In one newsroom, seven metro editors rewrote press releases just to fill their section, because their ten reporters had no deadlines. One writer had not filed for three weeks.

One morning paper prides itself on wide coverage, stories about night meetings from remote bureaus. But the daytime reporters downtown have no deadlines, file late, and swamp the desks so they can’t edit the late copy at all.

What are deadlines for?

A newspaper needs deadlines simply to be a newspaper. Without deadlines, the paper loses its sense of urgency, which is the essence, and the fun, of our profession. Stories slide in their reporting, waiting for complete information. Editors hold stories because they lack something or might cause somebody somewhere a problem, until they get old and die. (The stories, not the editors.)

Modern production methods, especially graphics and pagination, have not speeded up our output. Rather, they require more coordination, more teamwork and more effort. But newsrooms continue to shrink, necessitating even more precise interaction. Properly met deadlines keep the gears meshing. A lack of deadlines, or a culture of not meeting them, leads to “shoveling” copy, the norm in most newsrooms after about 9 p.m.

Absent or unmet deadlines further undermine the copy desk, already under heavy strain. In one paper I visited, copy editors played pinochle for three hours waiting for copy, and then shoveled for the rest of the long night. Pagination has deprived copy editors everywhere of half their reading time, and late copy can take away the other half. Then you get headlines and cutlines swiped from leads, and no “safety-net” reading.

Anybody who sits on a copy desk knows that at about 8 or 9 p.m., the ceiling suddenly opens, and a giant wad of the worst copy hits all at once. Mushy deadlines move the arrival of this difficult copy later in the cycle, when copy editors have run out of time, energy, and interest.

What do deadlines mean?

Some staffs disagree on what the deadline means, but they don’t know that. Many reporters who consistently file late regard the deadline as when they come in, not when their story comes in; their editors judge them as just slow. In one paper, the whole staff agreed that the deadline for all stories was 8:30 p.m. But the reporters regarded 8:30 as their filing deadline, while the desk editors believed they had to transmit stories to the copy desk by 8:30. Bingo! No wonder they came out late.

No pain, no game

So make sure you have deadlines, that everybody agrees on what they mean, and everybody meets them, including you.

Someone asked the poet Robert Frost why he didn’t write free verse. Frost replied, “Why don’t you play tennis without a net?” Journalism ain’t much of a game without deadlines.

Don Fry, an affiliate of the Poynter Institute, works as a writing coach out of Charlottesville, Va. Call him at 804/296-6830.