Online Content Administrator

Want to know what's going on? Just ask Karen Tay.

As an online content administrator at nzherald.co.nz, Karen prepares much of the news you read on this website. The job keeps her up to date on national and world news, business, and entertainment. But she admits that sport news remains a bit of a mystery for her, so she is quite happy when a colleague is willing to handle that part of the site!

Two online content administrators are on duty each evening from 5.30pm-1.30am in the New Zealand Herald's central Auckland newsroom. It is their responsibility to copy stories from the next morning's print editions (or on Saturday evenings from the next day's Herald on Sunday) into the website database.

Along the way, the content administrators reformat stories to suit the website layout and style, gather and process the pictures that accompany stories, and decide where on the site each story will be displayed.

The results are clear to see at 5am the next day when the website "rolls over" just as the print edition of the newspaper is arriving in shops and letter boxes.

On a typical evening, Karen and her online team mate will handle about 100 stories and associated illustrations, so there's not much time to relax.

It's also one of the busiest times of the day for their print edition colleagues. Every few minutes another newspaper page is being completed and dispatched to the Herald's printing plant.

As soon as a print-edition page is completed, Karen or her team mate will "open" the page on their computer, and begin making decisions about how to use the material online.

"You absorb so much just from being in a newsroom environment, and it certainly hones your interest in journalism and sharpens your sense of awareness about the world around you," says Karen.

This isn't just a copy-and-paste job either. The online content administrators must read every word of every story they handle in order to decide which of more than 500 possible classifications it requires. (For a look at the nzherald.co.nz classification system, click on "Site Explorer" in the left hand navigation.)

Karen says you need great attention to detail.

"The job requires you to concentrate for lengthy periods of time on vast amounts of content. Things like good spelling and grammar are essential as you have to be able to pick up a mistake at twenty paces, and some things will slip past the newspaper sub-editors."

Karen has been working full-time at nzherald.co.nz for just over a year, and in addition to her evening duty has also written a couple of stories that were published on the site. She has a Bachelor's degree in English and plans to advance her career through journalism studies.


Karen Tay talks about her job:

It is very rewarding being able to work as part of the editorial team for one of New Zealand's most well-known papers. You absorb so much just from being in a newsroom environment, and it certainly hones your interest in journalism and sharpens your sense of awareness about the world around you. As well as that, you also get a huge sense of satisfaction when your friends and family tell you what a great website nzherald.co.nz is and realise you helped contribute towards it!

The most interesting part of the job is definitely being there on nights when huge breaking stories come in like the London bombings, the Beslan school siege and the Asian tsunami. There is an atmosphere of suspense - it's like walking on a live wire, everyone gets charged up and knowing that you are one of the first people in the world to get the story or to hear about it is an incredible feeling.

The skills that I feel are most important/relevant to the job are firstly, great attention to detail. Being technologically savvy and having a sound understanding of topical issues as well as a good grounding in general knowledge are also useful assets to have when going through news stories. An interest in writing will help with creating headlines and captions.

The most fun? It depends on your definition of fun. Your inner control freak would probably be very fulfilled at the thought that you control what the site is going to look like when it updates in the morning. The most fun part will probably be the people you work with. You get an eccentric mix of personalities and will be able to have very lively and interesting discussions with them.

One of the least enjoyable aspects is the hours - the job does not allow for much socialising and you will have to give up a lot in terms of personal relationships. It can also get somewhat monotonous especially if you have a short attention span.

A special part of the job is the realisation that as part of the bigger picture, you are somewhat involved in R&D for new media. The audience for web content is very different to that of print media, they are younger, more liberal and open to trying out new ideas. They are also of the generation that perceives instant gratification as the norm, and expect this of their news websites.

* Neil Sanderson is the editor of nzherald.co.nz