Working with a regional design center

Does your design hub edit and fit wire stories for you or is it your responsibility to do that? Or do you not have wire stories?

 

What do you do about call-ins and emails from games and press releases? We get bombed by the phones. We have to have one person chained to the desk.

 

Bombed by the phones. Can you hear me, kissass editors? You blew it. If nobody wants to read a paper, why are coaches still calling in results? Cause mommy and daddy and gramps WANT to buy a newspaper. Sad at the demise.

 

They (those editing centers that just honestly aren't very good) are for brain dead editors who have no knowledge of what they are doing.... basically manned by people who think they know other aspects of the profession but many of the "leaders (60-hour slaves)" are young adults who still enjoy trying to color between the lines as they did in grade school.

Those who generally work in them who do know what is needed... are thrown into a meat-packaging line and their talent is wasted because they are designing too many pages on a given night.

Their job is to be purty with a fancy design and hope for the best, i.e. headlines that do not go viral because they are so stupid. Biggest stretch -- writing a headline that makes any sense.

When you have an 'editor' who does not know what he or she is doing... you get lots of stories about cats up trees, kids that are learning to read about squirrels or some other nonsense thrown in with some color pictures.

End result as the publisher usually sleeps at the wheel or is more worried about his old job than the one he has: A newspaper no one wants to read, but one the pet snake finds colorful and amusing before taking a dump on it.

 

B-B-B-Bennyandthejets nailed it. Those regional design centers are set up for cost cutting, not quality. Even paginators who have experience and/or are committed to designing quality pages get overwhelmed by the work load and waves of deadlines.

Communication breakdown is another constant problem. Hell, it happens between employees working different shifts (or with different duties) in the same location. Physically separate people by hundreds of miles and that problem gets worse.

 

Great post. I can only imagine how many mistakes are made at these design centers. My guess is once they are finished designing pages, somebody at the actual newspaper that's been designed has access to the page to change a headline or two, right? Or is policy such that the order to change a headline has to go back to the design center? One thing is certain. The design center concept is one of the worst in business history in terms of a way to create a product worth purchasing. Sure it saves money, but if newspapers have to go to design centers to survive, just kill the print product NOW please. The design center concept is appalling really.
Certainly none of you on this board can be in favor of design centers. Nobody is that much of a 9 to 5 butt kisser to think a design center is a good idea.

 

Two things that always drove me crazy about design centers:

1) You rarely got the same designer night after night. One night you might get one with great sports knowledge, some nights ya get some that need the difference between the Sacramento Kings and LA Kings explained. I found I had to be very specific on what I wanted, especially with agate.

2) As a West Coast paper, we were the last guys out. A delay on one of the papers done early just dominoed through the rest of the work cycle. And on a election night? May as well bring a sleeping bag.

 

Usually some of them have "editing" hires -- a person or 2 whose job is to proof pages -- but they usually go home by 11 p.m. with many papers still having final deadlines of 90 minutes or more later. In theory, the claim is that the designers are copy editors (NOT), and the sad thing is some of the editing center coloring book people become newsroom editors (translation: work cheap). Go figure.

Have seen some where editor indicates a copy or headline change is needed... and it doesn't get changed and the designer who decided to ignore the editor faces nothing in the aftermath (even if the request was provided 3-4 hours off copy deadline).

Have also seen situations where the editing center dictates what will or will not go into the paper... and content decisions are made based on what the center says it can handle as far as copy. If an 8 p.m. in-state major college basketball game might mean missing deadline because the designer is SLOOOOOOOOOOOW.... said game won't see light of day. If the designer assigned is good, the game gets in.... so Southern Cal-UCLA gets in but Arizona-Arizona State may not the next night.

Best picture to describe the centers.... with music even provided for entertaintment... is front row seat at a CIRCUS, circus music, bunch of (you insert fav circus animal here) running around -- some of them tied to a pole, others allowed to run around like those at the zoo and show their a-- is red to the crowd.

They, editors who don't know a story when they see one and do see a story when it's only purpose is to please an old lady who grew a big tomato or for someone they like (conflict of interest) , and publishers who have disfigured lips (think about it, you'll get it) are destroying journalism as we know it.

That said, please pray for the profession.... used to be the almighty dollar didn't rule.

Nowadays there's really little difference -- quality-wise -- between the local cop reporter and the fast food grill master...'cept "Do you want fries with that?" is not something commonly in the vocabulary of a reporter until the last 10 years or so.

 

You should get out, since you've reached the stage of shitting on everyone else in the pipeline.

 

Nothing indicated in that is untruthful, rip.

It is the reality of how they work... regardless of the quality of person/journalist who has to work in them. Plenty of really good people (as in good human beings, trustworthy, etc.) ... doesn't change the reality that they are given a task almost impossible to do well and are there while eds, pubbies, etc., pulling big Ks -- some 6 figures -- and none of those above them give a r---t's ass about them or other people.

What's the joke in the Philadelphia movie about what is one lawyer at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. Same could be said of a lot of those holding positions in any industry, but especially today's newspaper world.

 

The only prep agate we now have in daily schedules, the rest of the page is all regional/national stuff (and identical to every other paper in our chain). When our deadlines got pushed back a couple of years ago, we gave up nightly roundups for the next day's paper (no way we can get results and have it ready by 9:30 at the latest).

We usually go back to the office after the games we cover to add more/rewrite our online stories, add photo galleries and videos, etc. So, generally, the desk is empty from 5 or 6 to 10 every night.

 

This is the epitome of a vigilante post.