Welcome to The 9 To 5, our ongoing series where we highlight and interview creative professionals doing great things. Today’s profile is on Navin Vaswani, Editor at theScore.
1. When did you first know you wanted to become an editor?
I don’t think I ever planned on being an editor. It’s the path my career has taken me on, after journalism school, television production, online production, and work as a news editor. My goal in the past couple of years has been to be on the right side of a drowning industry. News has gone mobile, and theScore understands that and has created a personalized and customized product that caters exclusively to mobile. That I happen to be an editor at the company is mostly how things have shaken out, and I’m happy with the results. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I can edit, and I have a chance to influence young writers, many fresh out of school, so it’s been a fun transition.
Nothing makes a person a better writer and editor than reading, and not enough writers and editors do it.
2. What’s on your typical “to-do” list for a day at the office?
My typical day at work involves supervising the entire news desk, making sure news is being covered by our editors in a timely manner, and making sure all of our push alerts – we send probably a hundred or more each day – are spelled and formatted correctly. So across all sports, essentially all content on the app. I work in 10-hour shifts so the days are long, and there’s far too much sitting (my dream is to have a standing desk) but the news cycle is 24/7, so there’s often little time to breathe. Other mobile apps offer similar services as theScore, but we are always ahead of the competition with respect to speed. Our mobile newsroom runs incredibly efficiently, and that’s a testament to our news editors and the systems we’ve implemented. It’s been amazing to watch the team develop over the past two years. I’m proud of what we do every single day – the amount of mobile content we create and the timeliness with which we push it out to the world.
3. What do you do outside of the office to become a better editor inside the office?
I read. I read anything and everything, all the time. I’ve got a Twitter list I swear by that is mainly newsmakers and websites and I’m constantly reading, about sports and politics and current affairs and media. I also love to read fiction, and do so on my spare time. Nothing makes a person a better writer and editor than reading, and not enough writers and editors do it.
4. What are the skills that any editor should have?
Communication is an integral skill for an editor to have. You’re editing people’s words, and that’s something that can’t be taken lightly. No matter how minor an edit, I make sure to convey it to the person whose work I’m editing, to make sure they understand why I made the change, and to make sure they’re on board. I try to make it a more collaborative experience, rather than wielding some proverbial magic red pen that is the be all and end all.
5. What do you know now that you wish someone might have explained to you before entering your position or industry?
Expect change. I knew that journalism was hardly on solid ground when I got into it, but the amount of change the industry has undertaken in 15 years is staggering. Majoring in broadcast journalism certainly did not mean a lifetime in television production. The industry is constantly changing, and constantly on life support, it seems. Never get comfortable. Always be looking for the next job, the next big idea, the next medium. Complacency in this industry will kill you. Be adaptable. Learn how to do a number of different things that relate to the profession.
6. How do you prioritize your time?
When I’m at work, running the desk takes up all of my time. Ten hours, a short break, if I’m lucky, and that’s by choice – I want to be there when the next story breaks, when the next push alert to hundreds of thousands of subscribers needs to be sent. When I’m out of the office, I make it a priority to log off as best I can, because, as I mentioned, the shifts are long. Mornings are from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and nights from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m., and we work on two-week rotations. While that’s preferred over a month of nights, it makes it hard to get comfortable on either days or nights. Once you reach a comfort zone, you’re switching back, so if can be tiring. The Internet, especially Twitter and the never-ending news cycle, is exhausting. It’s important to get out of the stream when I’m not required to be in it, because the stream shows no mercy. My advice in short: log off.
7. What are the ways you get in the “zone” while working?
The stream makes it easy for me to get in the zone. As soon as I’m in the chair, either news editors are coming in a half hour after me (I start at 7:30 in the mornings) or are already there (night shifts run from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m.), so there are always alerts to approve and stories to read. As a supervisor editor of a mobile newsroom, you have to be ready to work, you’ve got to be in the “zone” before you get going, otherwise you’ll be inundated before you know it.
Expect change. I knew that journalism was hardly on solid ground when I got into it, but the amount of change the industry has undertaken in 15 years is staggering.
8. What’s the best part of your job?
I get to watch and write about sports for a living. More often than not, it doesn’t feel like work.
9. What are you snacking on while working?
We’re blessed to have a small kitchen at theScore stocked with chips, cereal, energy bars, granola bars, mixed nuts, almonds, flax seed sticks, fruits, vegetables, and chocolate. So much sweet delicious chocolate. A typical day involves coffee (from McDonald’s), and willpower, as I try to stay away from the chips and chocolate. I’ll either cave and hate myself for the day or go hard on the carrots and celery sticks and vitamin water.
10. After a long week, are you reaching for a pint of beer or a glass of wine?
A workout and some Irish whiskey. The former is an important part of being disconnected, and whiskey is better than wine and beer.
Follow Navin on Twitter and be sure to download theScore’s mobile suite!