How many deskers?

If a newsroom has six or eight news reporters, two sports reporters and two photographers, how many copy editors/designers should there be?

I don't mean for this to become a thread about the virtues of separating editors from designers. Buf if you're curious, a managing editor normally reads most copy before we give it a glance as we're madly alternating between proofing each others' stuff and slapping stories on pages.

Just wondering what a standard ratio of deskers/reporters might be.

Thanks.

 

I'm thinking four.

 

How many pages total for the paper? And what's the news/ad ratio?

Basically, in a perfect world, one copy editor and one designer for every three or four pages. If you're stretched, every five or six pages.

It's worse than that at my shop, and they keep flogging us while reminding us that we didn't get into this gig for the money anyway.

Guess I got into it for the fucking whip, Sir!

 

Number of pages and news/ad ratio varies wildly, to the point I sometimes doubt if a human makes such decisions.

News section can be anywhere between six and 12 pages, and sports anywhere between two and eight, plus one or two random specialty pages a night.

More often than not -- lately, at least -- we've been relatively small and relatively tight with ads, but that's far from universal.

Tonight, the two of us on desk had six A pages, three B pages (and comics, which we don't touch) and two C pages.

It's certainly not an unbearable workload, and supposedly there are fresh candidates just waiting to be hired, But I hate to see ridiculous mistakes creeping in, and I'm wondering if it's because the three of us who rotate are overworked with a short staff or because we aren't good at our jobs.

Hope those general numbers help. Thanks for the responses.