Editor’s Note: Succession Planning, and Learning How to Delegate

This column is about two months late. Sorry!

When I started Editor’s Note, I envisioned a monthly letter from me to you, our readers, in which I get candid about what we’re working on and The Rover and how to make sense of what we’re trying to do in a broader media landscape that feels like it’s crumbling around us. I’ve had some challenges in trying to keep up that rhythm.

A week after I published my last column, I started up school again. I’m almost halfway through a Master’s in Communication at Université de Montréal, and though I only have one class this semester, it’s time-consuming, with so much reading involved.

Then it was grant application season. We submitted three, and are still in the running for two of them, including the one that occupied my days and my nights for three whole weeks as I worked to create all the documentation asked of us. I created a digital content strategy, an updated transparency report, a budget, a fucking org chart with two faces on it because The Rover is literally just two overworked journalists in a trench coat, minus the trench coat (plus our amazing freelancers, of course). 

And then it was municipal election season, which was fun until it wasn’t. I’m proud of us for delivering a sizeable heap of content, laser-focused on housing and homelessness while the bikelane detractors droned on around us.

It was the increased workload of the campaign that made me realize things couldn’t go on as they had been. The Rover is growing, which is exciting, but it also means more time spent uploading articles and preparing the newsletter, two simple yet time-consuming tasks. Which, since those were my responsibilities, meant I had less time to devote to the higher-level tasks essential to keeping this project going, never mind finding the time to work on my next Editor’s Note.  

It became obvious that I was spread too thin. My own projects — this monthly column and our second documentary, which is still very much in the early stages — were suffering for it. 

I had to learn how to do the thing that Chris had to learn before me. That is, to delegate.

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***

When Chris first approached me about joining him at The Rover, he was pretty clear about what he needed: someone who could create some structure out of the madness that took over his life when he started this project. Someone to take the annoying-but-essential daily tasks away from him so he could focus on big-picture stuff.

I was honoured he thought I could do that, and ecstatic at the possibility of some stable work at an independent media outlet, albeit just 10 hours per week at the start. This was in 2023, and I was already tired of making it work as a freelance journalist. I’d enrolled in the Master’s, hoping that with another degree in my back pocket, I could transition to teaching journalism down the line, but I didn’t know if I could even make it that far. I was contemplating the famous switch to public relations, a real rite of passage in this godforsaken profession.  

So, naturally, I leapt at the chance. In July 2023, we announced that I would be joining The Rover as managing editor. Chris, the founder, was now editor-in-chief, because that’s just how it works in a newsroom. 

It was hard at first. Chris knew he needed to delegate, but he didn’t know how. And I didn’t know how to be firm, how to carve out my place.

Sure, I’d worked a year in a newsroom at The Eastern Door, doing all the copy editing for the weekly paper, contributing three or four articles to each edition, and acting as a sort of assistant to the managing editor, tracking all the content as it came in and figuring out the layout for the issue. It was a real hands-on experience, especially working in a small team. But The Rover meant more responsibility and even fewer colleagues to lean on. 

It was hard until a few months down the line, when I realized I had a handle on it. 

Chris and I work well together because our skill sets are complementary. The joke I routinely make is that we are each other’s bosses. But really, I’ve always seen him as the leader. I saw — still see — my role as facilitating his leadership by getting as much as I can in order for him to sign off on. 

It’s been working out, but the way things are arranged now, there’s only so much I can take off of Chris’ hands — after all, he is the person everyone goes to, and his Catholic guilt still gets in the way of his delegating abilities. But that will have to change.

***

By the summer of 2025, I was well established in my role. But Chris was struggling under the weight of his responsibilities. Being the editor-in-chief, the guy everyone comes to, and the lead reporter, on top of being a dad. It wasn’t sustainable. 

Anyone who has met Chris and read his reporting knows that he belongs in the field. He’s at his best talking to people, meeting face to face. He’s not so good at, nor is he interested in, handling the financials, managing a growing team of freelancers, or answering the dozens of emails we get every single week. 

Being the one officially in charge of those things, though I do my best to help him out with them, takes him away from what he’s meant to do. It makes him feel like he can’t even do the parts he’s good at because he spends so much energy finding his way through the parts he’s just not made for.

That’s what Chris told me when he first broached the idea of me taking over as EIC. 

It was on a May evening as I was visiting friends in Guadeloupe. The day before, we’d had what I think was our only argument since working together, which had upset me, but that I knew was a manifestation of his feelings that he was drowning in the responsibilities that come with heading an independent media outlet.

On the phone that evening, he said he just wants to focus on what he’s best at: writing, reporting from the field, and mentoring emerging journalists. Everything else was bogging him down. Would I consider taking over?

“We can definitely have that conversation,” I told him, like some kind of diplomat. In that moment, my only intention was to reassure him. I could still hear the manic tone in his voice, a tone I’ve come to know too well, that I’d heard during our tiff the day before. 

It seemed — still seems — both impossible and the logical next step. On the one hand, we both know that I’m the more organized one, better at keeping track of meetings and deadlines. But at the same time, he’s been in this business a good 10 years longer than I have. And the spaces we’ve made for ourselves within our roles and responsibilities feel so set in place. 

It will take us time to figure out just how that change will happen, how to extricate Chris from the top seat so he can sink back into the parts of the job he loves the most. And I have to get my Master’s finished first. But it’s coming. 

And before even becoming editor-in-chief, I have already gotten a taste of what it means to be overwhelmed and to have to learn to delegate for the sake of the project. 

Justin Khan, with whom I co-directed Palestine on Campus, has agreed to take over uploading articles, sending the newsletter, and managing the website, taking a good five hours’ work away from me every single week. I already feel so free! 

The Rover is growing, and so is my role. I’m excited to see where both lead.

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