Production and the page
Deadline
The fixed time by which a story must be filed, the discipline the whole news operation is built around.
Nothing matters more to an editor than copy that arrives on time. A newspaper cannot hold the presses for a late writer, so a missed deadline can mean a hole on the page and an editor who does not call you again. Simon's blunt advice to freelancers is to treat every deadline as sacred, and to set your own a little ahead of the real one. Reliability, he argues, wins more work than brilliance that turns up late.