Copy editor, Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/42653/

Cuts are industry-wide, but what was so egregious in the recent N&R case was the classless, brutal way they came down. Hope the money they saved was worth the damage done to their reputation. I can envision plenty of qualified, hungry journalists passing on this opportunity, and that really is ashame.

 

And now they're taking a beating on this board, which they deserve. This isn't John's fault. It's not fair but he'll end up paying the price. With that being said, someone will get offered the gig and someone will accept it. Best of luck to that person.

 

With the state of the industry, I'd imagine quite a few journalists will be applying to work there. It's a job that pays, right? It's a decent-sized paper, right? They offer benefits, right?
I could see someone who needs and wants a job would apply, completely overlooking unfortunate past history.

 

I'll admit the layoffs stunk bad. I didn't like to see us lose the people we lost, whether they had been here a day, a week or 20+ years. JR (the paper's editor) is good people, one of the best in the business, and he made the best of a very grim situation.

If you want to keep picking at the worst day in my 12 years at the N&R, there's a perfectly good (but dusty) thread elsewhere on the board - please dredge it up and use it. I'm done with it (in this thread, at least.) In the meantime, I hope we can use the rest of the thread to talk about the copy desk job opening we're hoping to fill. We're still doing good journalism here in Greensboro, and we want the best person we can get for the job.

Now to the mailbag:

Earlier in the thread, someone asked about salary. The range we're working with is $30K to $40K. Your mileage may vary depending on your experience and talent.

Someone PM'd me about reporting openings. We have several right now on the News side. You'll find them if you hunt around at the links earlier in this thread. We don't have any openings in Sports except for the desk job. Unless Santa brings me a second preps writer for Christmas (believe me, I've asked), we're not going to be adding writers any time soon.

Lastly, if you want to send work samples - snappy headlines, stories you raised from the dead, clips (if you want to make the move from writer to desker) - send them to Sports Editor Joe Sirera at jsirera@news-record.com. Try to keep 'em light - a 10 MB file might be a little much. A caveat: You must apply online as well. Them's the rules.

 

I didn't mean to beat up John. I've heard good things about the paper. I was just replying to the question that was posed here.

 

<a href="http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/42653/">
Good point by John. Here's the thread about the Greensboro layoffs.</a>

 

Nobody's blaming John for anything. They do a great job over there. We're just pointing out the deal with the layoffs and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

What does it mean when the ad deals with re-inventing the sports section? Are there new features coming?
Yes,the layoffs need to be taken into account when thinking about the opening.
With that said, there are still some good people there that do good work.

 

Tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure what that specifically means.

I mean, we're always tinkering with stuff here. We did a paper-wide redsign last April which added new features throughout. This fall, we revamped the Sunday paper. (Remember: This is a paper that 10+ years ago thought it would be a great idea to mimic USA Today.)

More generally, we're trying to figure out our (meaning the print product's) place in a digital world. We're doing a fair bit of stuff online, but that involves mostly reporters and editors and not the desk folks. Stll, though, the desk might someday (sooner? later?) play a role in all of that. We're also trying to figure out what we mean by "intensely local." Our News folks rarely venture outside of Guilford County these days. We're not so limited in Sports because our readers are a heck of lot more interested in things going on out of town (Carolina, State, Duke, the Carolina Panthers) than the stuff being played in town.

As for specific features coming down the pike, no, we don't have anything picked out, much less ready to launch.

 

Well, that's a bold plan.

 

Doesn't board etiquette requires use of blue type for those sorts of responses?

Now to the mailbag:

How many people are on our desk staff?
Six, including the person who's leaving. (He's taking a reporting job over in News, in case anyone's wondering.) News gives us a Sports front designer five nights out of seven. We also have four EAs in the rotation.

How is the work split up?
We have four jobs each night: C1 design, inside design, rim (there might be two or three if it's a busy night) and night editor (another rimmer; that person deals with production and News and is nominally in charge). Of the six, three regularly do design. (They also work some rim shifts.) The other three do rim only. We don't expect you to be laying out and reading copy in the same shift. In any given week, though, someone with design skills might do that two or three or four nights a week, depending.

What computer system do we use?
We use the shotgun three-way marriage of InDesign and InCopy on a Windows XP platform. In other words, DTI.

How soon before interviews start?
Soon, but the holiday schedule will delay the heck out of everything. Beyond that, I haven't seen my boss today to ask him. We are still taking resumes, so please send them in asap.