What Does a Co-Editor Do, Anyway?

While I spend a lot of time on entrepreneurial projects (two iPhone apps and a novel I’m trying to get picked up), I am best known as the Co-Editor of Mashable. I started writing for Mashable in 2009 before becoming Associate Editor in March 2010. Now I am the Co-Editor of a nearly 30-person company, and rapidly growing (by the way, yes, Mashable is my full-time job).

One of the most frequent questions people ask me is what do you do on a typical day? or what area do you focus on or how much of your time is spent writing?. Until now, I’ve never really answered those questions, but I thought today would be as good as any to talk about my life as a Mashable editor.

So what do I do on a typical day as the Co-Editor of Mashable? While my role has evolved considerably as we’ve grown, the short answer is this: I am the counterpart to our illustrious Editor in Chief Adam Ostrow, responsible for helping manage the newsroom, synthesizing editorial direction, finding the news, writing stories, and filling in the gaps whenever they’re needed.

Now for the long answer: I’d say that most of my activities fall under one of three categories:

– Writing: I don’t have a specific focus or “beat” at Mashable. I pretty much write about all of the subjects Mashable covers through the relationships and expertise I’ve built. You could find me writing about breaking news from Facebook or diving into a thoughtful opinion piece on the structure of the web.

– Editorial: I help Adam manage the news room, assign stories, and edit articles (though I want to take this time to say that Brenna and Lauren are amazing editors that make us all look good). I also work and manage a range of editorial projects to support the entire team’s efforts.

– Biz Dev/Strategy: Mashable has a lot of moving parts. While I leave the biz stuff to COO Adam Hirsch and the overall vision to Pete, I’m constantly helping out with events, internal projects, and figuring out our next steps.

There are many other aspects of my job (business relationships, speaking engagements, media appearances, story research, fixing bugs…), but my ultimate goal as Co-Editor is to support the team in any way I can so they can do their job of writing and publishing killer stories. That, I believe, is what being a good editor is all about.

img credit: Ken Yeung