Accidental editor living her dream

Alaina Rooker talks about her passion for journalism as a community newspaper editor

By Chloe Peter

Alaina Rooker was interested in design, photography and the layout of newspapers and magazines, but she never dreamed about being an editor or a journalist. When she attended Gustavus University, she was a communications major. Soon she got an internship with Sun Papers and ended up loving writing too. The company later transferred Rooker to the Sun Post, where she now works as a community editor for New Hope, Crystal and Robbinsdale, Minn.

Now Rooker now gets to decide what reporting she needs to do, which stories will be published as longer pieces or briefs, and what design the paper will look like each day.

Q: What does a typical workday look like for you?

A: I work off a weekly schedule mostly, and each day is different. I attend meetings to design the look of each page for the paper to come out that Friday. I run our media pages and try and post on each as much as I can along with working on other media relations to our newspaper.

I also need to contact and gather people’s thoughts for opinion pieces. Most days I’ll also go out to do my own reporting on stories I find in going through Police Department files, the cities’ community pages, or that have been brought to my attention. I have a managing and copy editor, but I still get to go out and take photos and conduct interviews.

Q: How do you cover and edit for three cities?

A: Each city has its own department, and reporters come to me with story ideas they think are interesting. I take those ideas and decide which will be published in the paper or online, which should be longer pieces or should be briefs, and which stories should get priority over others. I also need to go through each city’s websites and keep track of what events are happening when.

For example, I could check when city hall meetings are happening, but I might decide not to publish much of anything that happened during it. What stories from each city I write and how long they are both depend on what is happening at the particular event.

Q: Have you had people that are hard to interview and what do you do?

A: Well, I’ve definitely had some creepers. I think that one of the hardest things to learn is how to say no. I’ve had people repeatedly call and text my phone for days in order to have a story be told. With a smaller paper like this, I use my personal phone for work, so it’s difficult when that happens. It can be tough to cut something from a story or to tell someone no, but it needs to be done.

Q: What is a favorite memory from your time as an editor?

A: I got to follow Can Do Canines around at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Basically, I got to walk around with a bunch of puppies all day. A Delta pilot led a group of people around the airport teaching them how to travel with dogs. We stopped at each place they could go to the bathroom and talked about how to get through security with a support animal, but I thought the coolest place was a nearly empty room on one of the top floors. This room had a life-sized model plane so the dogs and their owners could practice being on an actual airplane. However, in the middle of the room, suitcases people had never claimed were stacked up in a giant pile in order to train narcotics dogs.

So yeah, there’s a giant room in the MSP airport that’s fully dedicated to training dogs.

Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring editors or journalism students?

A: I think that working on interviewing skills is a big pointer. Knowing how to have a conversation with someone that leads to important parts of a story is really important. Getting to know people and the details of what they went through can be hard, especially on a deadline, so having good interviewing skills is a big thing.

Having a sample from your writing to show possible employers is also important. They want to know what you came from and what you can do. Also, know your AP Style! Even though I have a copy editor, I want to present myself and the paper professionally. Knowing AP Style and grammar can really help with the writing and editing process. Instead of just focusing on tiny details, there’s more room to focus on bettering the big idea of the story.