Intrepid Louisiana journalist settles in Baton Rouge, taking over for Intrepid Miami journalist

Introduction: On Monday, January 6, on my first day working as metropolitan editor of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, I walked into the third-floor newsroom and immediately had another first-time experience as a journalist for nearly 40 years.

There was a big oval pastry with purple, green and gold icing on a table at the entry. And there were utensils, plates and napkins for me and my colleagues to taste the Mardi Gras king cake. After admiring it, walked by and went to my desk not wanting to look overly eager to sample the pastry on day one. Of course, by late morning my curiosity got the best of me and I ate a slice or two of the cross between a coffee cake and cinnamon roll.

King cake ritual: To my surprise, the king cakes kept coming to the newsroom. Everyday during my first week on the job, somebody brought a king cake to share. Had a vague idea about this king cake eating ritual in New Orleans and around the state but never participated. During the interview process, none of the senior editors mentioned the job perk of free king cake.

Since the annual French-inspired tradition practiced in Louisiana calls for eating king cakes from January 6, the official end of the Christmas season, to Mardi Gras day, or Fat Tuesday, which this year is March 4, guess I'll be tempted at work to eat plenty more samples of the delicious pastry in the coming weeks.

Forming memories: Years from now in retirement the king cake memories no doubt will help me remember my first week as an editor at The Advocate. (Maybe one day I'll even pick the cake slice that contains the little plastic baby toy, because that's where the person who brought the cake secretly inserted it. According to tradition, having the baby poke through your piece of cake brings good luck and an order to buy the next cake for the group.)

The Mardi Gras pastry bonus aside, much of what took place my starting week here in Baton Rouge was unsurprising, since this marked the tenth newsroom I've joined as a reporter or editor from Philadelphia to Miami to Chicago and Houston and all the way to the San Francisco Bay Area. My last role was business editor of the Miami Herald.

Making early impact: My overriding goal for opening week was to begin making an impact wherever I could on the metro reporting team and across the newsroom. By week's end, I'm confident I accomplished that goal through sharing knowledge with colleagues, giving feedback to reporters and editing a couple of stories.

Attaining this goal would be an admirable achievement for anyone who starts a new position. Achieving it though can be a challenge because of the firehose of information about benefits enrollment, the pay cycle and other human resources items, getting photographed for your employee badge, receiving a company laptop and initial bootcamp training on the variety of digital systems and online platforms you have to master to perform your leadership role as an editor -- or for that matter really any management post.

Bonding with colleagues: In between all of that and two daily news meetings, plus intermittent conversations with the managing editor, from the first day I started meeting the team of people working for me: roughly 10 reporters and two assistant metro editors. There's also a host of other reporters and editors in Baton Rouge and New Orleans I was introduced to in person or via video meetings.

No matter the professional position, the first few days and weeks challenge new hires with a whirlwind of details, new faces and names to remember and a formidable menu of responsibilities and tasks to complete. In today's corporate world, many companies offer less onboarding training time and much of it might be taught through video or essentially learning it yourself digitally.

While the early minutiae of a transition to a new job is important, what's vital are the discussions you have with your closest new colleagues, the ones on the team you were hired to lead and manage and your boss.

Articulating priorities: That's why last week in my first few days, I made sure the managing editor arranged a metro team meeting in the office so I could put reporters' faces to names and connect them to respective coverage beats. It also enabled me to share some of my background, my journalism experience and articulate to reporters and my deputy editors a few of my top priorities running the Baton Rouge metro news coverage.

As the week proceeded, I followed the team meeting by beginning to have individual meetings, hosting one-on-one introductory conversations with reporters and my deputies. These discussions offered the chance to forge productive working relationships and early trust with each reporter.

Serving the audience quality journalism: Happily, I managed in week one to make a strong contribution to serving our audience of readers and viewers by editing two front-page stories, one of them a marquee Baton Rouge story explaining why 2024 homicides in the city remained stubbornly high.

As an editor, collaboration with other reporters, editors, visual and digital journalists and coaching a team of reporters are critically important to building a sustained high performance cohort of storytellers to deliver compelling local journalism to your community audience. This will be my overriding priority for the weeks and months ahead as metro editor. I'm leading a younger team with great energy, tenacity and reporting instincts.

Adjusting to a new city: Outside work, spent my second weekend in Baton Rouge continuing to explore the city's restaurants, supermarkets, walking and biking trails. Had to cap week one Friday night with a three chicken finger combo meal from Raising Canes, the iconic chicken chain in Baton Rouge founded in 1996 by now billionaire Todd Graves, who slowly but surely is expanding the enterprise nationally. Discovered Hub & Spoke, an eatery in Mid City adorned with bicycles, that served up a winning breakfast for me Sunday.

Also, got my steps in Saturday on a brisk walk around part of the lake near Louisiana State University. Nearby after that, I toured a potential long-term house rental here for my life partner Kathy Styer and our feisty feline boys Binx and Mac.

Back in Palm Beach County, Florida, Kathy worked hard over the weekend on final preparation to put our Wellington house on the market for sale. The listing with photos of the two-bedroom, single-family home we've owned since 2003 should be go live later this week.

From plenty of experience, can say it takes three to six months to comfortably adapt to a new job. When you relocate out of state to advance your career, that adds to the challenge. Focusing week by week on progress and making key contributions to your work team, while you and your family contends with relocation logistics and ultimately moving into a new home is how I choose to manage the career transition.

Tasting more slices of king cakes in the coming days can provide a boost. I'm hoping for the chance to taste ones filled with fruit and chocolate.

New city, new headline title: Finally, since I've left South Florida the Intrepid Miami journalist title of my newsletter articles has morphed into the Intrepid Louisiana journalist. With my yearlong free agent journey seeking another meaningful leadership position ended, you can expect me to document the highlights of my transition to metro editor in Baton Rouge and share useful career management takeaways. You'll be able to continue to read me on LinkedIn and Substack.