The #TCOT Report
Fast-breaking news from the conservative world
#TCOT Report
Editorial Policies
Contact:
Managing Editor, the #TCOT Report: Bill Meeker (@MaximusPolitics)
RECRUITING
01/03/09
#TCOT REPORT IS NOW
RECRUITING FOR THE FOLLOWING VOLUNTEER POSITIONS:
REGIONAL EDITORS
(h/t to Smart Girl Politics)
The Regional Editor recruits
reporters from the states within their region. The Washington, DC Editor will recruit reporters to cover
salient aspects of Federal government activity (e.g., White House, Senate,
House, Federal agencies, etc.). Reporters
will submit breaking conservative news and commentary to their editor, who will
compile, edit and submit them for posting on #TCOT Report.
ON-DUTY TCOT
REPORT EDITORS: These volunteers
post content directly to the #TCOT Report. They obtain this content from Twitter messages sent directly
to @TCOT_Report by TCOT members, from links posted in the #TCOT Twitter stream by
TCOT members, and from material submitted by Regional Editors and Investigative
Reporting Editors.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
EDITORS: see below under “Editorial
Priorities” for priority areas of focus.
Pick a topic within a priority area or submit your own proposal for investigative
reporting in a different area.
EDITORIAL PRIORITIES
01/01/09
Our top priorities for
January 2009 in the areas of investigative and news reporting:
INVESTIGATIVE
REPORTING
(1) Minnesota Senate
Election Recount – Editor: Duke
Powell (@DukePowell)
(2) President-Elect
Barack Obama’s Background – Editor:
Paul Arden Lidberg (@dreadfroggod)
(3) Economic Policy (esp.
Keynesian & neo-Keynesian – Editor:
TBA
(4) Healthcare Policy
(esp. nationalized healthcare) – Editor:
TBA
(5) Energy & Environmental
Policy (esp. “global warming”) – Editor:
TBA
(6) Topics pitched by
interested, potential investigative reporters.
NEWS TOPICS
(1) RNC Elections
(2) Economic Stimulus
Plans (esp. “bailouts”)
(3) Health Care
Reform Plans
(4) Attorney General
Nomination (Eric Holder)
(5) DeMint/Flake
Committee Appointments
(6) Operation
Conservative Republican Majority 2010 (OCRM 2010) TCOT Action Project
INITIAL ITERATION
12/30/08
As defined by Career Opportunities for Writers (2000), the
traditional primary responsibility of the managing editor is to supervise
editors and writers. He also
assigns stories, oversees the entire publication’s work and bears “ultimate
responsibility for final editing”.
Although he “may also write features or articles,” usually he must limit
himself to editing. Above all, he
is “responsible for meeting deadlines.”
I am writing this
first iteration of the #TCOT Report’s editorial policies on such a
deadline. As such, it is, unlike
the U.S. Constitution, a “living document” that I will develop over the next
few weeks.
As the #TCOT Report’s
new managing editor, I am already fortunate to have onboard two excellent TCOT
members as fellow on-call editors:
Michael P. Leahy
(@michaelpleahy): The co-founder
of TCOT, he is also the Publisher of the #TCOT Report.
Tim Knight
(@tim_knight): Tim is also (and in
the long run, primarily) our Chief Technology Officer. He is currently building a WordPress
back-end for the #TCOT Report site.
PRIORITIES
So what are my initial
priorities at the outset of this new undertaking? They are (1) recruiting and training TCOT members to be
on-call editors and writers of investigative reports, (2) launching and
promoting our new investigative reporting initiative, (3) maintaining and
developing our focus on fast-breaking conservative political news and (4)
articulating and developing our journalistic standards and editorial policies.
A little bit about each
initial priority, with more to follow:
(1) As stated near the
bottom of the right-hand column of the #TCOT Report, our goal is to have
twenty-four on-call editors, each of whom will be responsible for updating the
#TCOT Report’s main page with breaking news during a one-hour period. When this goal is met, we will have
true twenty-four hour coverage of conservative political news. At this writing, we have a few TCOT
members who are in the process of training. We need more.
The more on-duty editors, the easier the job is for each editor. Tim Knight is making the job even
easier by developing our WordPress back-end. At this writing, we have a “Walter Mitty” (to quote Mike
Leahy) page management system in place.
Tim’s new site management system will be very fast. And yes, it will have RSS feeds!
(2) Besides objective,
fact-based reporting of conservative news stories developed by other sources,
we are also building a staff of investigative reporters who will each cover a particular
“beat” for the #TCOT Report. I
will expand on this initiative in a subsequent post. For now, I’d like to announce our first investigative
reporter: @dreadfroggod will cover
President-Elect Barack Obama, with particular emphasis on PEBO’s background.
(3) The primary source of
“fast-breaking news from the conservative world” is TCOT members’ tweets on the
#TCOT stream. As such, the
involvement of all TCOT members is of major significance in the ongoing and future
success of #TCOT Report. I cannot
stress this point enough. TCOT’s
members dig out the stories that we want to post, especially those that the
mainstream media (MSM) refuses to cover or to which the MSM gives short shrift
or a liberal spin. In a future
posting, I will enumerate the top issues on which #TCOT Report initially will
focus.
(4) I have more to
communicate about journalistic standards and editorial policies than my looming
deadline will allow me to document at this writing. In a future posting, I plan to cover not only policies and
standards, but how they relate to TCOT’s bedrock standards, which are currently
under discussion by the community.