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Too many of YOU folks!

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Joe Williams, Feb 18, 2008.

  1. pallister

    pallister Guest

    Hate to break this to ya, puppies, but laziness and incompetence can just as easily apply to Sports. And often do.
     
  2. ColbertNation

    ColbertNation Member

    Are there many papers that have people who are strictly copy editors? Our copy editors also paginate (with one exception). But because of that, I've always made the reverse argument that my job is more secure than the writers because most paginators, if called upon, can go out and cover almost any story, but most reporters don't have a clue when it comes to pagination.
    Not that I'm that self-important. I know that I could be replaced easily, but I don't think my job could be eliminated.
     
  3. beardpuller

    beardpuller Active Member

    If there's a problem, it isn't with the number of people editing stories, its with the number of people whose jobs entail sitting around in meetings all day, providing "input" to the people who actually report and edit. Those are the people who can and should go. Yet, most shops, they seem the most well-insulated (many of 'em literally, if you look at the size of their meeting-fed fannies).
     
  4. Diabeetus

    Diabeetus Active Member

    I'm surprised nobody caught this. It had me cracking up. Well played, JG.
     
  5. ServeItUp

    ServeItUp Active Member

    It is, indeed, the winter of our discontent...
     
  6. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Look at the big brain on beardpuller!
     
  7. zebracoy

    zebracoy Guest

    Yes. Mine. The minor league guy dabbles in high schools during the fall and winter. The other guy is just a takeout writer whose byline graces the pages once or twice between March and October. Both have been at the paper 15 and 25 years.

    Both are great guys, I'll give them that. Nice people, solid writers. But really, this couldn't be done better?
     
  8. I see copy desks getting younger, which is a shame because you're losing your institutional memory - the editors who had your beats before you did. We don't want less of them.

    I have also seen newsrooms with too many line editors per reporter. How many fucking middle managers do you need? Especially if you've cut reporters and there's no copy to edit. Give 'em a notebook and tell 'em to write.
     
  9. pallister

    pallister Guest

    Depends on how shitty the copy is.
     
  10. MacDaddy

    MacDaddy Active Member

    To me, this part of the quote jumped out:

    At my shop, and presumably at many others, all the suits seem to care about is generating web traffic. Our web folks are much more interested in, for instance, putting up galleries of fashion shows that happened on a different continent than lifting a finger to do anything to make our local content better. Why? Galleries get clicks. Especially when you allow users to vote whether the picture is "hot or not."

    It's all about clicks; at least at our place, no one seems to care about content. Or embarrassing themselves.
     
  11. jlee

    jlee Well-Known Member

    Even as a young desker, I agree this is a bad thing.

    Today's paper included 17 pages of news entirely edited and paginated by two 23-year-olds who each moved from places more than 2,000 miles away. Between us, I've been here longer with five months under my belt. What are the chances we actually arranged a paper worth four bits?

    Forget having covered the beat before. It's at least better to have someone on the desk who's read the beat for an extended period of time. Especially when the fresh-outta-college writers give the fresh-outta-college editors copy, someone needs to be there to call "bullshit" when it's obvious none of us have been around long enough to really know what we're talking about.

    Trimming an editorial staff can only worsen this problem.
     
  12. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Wow.

    I can see the value of having a takeout guy, but why have him spend half his year covering a small college?

    Yeah, I'd say it can be done better.
     
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