Web and Print Production Specialist
Job Description

Summary

The Andover Beacon, a small non-profit monthly community newspaper and news Web site, plans to hire a permanent part-time Web and Print Production Specialist to process articles, photos, and ads in preparation for printing/posting.

The only required technical skill is to be comfortable and efficient using computers for work. If necessary, we are willing to train all the other specific computer skills required.

Certain personal qualities are absolutely required, including the ability to work effectively as part of a deadline-driven team. Reliability, motivation, and a commitment to quality work are some of the other essential qualities we must have in this new hire.

Details

The Andover Beacon plans to hire a permanent part-time Web and Print Production Specialist to work at least 10 to 12 hours per week, mostly at the Beacon’s offices in Andover, New Hampshire. The salary approved for this position is $500 per month. There are no benefits. You can learn more about The Andover Beacon at AndoverBeacon.com.

In brief, the job is to prepare ads, photos, and articles to appear in print and on the Web site. The articles and photos — and many of the ads — will have been created by others. Your job will be to get them ready to appear in print and on the Web site. Some of the simple ads won’t have been created by others — you’ll be asked to create them “from scratch.”

In making this hire, we believe we will be far better off if we hire the right personal qualities than if we only hire the right skills. Helping community members master Web and print production technology is an important (though secondary) role of The Andover Beacon, so helping you learn the skills you need to succeed on our team isn’t a problem.

What we can’t afford to teach you is how to be organized, reliable, motivated, mature, and many other “must-have” personal qualities you’ll need (see “Professionalism,” below) to be a valuable and productive part of our very small team. Those personal qualities are the things you must bring with you to this job — as for the skills, we can take care of those once you get here.

Here’s more detail about the job itself and who we’re looking for to fill it.

Functional Responsibilities (primary)

  • Prepare approximately 30 ads for print each month
  • Lay out approximately 60 articles and photos for print each month
  • E-mail proof copies to advertisers and/or article writers
  • Help track all ads and articles through relevant steps of the integrated Web/print production workflow

Functional Responsibilities (secondary)

  • Prepare articles and photos received by e-mail for entry into the production workflow
  • Post articles and photos on the Beacon’s news Web site at AndoverBeacon.com

 Problems to Prevent (or face and solve)

  • Backlog of unprocessed ads, articles, and photos in the production workflow queue
  • Ads or articles received in the wrong format that must be converted
  • Ads that are almost correct, but need either technical and/or content tweaks
  • Ads that are nothing but a list of ideas and need to be designed from scratch
  • Ads and articles that are spread across a number of e-mails and have to be pieced together
  • Decoding customers’ often cryptic instructions about their ad design
  • Dealing gracefully and efficiently with the inevitable problems that computer hardware and software will throw at you.
  • Never losing track of anything! Articles, ads, photos, e-mails, files, etc.
    • Naming everything you handle with its proper canonical name
    • Saving everything you handle in its proper place
  • Always working on that which most urgently needs to be completed, and working down the “to-do” list in descending order of urgency
  • Co-ordinating your effort with the efforts of all the other members of the team so everyone’s effort is leveraged, efficient, and maximally effective.
  • Maintaining a sane workload by pushing to get things done even when there’s no immediate deadline looming.
  • Leaving a generous margin for the unexpected (which you absolutely can expect!) by always finishing everything well before the deadline.

Required Experience

  • Enough experience using computers for real work (not games, not Facebook, not personal e-mail) to be comfortable and efficient

Desirable Experience (but definitely will train!)

  • Meeting an immutable monthly deadline without having to invoke last-minute heroics
  • Magazine or newspaper layout
  • Advertisement design
  • Publication or commercial printing workflow
  • Working toward a complex, challenging goal with a “virtual team” that isn’t all in the same office at the same time
  • Windows Explorer, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Google Drive (aka Documents), Google Chrome (or Firefox) browser, WordPress, Web-based e-mail software, an FTP client

Professionalism

  • Clear, proactive communications skills, both written and verbal, especially in support of helping the team coordinate its efforts for maximum efficiency
  • Organization skills, especially the ability to work effectively within a large but carefully-organized hierarchy of folders, file-naming conventions, lists, spreadsheets, workflows, etc.
  • Ability to balance your own needs and ideas with the needs and ideas of the entire team in order to ensure that the team as a whole is maximally efficient.
  • Motivated to make a difference at the Beacon, just as the Beacon makes a difference in the community
  • Maturity and determination to persevere even when a tough challenge arises, not stopping until the challenge is successfully met
  • Humility to ask for help when you need it
  • Confidence in the ability to learn new skills, face new situations
  • Reliability and regularity in work schedule and work habits, keeping commitments made to others
  • Pride and dedication to doing quality work with great attention to detail

Send your resume to:

The Andover Beacon
PO Box 149
Andover NH 03216

November through March is an insanely busy time of year for us, so we won’t necessarily get back to you quickly. But we’re going to try to move this job search ahead as best we can, even during this very busy time. Thanks for your understanding.