News/Sports Copy Editors/Designers - Cox Media Group, West Palm Beach

Two postings from jjobs. I'm not a designer and might go crazy copy editing all day, but I love seeing these types of jobs come open for someone. Looks like it's a design hub in West Palm Beach, Fla.

 

Hope this will be nothing like working at the Gannett hubs. Of course there are a lot fewer papers in Cox...and they are fairly large ones at that.

To any who applies, if they end up using Newsgate and CCI...run away...FAST!

 

Disagree . . . any hub putting out a lot of pages nightly could benefit from using CCI, a front end and design system known for knocking out a lot of inside pages quickly. Something a hub, theoretically, is going to have to do. As for front pages . . . sure, it's more limiting than InDesign, but if you know what you want to do going in, anything is possible in Layout Champ.
Don't know anything about Cox papers, but I wouldn't let CCI scare anyone away if they are OK working for Cox.

And no, I do not have any affiliation with Cox or Gannett. Just have a lot of experience with CCI.

 

Anything is possible in LayoutChamp. It works seamlessly with InDesign and/or Illustrator, so there really are no limitations.

Curious about the pay for these jobs --- especially the ones requiring experience. McClatchy lowballed its publishing center hires (high 20Ks to mid 40Ks). But WPB is a much more expensive place to live than Charlotte. Don't let lack of state income tax in Florida fool you. EVERYTHING in South Florida is prohibitively more expensive, from the house you buy to the taxes and insurance you pay on it.

 

I did some investigative reporting (i.e., asked a friend of mine who works in Atlanta) and he reports that the editing hubs will use DTI.

 

Random cost-of-living-indicator says that if you make $50,000 in Charlotte, you need to make $52,000 in West Palm Beach to break even. Doesn't seem like a stunning difference.

 

Those indicators are all over the place. Just from my own experience (and your mileage may vary, of course) . . .

House: $229,000 South Florida (1,550 sq, 1/8 acre land), $139,000 Charlotte (1,850 sq, 1/3 acre land)
Home insurance: $2,000/year South Florida, $435 Charlotte
Car insurance: $1,600/year South Florida, $800/year Charlotte
Water bill: $80-$100/month South Florida, $35/month Charlotte
Property taxes: $3,300/year South Florida, $1,500/year Charlotte
HOA dues: $72/month South Florida, $28/month Charlotte

I suppose if you don't buy a house you can bypass some of the major expense differences.

 

anybody else have trouble with that email address? i keep getting a failure to deliver notification

 

Stellar points, BTE. But Florida does not have state income tax whereas North Carolina does. But, swinging back in favor of North Carolina, Florida's costs to register vehicles is obscene by comparison.

Advantage: Still North Carolina. But no state income tax does even the playing field a bit.

 

Newsgate may be a great system in "theory", but in real world use "Gannett" it's an unmitigated disaster. In the past month alone, the entire system has gone down more than once for hours at a time. Now that may not be a Newsgate issue, that could just be poor servers, hardware etc., but I doubt it.

As for the copy editor job posting, what does everyone send as far as samples of their work? They want them sent through e-mail, but I only have hard copies.

 

Get them scanned. If you don't have a scanner, go to Kinkos. This is the 21st century. You have to have digital clips.

I've seen a variety of things for copy editors over the years. When I was going that route, I would save off copies of a few stories that I did major work on and put together a side-by-side clip that showed the original and what I edited, with the edits bold-faced and notes going down the middle explaining them if necessary. Odds are, you won't have that, so I'd go with a packet of headline samples. Bottom line, clips aren't probably going to get you a copy editing gig. The tests they give you when you get there and the interview will do a lot more for it.

 

I thought Cox was on DTI. Not a bad system, but it has its faults. Still, you get to use InDesign every night. I'm betting they'll be on one of the latest versions, which has a lot less bugs, and since Cox is one of their biggest customers (I think), then I'll bet they get pretty good service when issues pop up.