Latest News: Editor Is Journalist Shock

MOST EDITORS - and I can think of a few honourable exceptions - started in journalism doing all the things we love best.
Reporting, writing, taking pictures, writing headlines and drawing pages are the building blocks of the newspaper game and we love 'em all.
But just as you get quite good at that someone comes along and tells you that you might also be quite good at recruitment, budgeting, going to meetings, making pearls from swine and sometimes cleaning the toilets.
So, off you go to the door marked 'Editor' and suddenly all that fun journalism seems from a different world.
Here, in no particular order as Dermot would say, are some of the things I've done this week.

• Helped set up meeting with Union reps about pensions
• Dealt with aftermath of over-exuberant office Christmas party
• Held an inquiry into company car usage.
• Hired three staff, said no thanks to another three
• Handled three angry readers, two upset MPs and a pigeon in a station tree (that's a story for another day).

Don't get me wrong, I love it all, especially making things happen when not much is happening but I am also determined to keep my journalistic hand in.
This week I've also written a panto review (Oh yes I have!), penned a trenchant comment and taken the front page picture for this week's Essex Chronicle (see above) complete with photo credit. My mum would be proud.
So, editors, wherever you've got to remember where you've come from and keep doing what you used to do.