Dips*** publisher asks readers to edit newspaper

We're not talking consommé. We're talking some very hearty soups.

 

True story from about 10 years ago: a retired postal worker gets a habit of calling/emailing editor over every little single mistake (or supposed mistake) in the paper. This goes on for a couple of weeks before editor asks if he'd like to edit for us. So they hire the guy part-time, a few bucks per hour.

Yours truly gets assigned to work with him. Guy is good with grammar, but has no journalism background. I'm paginating pages and he's reading copy. Well, problem is he takes forever and can't understand why I'm cutting a 40-inch story on Afghanistan to 12 inches or why we have to have so many ads on a page.

So we change things up and I'm giving wire copy a quick read before slapping it on a page and handing it to him to proof. We're a small staff, so I have a pretty heavy page load some nights, and he actually is slowing me down by taking 45 minutes to proof a page. One night when it was he, me and an intern to do 13 pages in the Sunday "A" section, I got the idea it might be time to start sniffing around for a different job. But it was an experience.

 

One of the five managing editors I worked for at my old place once hired some retirees for minimum wage to proof pages because of errors. I wasn't on the desk, but my buddy who was showed me a rpoof one night. The lady we called the school marm (claimed she was a recently retired teacher, but she had to be 90-something, I don't know) did nothing but add serial commas (or Oxford commas) everywhere. Buddy said it was explained to her that the serial comma wasn't AP style, but she kept marking it because it was just wrong, AP style or not.

Anyway, someone compared editions of the paper both pre- and post-extra copy editors and ... wait for it ... just as many errors made it into print. I don't know what happened for sure, but these extra eyes weren't around much longer. So, a lot of money foolishly spent, and it didn't improve the product a bit.

 

We had something very similar at a previous shop, though the lady was probably around 60. She insisted she had to get something like $11 an hour, came in Wednesday nights to help with proofing. She edited in errors, particularly with regards to commas. I would edit out her edits. She didn't like that and insisted she was correct. Needless to say, she didn't last long because she felt it was a waste of her time. She was half right: it was a waste of everyone's time.
From time to time, we would get anonymous clippings of our pages in the mail with alleged errors circled in red. I'm pretty sure I know who sent those.

 

"I'm surprised the publisher didn't ask the 'pubic' to edit it."

 

The publisher responded to Romanesko with one of those typical letters that are long on buzzwords and bullshit:

http://jimromenesko.com/2014/01/24/st-augustine-record-publisher-catch-the-typos-contest-isnt-an-attempt-to-save-money/

I love the part where she says they're going to use the data that they learn to improve the paper. Yeah, and what if that data says you have to spend money?

 

She's backpedaling now. And she sold out her newsroom big-time.

How about if she works on the desk from 8 to 11 at night for a few weeks?
Hell, I'll buy her a nice dinner if she doesn't fuck up her paper beyond repair.

 

She sounds like the type of publisher who thinks she knows how a copy desk works even though the only time she sees them is on Election Night, when she thinks she's actually contributing, but in reality, is doing little more than getting in everyone's way.

 

"I brought in pizza. What more do you people want?"

 

I wonder what kind of dinner she's going to provide for the volunteers? Is she going to also give them pizza? And what happens if the four workers decide to take a couple of slices?

 

This story made it to SNL.

 

Their writers can't scour the news any better than that?