All editors, reporters, photographers and designers should become coaches. 

We are teaching the next generation to practice our craft at a high level. 

Both coaches and rookies benefit.

The two kinds of coaching you can practice:

• One-on-one coaching. My first coach was also my boss, the slot man on a daily newspaper copy desk. He taught me to question anything that you did not seem right or clear in an article, write headlines that attracted readers, crop needless details out of photographs and design appealing pages. 

Then he let me learn even more by doing the weekly farm pages. It was a great way to learn.

When I became a slot man, one of my first students was a quick learner. She saw the importance of careful editing. That impressed me. She later married me and helped me coach our sons.

Another veteran showed me how he coached reporters, one on one, line by line and word by word. His instruction led me to become a coach for more than two dozen newspaper, magazine and corporate public relations people. It paid well and I got to travel the country.

• Group coaching. This kind of coaching has other benefits. The rookies learn from other rookies by the questions asked and answers discussed. At a New York newspaper, the city editor and I held weekly coaching sessions for reporters and copy editors. 

We gave reporting, editing and writing skills memorable names: Big Eye & Big Ear Reporting, Final Gatekeeper Editing and Writing Letters to Mom. 

It also led to opportunities to teach college journalism students and professional seminars for working journalists.

“It’s a difficult time in our newsrooms,” says Tom Huang of The Dallas Morning News.  “It’s easy to forget that our colleagues, especially the younger ones, are being asked to sink or swim.”

As coaches, Huang says we need to be empathetic listeners, ask tough questions, be supportive, recognize potential in our colleagues that they do not yet see and drop any judgmental attitudes. 

What’s in it for you, the coach? Huang lists:

• You become a more skilled practitioner of the craft. 

You are forced to break down what you and they do, consider why some things work and others don’t, and teach that to someone else. 

• You become a student too, rereading On Writing Well by William Zinsser, The Elements of Style by Strunk & White and other writers on writing you just never got around to. 

I found that hours in airport terminals and on long flights gave me time to read and absorb new ideas.

• You contribute to a legacy.

“Many of us are seeking some sense of permanence, a legacy that lasts beyond the words we’ve written or the stories we’ve uncovered,” Huang said. 

When he sees how much his students have grown and how far they’ve traveled, he thinks: “I gave something of myself to them, and now that small spark lives on.”

For more, read Coaching Writers by Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry. Their book shows you a system based on the Poynter Institute’s methods in coaching across media platforms and in diverse newsrooms. In newsrooms, where leadership is increasingly flat, everyone needs to be a coach.

Next: Give pace and flow to your sentences

The above will appear in The Art of Compelling Writing, Volume 3. Volume 1 and 2 are available at Amazon.com for $9.99 each. The author, a well-known writing coach and retired newspaper owner, wrote these books to help editors like you teach your reporters how to write well. 

Sales proceeds go to adult literacy tutoring. You can help us change many lives by teaching them to read and write.

To comment or ask questions, please write JerryBellune@yahoo.com. He would like to hear from you.