Never a dull minute at The Voice offices

Production editor Tracey Sweetland and editor Rachel Mayfield “plan” the next edition of the Spalding and South Holland Voice.

This week’s edition of the Spalding and South Holland Voice marks our first anniversary – but do you know what goes on behind the scenes to produce your free weekly newspaper? We’ve compiled a diary of an average week at the Voice offices.

WEDNESDAY

Work on the following week’s Voice starts on a Wednesday after deadline has passed and pages have all been sent to the printers, Mortons, at Horncastle.

As soon as one’s done, it’s straight on to the next and editor Rachel Mayfield and production editor Tracey Sweetland have a meeting with advertising sales manager Mel Biggadike to decide on the size of next week’s issue and discuss what advertising has already been sold. From that, an initial paper “layout” – where the news and adverts will be – is decided.

The advertising team, of Mel and sales executives Lynda Robinson, Gill Wheldon and Claire Sharpe get on with the job of contacting potential advertisers, while upstairs in editorial the rest of the day is spent setting up the pages in Adobe InDesign, ready for adverts, news, features, sport, entertainment, BMDs, letters and all the other regular content to be added.

A few hours are also dedicated to updating The Voice’s website spaldingvoice.co.uk and interacting with our “friends” on Facebook and Twitter – an enjoyable and worthwhile activity that continues throughout the week.

After lunch, it is also time to meet our distribution manager to collect that week’s newspaper that he has picked up from the printers.

Andrew Charlton distributes thousands of papers to outlets in and around Spalding, as well as a team of delivery people who drop them through thousands of letterboxes.

Outlets further afield, including Holbeach, Long Sutton, Pinchbeck, Crowland, and Cowbit are supplied by the Voice team on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.

THURSDAY

Design editor and Voice photographer Nikki Clucas works closely with the advertising team to create eye-catching adverts for approval by clients as well as getting out and about taking pictures of what’s happening around South Holland.

Today, she’s trying to “design” a giraffe with a coiled neck for one customer, and then later she’s going to the new football academy in Holbeach to catch some youngsters in action.

She said: “My job is never dull. I never know what I’ll be doing from one day to the next and I get to be creative and meet lots of people.”

As for everyone else, it’s down to business. The advertising team get busy selling advertising, including any special features, while upstairs it’s time to start writing advertising features and regular features, such as the entertainment pages. There’s always business admin to be caught up on too.

Receptionist Lisa Coley starts getting out the invoices to the previous week’s advertisers and processing photo orders, as well as meeting and greeting all the readers who pop by to pick up their copy of The Voice.

During the football season, Thursday tends to be sports editor Andy Clucas’s day off as he works most Saturdays.

FRIDAY

Formal staff meetings are few and far between at The Voice, but occasionally we do all get together to come up with ideas for features for the paper or to look at ways of improving the way we do things.

This morning, advertising and editorial all get together to discuss how we are going to mark our first anniversary.

Many of the ideas we came up with you’ll find in this paper, including launching the Voice Community Fund and a competition for advertisers.

Editorially, it’s also time for Rachel and Tracey to have a catch up with news editor Nigel Chapman to look at what news stories and pictures we have already and where we are going to place them in the paper.

Some of the factors influencing our decision is how interesting the story is and how many people it affects. The best stories go on early right-hand pages such as three and five, with lighter stuff on left hand pages or further back in the paper.

Sports editor Andy Clucas goes through the same process for the sport content, but obviously working from the back of the paper.

WEEKEND

The advertising team do not work weekends and most of the editorial team also take the chance to relax unless there’s a big story breaking, but weekends are a busy time for sports editor Andy and often for photographer Nikki.

Andy usually tries to make it to one of the big games of the weekend, which can mean travelling quite a distance to an away game, while Nikki can cover quite a few miles herself if there are a number of events on around the district that she needs to get photos of.

As well as watching the action, Andy usually keeps his “followers” up to date with sporting action from across the district through Twitter.

MONDAY

By Monday, we are getting down to the business end of the Voice’s week as deadline looms.

There’s usually so much writing going on that steam can be seen coming from news editor Nigel’s keyboard!

By this point in the week, much of the “regular” newspaper content, such as submitted columns, entertainment section and letters, is complete and it’s really time to turn our attention to “hard” news.

Monday is a busy day for everyone as Nikki works hard to turn around as many as a dozen adverts, which then need to be sent to clients for approval and alterations made ahead of deadline.

Andy also has to write reports of all the sports action from the weekend, as well as updating league tables and compiling fixtures.

TUESDAY

Tuesday really is the busiest day of the week at The Voice as we like to have the paper all but finished by the time we go home.

Our progress is obvious from our “washing line” where pages get hung in sequence, ready to be proof read, corrected and sent.

Tuesday also means lots of to-ing and fro-ing between advertising and editorial to ensure the advertising space has all been sold, all the adverts are created, corrected and available. Including all the announcements and classifieds, that’s a lot of adverts!

By the end of the day we all go home tired, but proud of what we have achieved.