h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's the deadline day for submissions for the new weekly (on Mondays) Post?

There's no deadline any more. If you want to submit something for the next (05.10) issue, I think it shouldn't be in the inbox much later than Tuesday (29.09) next week, to give Bea a chance to edit it and do all the necessary stuff.
Hope that helps.

Bel

Bel. Thanks

Hi guys,

Grateful as I am for Bel's helpful clarification, I think I need to post a little un-clarification here.

The 'deadline' for the next issue is the moment the Post page clicks over sometime in the morning of 5th October, and maybe even later, but there's no guarantee we'll use it then.

I'm kind of glad you posted this, h5, because your column gives me two prime examples of the way more flexibility is going to be extra-helpful to us.

Imagine you've just watched 'Last Night at the Proms' and been truly inspired by some magnificent music. On Sunday morning you write a brilliant review of the music you've heard, but The Post is published the following day...

When we were fortnightly, would we have taken a column the day before The Post came out? No. You'd have missed the deadline by three days, and we'd be too busy to do anything with so many columns to upload. With a deadline of any sort, even on a weekly cycle, under these circumstances you'd still have to wait eight days to see it onsite.

Now, we'll be able to publish a column like this the next day if you send it in. My gut feeling is that if people think they've missed 'the deadline', they're less inclined to send in work on spec.

A theoretical example: Somebody goes to see the FA Cup Final on a Saturday in May, and sends in a great column on Sunday afternoon complete with photos. Rather than delay the column for a week because of a lack of editing time and knowing there would be no chance of getting the images blobbed, we'd run with it anyway and email the Eds to sort out the images for us asap.

You come up with a piece on secret signatures and submit it in plenty of time for the next issue. Having been assured that there's some kind of vague deadline that gives Post editors time to prep and edit articles (say, for argument's sake, the Tuesday before ), you're a little disappointed to find the Post eds haven't run it this week, and email in to find out why.

I really, really, really want to get away from the idea of deadlines partly because of the presumption that because a piece meets a deadline, we're going to publish it in the following issue. And I've really, really, really wanted to be able to think more intelligently about what we present to readers in every issue ever since I took over the editorship from EMR.

I don't want to give away too much about the new format until we actually start on the weeklies, but the days when we'd open up the Post inbox on a Sunday night and run with every piece that was well-written, interesting and submitted in time are over. Just because a piece is sitting there waiting for us doesn't necessarily mean we're going to run it in the next issue. There's a more careful and selective process that we're going to be using, and you'll see it develop over the coming months.

So a piece like A49686501 may not get used in the next issue, or the one after that. It may even be a month or two before we decide the time is right for it. Most submissions will be used fairly quickly, I think, but it will no longer be a given.




In essence, then: don't think about deadlines at all. I know this is much vaguer and less helpful than Bel's reply, but I've got a fairly clear idea of what I want to achieve over the next few months and the last thing I want anyone to do is to worry about completing a column on time! My advice to anyone reading this post would be to simply send your work as soon as you're happy with it, but be aware that once you get past Friday the odds of your piece being included in the next issue are significantly lessened. However, as soon as we've finished one issue we'll be working on the next one, and our newer, more thoughtful approach to editing is going to need our contributors to keep supplying us with a steady flow of great material. I'm more excited about The Post right now than I have been at any time since the Beeblecast, and I can't wait until the next issue is finally unveiled.

Just leave us to worry about deadlines from now on

Getting kinda nervously excited about this now. I really hope it all comes together as I envisaged it!

Don't worry, it will be fine


I'm looking forward to reading the new weekly format