At the moment, our temporary editor-in-chief is Tolga Korkut. I say temporary because our duties change every three months.
Initial specialisation
As our regular readers know, bianet believes in "rights journalism", that is, reporting predominantly on rights issues. We report regularly on human rights, women's rights, children's rights and the freedom of expression. Up to now, our managing editors have been responsible for one of these areas each, have made contacts and represented bianet in these fields. Of course there were times when, for instance, the children's rights editor reported on freedom of expression, but that was an exception rather than a rule.
In addition to the four editors, we also had a reporter, Emine Özcan, who worked in all four areas. Now we are all experiencing this widening of horizons.
A new idea
In June 2007, Ertugrul Kürkcü and Nadire Mater, our project coordinator and advisor at bianet respectively, suggested the rotation model. The suggestion was met with excitement and curiosity.
Our first editor-in-chief was Erhan Üstündag, one of the longest-standing journalists at bianet. He was our children's rights editor before and helped to shape the reporting on children's issues at bianet.
Under Erhan, Nilüfer Zengin looked after "children"; Tolga Korkut was responsible for "human rights", Gökce Gündüc for "women" and Erol Önderoglu for "freedom of expression".
Three months later, in September, it was Nilüfer's turn to become editor-in-chief. Erhan returned to "children". Because Gökce was new to the women's rights editor's position, it was decided to leave her there for longer, which left Tolga with human rights.
Since December, Tolga is our editor-in-chief, while Nilüfer looks after human rights, Erhan after women's rights and Gökce after children's rights. Emine continues to be our reporter.
Because he has a young child, Erol preferred not to join the rotation, but we are not sure how long he will be able to stand watching the excitement without joining in...
Administrative staff included
The division of labour which ZNet editor and activist Michael Albert speaks about is being applied at bianet. Our administrator Baran Gündogdu, assistant Leyla Isbilir and IT support technician Korcan Ugur are also writing about issues they are concerned about.
In an interview with Gökce, Albert said: "For instance, editors must also take on the cleaning duties at certain periods, and the cleaner must be editor. That is what I am talking about, and this is what we do at ZNet."
And this is what we are doing at bianet, even if we have some problems over the washing-up...but when Leyla complains enough, that gets done, too.
Empathy between editor-in-chief and editors
The duties of an editor-in-chief are not easy. They involve evaluating what topics should be heading the page and discussing them with the editors. The content and lay-out of the website has to be controlled all the time, and there needs to be continuous communication with the editors.
Fortunately, there is great empathy between editor-in-chief and editors because the responsibility rotates.
A wider horizon
The rotation has allowed us at bianet to widen our areas of expertise and to avoid the monopolisation of topics by one person. In a sense, rights journalism is difficult to divide into "areas" anyway. Women's rights, children's rights, human rights and the freedom of expression all touch on each other, and attending to one really means attending to all of them.
The rotation means that we do not lose sight of the bigger picture and offers us a different perspective on the world.
So, of course, we will continue the rotation. As of March, our new editor-in-chief will be Gökce. Tolga will look at children's rights, Erhan at human rights, and Nilüfer at women's rights... (NZ/TK/AG)
