. Projects will overlap and depend on one another, and as a leader, I need to know how to give and take in a way that ensures all parties accomplish what they need to.