Conversationalist 1: Laura Emerick
Conversationalist 2: Kelly McBride
Laura Emerick is the arts editor at the Chicago Sun Times. That means she’s the woman behind famed film critic Roger Ebert. She has been editing his work for 20 years.
She spends her work days doing more with less, and figuring out how she will catch up.
“Everybody wears many hats around here,” she said.
In addition to editing Ebert, she is the classical music reporter for the paper, covering the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. And, she’s the self-appointed Latin music and culture writer. That part of her job took on more significance when the paper’s Latin Affairs reporter went the way of down-sizing.
“Remember the Ed Sullivan Show with all the spinning plates?” she asks. Yeah, you get the idea.
Emerick gets the significance of the Internet. She’d like to start a blog. She’d love to get on Facebook. But she just doesn’t have the time.
She thinks about a buyout frequently. But she survived ovarian cancer in 2005 and the notion of going without medical insurance is a bit scary. For now, she figures she’ll stick around until Ebert quits.
She’s coming to the Newsecology Conference because she’s never been to Poynter and she’s hoping for some better ideas about balancing the demands of print and need to innovate on the web.
