Comms channels
There are a few main channels for team communication you need to know about. These are extremely important tools that help us work better remotely and ensure there’s transparency and visibility across the team.
all.graphics@thomsonretuers.com
The all.graphics listserv inbox is the principal point of contact to our team for the newsroom. This is where they reach out to us with questions about graphics underway or with pitches for graphics.
Ask your manager to make sure you’re part of the group that receives all.graphics emails.
Story pitches from the newsroom should generally come through here so that there’s clear visibility across the team. If someone from the newsroom reaches out to talk through an idea, by all means, have that conversation, but if it’s pitch you’re not personally planning to field, it should hit the all.graphics inbox.
🌐Global graphics
The Global Graphics channel in Teams is where we chat with each other on the graphics team.
Importantly, we want as much of our communications as possible to happen only in this channel, rather than in meeting or other private chats.
Because the Global Graphics channel needs to bear the weight of a lot of conversation, we lean on a few important pieces of chat etiquette. More on that in sec, but first two things you need to do:
Join the Global Graphics channel in Reuters Graphics Teams.
Please 🔕turn off notifications🔕 for that channel. Yes, that’s right, turn them off…
We’re turning notifications off because the conversation in this channel is going to extend beyond your workday. You need to be able to walk away from this channel, and we highly encourage you to learn how to manage your notifications across Teams. Critically, though, turning off notifications will not shield you from direct mentions, which is what we want. More TK.
So let’s talk about CHANNEL ETIQUETTE…
⭐ Use replies to thread your conversation
If you’re responding to someone else or continuing a running conversation in our channel, you 👏 absolutely 👏 must 👏 use 👏 replies. This is the most important piece of hygiene to help keep our channel clean and useful. Don’t litter the channel with comments that should otherwise be connected. HOLD THE THREAD! 🧵
⭐ Start new conversations with a subject
If you’re starting a new conversation, for example about a new project, click the little text formatting button below the text entry box and add a subject line. That makes it MUCH easier to see what each thread is about in our channel and to find that thread in the channel.
⭐ Use @ mentions to get someone’s attention right now
If you need to get someone’s attention, @ ‘em, but only if you expect to have a conversation that day. As we start collaborating more across desks and timezones, it’s important that work doesn’t just extend all our hours. If it’s something that needs to be seen when someone is next online, you should either send it in an email or make yourself a note to catch up to them when next you overlap.
⭐ Embrace the firehose
We’re going to have a lot of conversation within earshot of each other. If we’re courteous to each other via the rules above, though, it won’t be overwhelming.
Importantly, please don’t feel like you can only talk about big work tasks and milestones here. It needs to be the place we have running conversation about our work. All the nitty gritty details, casual chatter, idle thoughts, even bad puns are good for this channel. Let the threads manage the volume.
Datawrapper helpline
The Datawrapper helpline is a channel our newsroom can use to request our help on Datawrapper charts. It’s also the best place to help coach the newsroom on the best practices we take for granted.
The Datawrapper helpline is everyone’s responsibility to field, though folks on Spot News should pay special attention to it. There are often great graphics for Spot Week that come across the transom in this channel.