Teaming For Time

Not everyone at the Boston Globe truly sees the benefits of changing their delivery time to 6 AM. There are departments that are currently late in their submissions that are delaying the production process. These departments are also causing arguments with other areas internally that feel they are putting in too much effort to the 6 AM process and others are not. In the newspaper industry getting all the facts correct and having the most up to date information is crucial, but it becomes problematic if it causes the newspaper to not be printed and delivered on time. The industry is steeped deep in tradition and some departments do not want to change any of their processes to conform to this new change.

Some of the departments constantly miss their deadlines, pushing back the entire operation. Currently the newsroom is constantly late in meeting its nightly deadline. Also, they tend to submit a large portion very late, making it far more difficult for other steps in the production process. They have historically been late in their submissions to make sure they had the most up to date information printed in the morning edition. The advertising department is also missing deadlines by changing layouts of their advertisements, introducing a late ad, or removing one after their deadline has passed. Editors then have to rearrange the layout of newspaper pages to fit their redesigns in with the articles and have it ready on time to be printed.

As seen with the Denver International Airport Baggage Handling System and BAE Systems, when individuals and departments are not held to strict deadlines it can increase costs, delay completion, and cause work already completed to be redone. Publisher Benjamin Taylor felt the front end deadlines could not change, but it clear to the Project Coordinator, Anne Eisenmenger, all departments need to be comply with strict cut off times. Since upper management supports this project, Anne needs to use them more effectively to get all departments heads to be assertive with their employees about complying with the deadlines. Currently there seems to be no authority figure reprimanding the tardy departments. The newsroom has valid arguments on being delayed, but if the newspaper is not produced on time and shipped out to the customers by the delivery time on a constant basis, the Globe could lose subscriptions. Upper management is compelled to get the best news articles into every edition, but if delays result in a decrease in sales they will opt to have the newsroom comply with the deadlines established. Anne's point was very clear when she stated, "you can't make a difference if you're irrelevant, and