Quick Newbie Question

Stringing high school columns, and 3-dot versions, in particular -- high reader standards there. No wonder circulation is booming.

 

Paging Mud. Paging Allan Malamud. (Damn, I miss his columns.)

 

Not that I know of CU, and I have been around a bit.

My response was an educated guess.

 

Funny how reporters never think a few inches is that big of a deal. I can't count the times I asked for 16 inches, and the reporter finished and said, "I wrote 20 inches; is that cool?"
Usually not a big deal unless it's on deadline. That's when things get really fun.

 

In the old days, I always thought it was better to write longer -- I thought it was best for the editors to use their judgment on what to leave out.

After a couple stints on the desk, my opinion has changed drastically.

 

Colbert, I've reported and been on the desk, so get what you are saying. The stories that I was referring to checking were usually longer features that I turned in a few days early. I would be writing and wonder if my story was 30 or 40 inches, so I'd do the math. When I put it in the system it would be close. This was usually on a Thursday for something I put on the budget for a Sunday. I know deadline is different.

 

That's really my point. When I have time to sit with a reporter and decide what to leave in and what to take out, or if I have time to tweak the space, it's not a big deal. But when I have to send a page in five minutes, and I get an extra 2-4 inches of copy, it's likely that those last 2-4 inches will not make the final cut.

 

First time I'd heard it called that. I have heard such a column called a "scatter-shooting" column.

 

Oh no. Those columns are stupid.

 

We shouldn't jump to conclusions. Maybe it's not an ellipses thing at all.

Maybe the editor just expects a total of three sentences in the 10-18 inches (an no lower-cases i's). It's possible that the paper is just short of dots.

Lots of long dashes is the way to go.

Oh, and don't agree to do something without knowing what you are agreeing to do. How can you say you'll do a three-dot column if you don't know what it is?

I'm much more impressed with people who ask specific questions about things they don't know than people who try to guess or fake their way through. Many of the bad mistakes in newspapers are from people making false assumptions.

Much better to ask questions up front than to explain to the editor afterward that you weren't quite sure what you were doing.