$$$ > product

Sounds like it was already printed and unless it was a catastrophic error like the ads getting left out or the first seven letters of each copy block spelling out F U C K Y O U, then I'm not sure if any daily publication is going to reprint an entire section.

I'm with jroyal, it sounds like someone should checked the pages once they were converted to PDFs just to make sure everything looked right. But at a certain point, you just have to walk away and say the next one will be better.

If not, you'll just go insane.

 

I might be at one of the few (the only one?) papers in the world whose publisher would reprint. That's because under the previous ME, a lot of mistakes went unnoticed until it was too late and she's very sensitive to the perception that we're run by inept people or that we don't care that she'd order the reprint.

Then whoever's responsible would get a lecture about how much it cost and that it had better not happen again.

 

The thing got printed. It was an eight-page special section that was being inserted into every paper. Because it was the front, they would have had to reprint 1, 2, 7 and 8 and the whole section was color and we would end up barely breaking even or losing money on the project if we did.
As I said, I think putting out a shitty-looking section is more detrimental. When the advertisers see it, they're not going to be happy and if I were them, I wouldn't be jumping up and down to get on the spring section.
Of course, this type of rational thinking eludes the suits, so I shouldn't have been surprised.

 

Sorry, but that's *really* easy to say when it's not your money but it is your product. I can't blame them a bit for not eating an entire reprinting.

 

If advertisers bail, you should get fired, since it was ultimately your fault, not the writer you threw under the bus.

 

Rhody, you have every right to be pissed and annoyed. If you weren't that would be a bad sign.
I'm not one to usually take the side of the higher ups, but I agree with many here. I'd bet most papers wouldn't reprint in this situation.
From what you wrote, are you saying NOBODY looked at it between the time you sent it to production and the entire press being run? It sounds like a glaring enough mistake it would have been caught if early copies were looked at. I don't know if that's the responsibility of you, the new guy, someone in production or what, but it seems like someone should have been looking at it to make sure everything came across right before the entire press run was printed. If no one did that, sorry, but why should the suits be asked to take a bath?

 

It's his fault that he turned in a well done product and someone else screwed it up while he had to go cover a game? Man I would hate to work for you.

 

I'm not saying it's firable, but someone has to be in charge of designing the production process, and it's not uncommon but still wrong to have a process where nobody from the editorial side sees the page once it leaves the newsroom. Plate checks or print checks are a pain, but they stop stuff like this from happening.

 

Agreed. As you know we have an monthly oil magazine. This past issue had a majority of jumps wrong, among other things. Reason for it is, the person who did all the writing wasn't given the chance to proof it. The publisher did the designing and proofing. The same set of eyes shouldn't do both, especially when the publisher here very rarely does anything in the newsroom. For a 80+ page magazine to have jumps messed up throughout is a really bad mistake. People who want to finish the story are left searching through 80+ pages to find the next part. It's made even worse by the fact that we jump stories 4-6 times because they don't know how to design for a magazine. Those of us that know magazines pretty well from reading or experience have tried to get them to stop jumping so much but they won't because it means a change in ads (not necessarily less money).

The trend seems to be going away from taking the time to make sure as many mistakes are possible are eliminated. Seems like just get the thing done well enough and then just live with the mistakes is the standard.

 

But, does that make it right? [/feebleattemptattopicdrift]

 

Hell, quit ya'lls bitching. I celebrate the days the paper reaches the level of looking like ass.

 

Moral of the story: When doing a special section or project, don't wait until the last minute deadline to finish it. That way, you have no wiggle room if a mistake like this happens.