Staff Q&As: Meet visual editor Eileen Joyce
To help you get to know our newsroom staff a bit better, a series of question-and-answer posts with each journalist will run on Mondays. This morning, meet visual editor Eileen Joyce. She oversees the photographers as they tell stories through photos and video and dive into new technology like live streaming. You might have seen her posts on the visual staff’s blog, Look.
Name: Eileen Joyce
Lives in: York Township
Hometown: Um, good question. I lived in 5 states by the time I was 18, but most of my family is from Missouri so I’ll claim the whole state as my hometown.
Position at the YDR: Visual Editor
Years with the YDR: 2
Graduated from: University of Missouri
With a degree in: Photojournalism & international relations
Twitter: @sadandbritish
Facebook: facebook.com/sadandbritish
Google+: Search for Eileen Joyce
Whatever you’d like to tell us about yourself: I grew up moving all over the country, which isn’t always fun as a kid but is something I appreciate now. It means I have great friends to visit wherever I go. One of my best friends from middle school (in Texarkana, Texas) lives in Baltimore now and we get together pretty regularly. I’m a big sports fan and I’ll watch about any college football game that comes on TV. I root for the Reds, Royals, Bengals, Packers and Chiefs but I’m far from a die hard fan. I like to tell people I root for the game. I just want it to be interesting. I have a black cat named Tippy who sometimes gets worked into illustrations in the paper.
1. What made you want to become a journalist? I’ve always enjoyed writing. When I was a kid I read a book about different American Indian tribes and wrote a report about each one – for fun. I love news, too, so I knew pretty early I wanted to be a reporter. In high school I moved (Surprise!) to Michigan and my new school offered photography classes. That got me thinking about other ways I could tell stories and by the time I went to college it was for photojournalism and not writing. Since graduation I’ve worked in newsrooms in Iowa, California, Ohio and now York as either a photographer or editor.
2. How do you see journalism changing? I think everything is up for grabs, and that’s exciting. The whole time I’ve worked in journalism people have worried whether newspapers would still be around. I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ve enjoyed figuring out all the other ways we can reach people. When I started studying photography I would have died if you told me I had to do video, but now it’s something I really enjoy.
3. What do you like most about your job? The least? A lot of my job is about making sure our photographers have what they need to be their best. I like working with them to brainstorm ideas or edit photos and video. I also enjoy helping reporters figure out visual ways to tell their stories. They’ve been doing video, too, and I try to give them guidance. What I like the least is troubleshooting things that aren’t working correctly. The visual department tries out a lot of new technology and when it doesn’t work I usually have to figure out why.
4. It’s 9:30 a.m. on a day off. What are you doing? Sleeping, hopefully. If my cat has already gotten me up then I’m drinking coffee and checking CNN to make sure nothing crazy happened overnight.
5. What’s been your favorite project or story recently? Why? I really enjoyed Kate Penn’s Veterans Day portraits. She did a lot of work to track down vets from each war and let them tell their stories in their own words. It was a nice use of portraiture and video — old and new techniques.
6. The drink that’s on your desk right now is: Coffee. Good old office coffee.
7. Your favorite journalism-related blog you read or Twitter feed you follow: I really enjoy the Mediaite twitter because they give me a little roundup of anything I might have missed, especially any strange TV news moments.
8. What’s your favorite movie? My favorite is probably “The Hudsucker Proxy,” but I watch “Love Actually” every Christmas. Book? I probably read a book a month so I’m too picky but “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides and “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers are books I always seem to be recommending to people.
9. What’s your favorite place in York County? I’m a huge music fan and I go to concerts whenever I can so my favorite place is probably the Capitol Theatre whenever there is a Cap Live show going on.
10. What’s one piece of newsroom jargon that had to be explained to you? Each paper I’ve worked at has had its own internal lingo that always takes time to figure out. In Cincinnati there was something called a “Kathy” and a “bonobo” which is much stranger sounding than anything I ran across in York. I will admit that when I first worked at a paper I wondered why so many editors were in a “budget” meeting when they didn’t deal with money. [Editor’s note: The “budget” meeting is where editors review the top stories for the day, decide what belongs where in the paper, talk about web coverage and updates, etc. You can actually watch a live stream of the afternoon budget meeting weekdays at 4 p.m.]
Last week, we ran a Q&A with niche publications editor April Trotter. To read all of the staff Q&A interviews we’ve done so far, click on the “Staff Q&As” under “About us” at the top of the homepage.