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Info on industry deaths in 2021 sought Guest Column:
Recognizing microagression in the newsroom
Arkansas Press Association
Publisher Weekly
By Larry Graham
Vol. 16 | No.45 | Thursday, November 18, 2021 | Serving Press and State Since 1873
Deputy managing editor takes hands-on approach to job The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Kim Christ is not content to sit in waiting as the newsroom’s “vice president.” Christ, the deputy managing editor of the state’s largest newspaper, acknowledges her primary responsibility as second-incommand is to fill in for the managing editor when she’s unavailable. But as someone who’s been eager to learn the ins and outs of the news business since she started her journalism career, she said she’s doing all she can to take an active role in the newsroom. “I like to think of myself as the vice president,” Christ said in a recent telephone interview. “When the president can’t serve, I serve. I run the newsroom when the managing editor isn’t here.” While that means handling the administrative duties and running daily meetings in the absence of editor Eliza Gaines, Christ also has her hands full with copy editing and design of some sections and with planning and budgets. She oversees the newspaper’s features staff and puts together its Style section on occasion. “Over my career, I’ve done all the jobs in the newsroom,” Christ said. “I really like knowing how to do the work and I like having my hand in it. Every week I work on some of the paper.” Her interest in knowing the ins and outs of the newspaper has recently extended to learning all she can about metrics – those statistics like view count and time spent reading online articles that newspapers use more and more to measure success in the digital age. Before that, she volunteered to work nights
Arkansas Newspaper Foundation Board Member Kim Christ of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, during the APA Convention last year.
at the newspaper – two different times – so she could learn the new software and computer systems the Democrat-Gazette was using to compose the publication each day.
at a newspaper in Millington, Tennessee, and was editor of a restaurant association magazine in Texas before moving to Little Rock.
Christ became an advocate for good newspapering in high school in West Memphis, where teacher Jim Johnson “really, really loved journalism and somehow passed it along.”
Her first job with WEHCO Media was in 1986 as a copy editor at the thenArkansas Democrat. She worked in public relations at the Old State House after that, then later returned to the newspaper on the design desk.
She wrote a column for her high school newspaper and then for The Herald at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. After graduating from ASU, she worked
“When I left, we were pasting things up and now we were doing it on the computer,” she said. “I would have been left behind, but I was able to catch up in no time at all.” Continued on Page 2