Miami Herald cuts 13 more positions

I worked at a newspaper where a 1A story got seven (seven!) reads, back in the glory days, before said story was published. And even then, errors were being made and corrections were being generated. It's not how many reads a story gets; it's how much time the person can spend reading the story and talking to the reporter and not having to be distracted by other duties like pagination and writing performance reviews and updating the web site and going to meetings and and and and ...

 

Both true.

The truth about the number of reads is that it's always varied. Even in the glory days at Miami, the normal computer message at some point each night would say, "RO is closed." RO stands for Read Over, what many papers call "the slot." They meant at some point the rim would ship directly to typeset because there was no time for a second read. I was RO four nights a week for about the last half of my time there and I hated closing RO and fought doing that until I finally had it beaten into me that the practice had been adopted by predecessors for rational reasons. And even after, I was pretty anal-retentive about at least calling up on "read only" after it had been shipped so I could look for big stuff. I wanted, and still want, to read absolutely everything. But those presses need to start on time.

My current newspaper still has a slot/rim setup, so everything in theory does get a second read, although some of it is backread very quickly. We still do change a lot of heds and make catches in slot, but we make educated decisions on where to devote the most energy and we process the less important stories very quickly. That's always been a good editor's job, deciding the importance of stories and then allocating resources accordingly. An editor who applies an identical work process to every story is not thinking, and that has been the truth whether the desk numbers 40 or four.

Here, a lot of the Page 1 stuff has been through numerous glass offices before I see it. They know what they are doing, and they understand what they need to look at. On anything that I think is touchy, I do a "versions" on the computer to see who has read it. And if I think the story warrants scrutiny by someone who outranks me, it's part of my job to speak up and ask for an AME or ME to look at it. I pick my spots on that, too, and do not bother the higher-ups about trivial stories. So the truth is that here, a story may get 12 people reading it, or it may get 1.5 and then someone on the proof.

 

Is the Herald going to a pure universal desk? Can't see how else they can be cutting editors in sports ...

 

Didn't you hear, the paper will be produced in Gary, Indiana