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What happened to the Copy Editors?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Your Huckleberry, Jun 15, 2007.

  1. jfs1000

    jfs1000 Member

    Copy editor with no paginating skills is useless in the current market place. With technological advances, it is a waste of resources to have just a straight copy editor. You want someone who can do both.

    Less pay, less jobs, more work. That's how it goes.
     
  2. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of folks in this business who want to celebrate that as a virtue, at least when it comes to the elimination of "true" copy editors.
     
  3. imjustagirl2

    imjustagirl2 New Member

    I'm one. Well, I write too. But when I'm on desk, I am straight copy. No designing.
     
  4. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    Find a newspaper that still edits its own staff-written copy, but has outsourced its pagination and most of its design duties to its larger sister paper. At that paper you'll find people who strictly have the title of copy editor.
     
  5. TyWebb

    TyWebb Well-Known Member

    Even reporters have to be multi-talented. There isn't a person in my shop that can't write a story, edit someone else's then lay it out on the page. Not to mention we are all very capable of handling angry mom calls.
     
  6. Very interesting theory. We should investigate.
     
  7. Yes, but those angry Mom calls are definitely the most difficult. :D
     
  8. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    You can still find straight copy editing jobs on large papers. But even at that level, not all metros treat copy editors the same. At some places the word people really get abused -- in my experience never out of malice, but sometimes out of ignorance and most often just a decision to allocate resources to areas that they believe (rightly or wrongly) are more noticeable to readers (and contest judges). Long time ago I was employed as a slot -- on large papers each desk has a chief copy editor who reads the stuff after the regular copy editors and hits the final button -- and at that time we had one of the largest news holes in the nation and usually 2.5 to four rim people. Eventually the macho thrill that I took in being able to slot 50-70 stories per night began to wane and I began to realize that I didn't work my ass off for years to become a good copy editor so I could work as a hack who "edited" a story in two minutes, so I left. But the point is that the people who made the decision to staff us that way weren't evil or ignorant -- we were in a very competitive situation and shit needed to get covered and somebody had to lay out all those pages. And while copy editing wasn't their priority, I understood that they did place at least some value on it or they wouldn't have spent the money to hire me when they could have gotten somebody OK for $10K less.

    In this climate you're probably not going to be mulling several offers at a time, and it will improve your marketability if you are versatile. And I've always been a fan of the "when in Rome" strategy -- try to work in the area that the paper is best at -- because that way I got to learn from people who were pretty accomplished at what they did. Even if designing pages wasn't what I wanted to do, why pass up a chance to learn from a designer who's really good? Especially if editing copy was an afterthought at that place -- why expend all that energy every day doing something that the glass offices never would notice? Most of the glass offices atop the newsroom came up via the city desk, where they did some editing but a different kind of editing, and they wouldn't notice many of the nuances because a lot of what we do just isn't in their frame of reference. But they'll notice a sharp page or a good headline.

    If you're sure you want to just edit copy, my advice is to look for papers that have tight space but still try to be a paper of record and accomplish that by running lots of short stories. Usually those papers appreciate editing and spend money on it because great editing is what allows them to be a complete newspaper despite small news holes. There's a greater emphasis on tightening copy and you'll learn more in a year there than you'd learn in three years at a place where you don't have to fight for every inch.

    Before your time, Huck, we had a poster named DyePack who got banned. I was a bit more tolerant of him than most because I understood where he was coming from -- that editing was being sacrificed in favor of cosmetics. At the same time I believed he had no one but himself to blame for not noticing 10 years sooner that the business was changing, and I also thought his anger was misdirected at designers instead of at those who employ them, as the designers didn't overthrow the government to acquire power, that power was given to them.

    So, you know, if you want to just edit, be careful of where you land -- you want to go somewhere copy editing is noticed and appreciated. Otherwise, you are better off acquiring as many skills as you can.
     
  9. Dan Rydell

    Dan Rydell Guest

    It's sad, but copy editors (and designers too) are just considered production people now. Once the composing room went away, newsroom management realized that we were the production people now, and for some reason they just assigned us as that.

    We're not production people. We are live journalists also, and yet they keep cutting us to the bone. We design outstanding pages and write incredible headlines as often as we can.

    Meanwhile, the management team never comes around to talk about our concerns.

    "Fuck the desk. They're just the production staff."

    This is why I hate the assholes in the suits.

    Newspaper management has lost touch, a long time ago, about what makes a newspaper great. It usually involves the incredibly talented journalists on the copy and design desks as much as anyone who writes the story.

    That's my beef. Discuss at will.
     
  10. Frank,

    Thank you for such a very well thought out answer. Very insightful and helpful to me. You're right about taking advantage of good people around me. I need to do that more, especically the good design people. It sure wouldn't hurt to know that part of the assembly line as well. I've had editors in the past and really appreciated their skills. I feel plenty equipped to handle copy editing but as you have said, it's not too common any more. Not sure where I'm going in this profession right now. I love the position I have, so it's not like I need to make a move. But I'am always looking and weighing my options. Thanks for your thoughts and the time you put into your reply.
     
  11. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    Dan, with no malice intended, I think you've found yourself at a newspaper which treats its desk people like crap. It's not the way they're looked upon universally, I assure you.
     
  12. I fully respect our desk people Dan. I don't know how they do their job. I would love to have the creativity that they have in some of their design work. Shot is right, your employer doesn't give your desk people the respect they deserve. I know they do at my place. They pay them well and they are considered very, very valuable.
     
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