Editor starts day at 6 a.m.
STAR TRIBUNE DIGITAL SPORTS EDITOR HOWARD SINKER SAYS, ‘IF ONLY 10 PERCENT OF YOUR DAY IS BAD, THEN YOU’RE DOING PRETTY WELL.’
By HALLE MARR | Managing Editor
Digital Sports Editor Howard Sinker is a prime example of someone who has discovered how to take what he loves and make a living out of it. With the pressures of working for the largest news outlet in Minnesota, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sinker must be sure to put in the best work he possibly can. His job keeps him busy and keeps him going.
Q: Where did you go to school, and what did you study in college?
A: I went to Macalester, and it didn’t have a journalism major, and so I designed my own major called communication theory. It involved classes in journalism, sociology and political science. I knew at the time I wanted to go into journalism in some way. I designed it myself, but now Macalester has a major in media cultural studies.
Q: Tell me about your path to getting your current job as an online sports editor.
A: I was pretty lucky. I did an internship right after I graduated, at a newspaper in Minneapolis temporarily as a reporter for the Minneapolis Strib. I did that for six months and then went to Grand Forks, North Dakota for a year. After that I was fortunate to work for the Strib again.
Q: What is your job, and what types of tasks do you do?
A: I basically run everything that has to do with startribune.com/sports. I design the Web pages. I take our content from print and come up with ways to display it for a Web audience. We have unique web-only content for specifically the Web that I’m in charge of getting from our writers and photojournalists. Sometimes I create it myself. Basically (I’m) creating a more interactive version of the newspaper with the advantage of having people who will continue updating the website. What we start today will look much different in 12 hours. My job is basically updating things in real time plus planning ahead for multimedia things that can’t be done in print.
Q: What is your favorite memory relating to your career?
A: If you asked me that every six months, I would probably say something different each time. I’ve been really blessed to do a lot of different things: sports writer, news reporter, covering the University of Minnesota and covering things throughout Midwest. I’ve been a news editor and assistant sports editor for print. It’s almost been like having five or six totally different jobs. Having that opportunity to do that many different things has been really cool. I really like what I’m doing now because I’m a geek, and I’m doing a job that changes. What I’m doing now is much different than five years ago when I started doing everything on the Internet. All of the different opportunities I’ve had have been great. If I had to do the same thing for however many years, I probably would have ended up at a lot of different places. It’s hard for me to focus on an individual moment compared to everything.
Q: What are the highlights of your day, and what are the lowlights of your day?
A: The real highlight is when my alarm goes off at 6:10 a.m. and I’m working at 6:15 a.m. I get to work from home, and I have an official setup. What I do in the morning is what is left for me from the person the night before. There are always things that need to be changed. There might be video content available; things happen overnight that we become aware of. It’s like being an editor for the person the night before. What I do from about 6:15 to about 8:30 or 9 a.m. is look for new news or content to add to stories and try to prepare for the rest of the day. I’ll see what might happen and what we might need editors and reporters to do to create news for real time in the Internet. I typically meet with the sports editor group around 11 or 11:30 a.m., and we do some long-range planning. The rest of my day is continuing to work with fresh content and also creating new elements. We run live chats where our reporters take questions and comments from our readers, and it’s a discussion on the Internet. We also have the Twitter feed that has 17,000 followers to bring people to our website when things are happening. There are lots of things to do during the day. I’ll be honest with you, I can make a list of about 10 things that I want to do on a given day, but on a good day I’ll get maybe five or six of them done. There are so many things we could do and not enough time to do them all. If something has to get done, it gets done. There is no such thing as boredom. There are always things I can be doing. The things that annoy me are minor. When I was a print editor, I worked a lot with people, and now my job is more focused on content. I like working with people, and so sometimes it’s frustrating to be on my own. I miss that interaction with people. That takes some getting used to.
Q: Do you have any horror stories or experiences that have happened during your career?
A: I used to fill in running the entire website on weekends and have one person doing everything. One time, when I didn’t know what I was doing, I hit something wrong — and I had messed up the Web page for the Star Tribune, and it took about five minutes to figure out what was wrong. I was freaking out thinking my career was going to end right then and there. Sometimes the Internet will act up, and we have to figure out how to fix it as soon as we can before someone sees it. It’s 90 percent good and 10 percent bad. I rationalize it by telling you that if only 10 percent of your day is bad, then you’re doing pretty well.
Q: What keeps you motivated/passionate for your job?
A: The change. It changes so much I never know what is going to happen on any given day. I do work that other people see. We get about 2 million page views a day. That gets me motivated. You can’t be a slacker or only give about 50 percent. That’s motivation because if I don’t do it well, people will go somewhere else to get their information. We are larger than any other organization in Minnesota. We have no excuse other than our own failure to not have people come to us for their news. That’s motivation to really do things as well as we can. Plus I’m doing something that’s fun.
Q: If you could go back, would you still pursue the same job you currently hold?
A: When I started out, no one knew this job would exist, so if I had a do-over again, I would do a career in journalism. I’ve had a chance to travel, meet people and see things I wouldn’t have seen. In all likelihood, that’s pretty cool. There are a lot of different opportunities to do things that other people will envy. I have a feeling that more people are jealous of what we get to do in the media because of the access we have to stuff. If you’re working in sports, you meet people and go to events and describe them for other people. That’s something a lot of people wish they could do. I don’t care if they don’t realize how difficult it is or think it is bad; they’re still engaged in what you’re doing. What I tell students is, “When you’re writing a story, you’re not doing it for yourself. You’re doing it for other people.” It’s the opposite of so many things. It’s fun to have a job that a lot of people wish they had. It’s also a challenge to be good enough to keep doing it.
Q: What advice would you give to college students hoping to pursue a career in editing?
A: I’d encourage them to become fluent in a second language. Be multilingual. There are so many more writing opportunities now with the Internet. Try blogging or freelance opportunities. Take advantage of anything you can do to improve writing. You need to know how to shoot video and skills that we didn’t have to learn when I was in school, and it’s fun stuff. Become a competent videographer. Those are things you need to learn now. Also, you need to know about more than just journalism. My students come to class with a variety of interests, and it plays a role in their class. They know about politics and science, and it makes them more engaged in their writing. So, keep writing, keep learning about stuff, and I always start out with saying, “Be fluent or at least conversational in a second language.”
Q: What else do you invest your time in outside of working for the Star Tribune?
A: That’s kind of changed. When I was younger, I coached a lot of traveling basketball. I did that for years and years with my son. I like music. I like to hang out with friends. I don’t have one of those really awesome side hobbies, like when you read about people who are doing things like woodworking. No, that’s not me. Because I have a job where I feel like I’m doing some extraordinary things, I like to do ordinary stuff like concerts and reading. Another thing that’s different is a lot of what I do is directly related to what I do professionally. My wife and I have Lynx season tickets and Twins season tickets. It’s fun to do stuff like that as a fan and not have to worry about it as a journalist. It’s nice to have a job that meshes with my interests outside of work. That’s something my accountant or dentist can’t really say.
Sinker’s pursuit of turning what he loves into his career is a valuable life lesson. He doesn’t do it for himself. He does it for the readers. He works hard at what he does because he knows people see it and it has an influence. The pressure of working with high expectations keeps him going. It’s admirable to think that he loves his job so much that waking up and working straight from home is the highlight of his day. Such enthusiasm is not very common. Like Sinker said, “If only 10 percent of your day is bad, then you’re doing pretty well.”
