Why we can't respond to every email

Emails. They’re the bane of our lives, aren’t they? I’m not sure how you manage your inbox but for most journalists there’s always a never-ending trail of messages hurtling through at a faster pace than you can ever manage to read them. Probably the same for anyone who works on a laptop.

Now as much as I try to instill kindness and doing good in this world, I will say that for many journalists, it is impossible to reply to every email. Now I had someone pop into my LinkedIn messages disagreeing with me on this recently, arguing that they themselves were a boss, managing a large number of people and juggling lots of various gigs, but they still replied to every email. Good on them. And while I try to respond to personalised emails (rather than generic press releases and pitches that have just swapped a another hack’s name for mine), I know that when you’re on a news desk – when you’re working fast and furiously, focused on that story, building on it, calling sources, meeting people, trying another case study after one just pulled out…while at the same time juggling 12 different stories, as well as perhaps inputting them the system, training the new member of staff, heading to Brussels for a conference and attending yet another internal meeting, it's an impossible task.

I know some people will still argue that we should then continue working till 9pm till we do respond, but I disagree. Instead stories and sources are a priority and producing that TV report for the 7pm news or working on that front page. By the time you want to reply to those emails another 1000 might have come through the inbox. So it’s a trade off: do you want brilliant journalism or someone with a damn good email etiquette?

I hope you understand. We’re not terrible people (most of us anyway) and in an ideal world we’d reply to every email, but the nature of the game means it’s overwhelming (it doesn’t help that our inboxes are often overflowing with irrelevant stories) and impossible without impacting our work or our personal lives.

Thanks for reading,

Susie