Your fault, OR, what are they paying those darned copy editors for?

Previous shop the prep editor used to be a copy editor, and he saved countless fact/name/date errors by grabbing any and all non-event copy and going over it.

 

Why don't we start printing copy editors names below stories. Then readers can decide who they want to call.

Unless the copy editor changes my copy and they insert an error, I'll take the blame.

The only time I'd get pissed at the desk was if an error was inserted in a big feature or project I had been working on and they inserted an error. Otherwise, we've got the next day's paper to put out. No point in holding small grudges when we all have to work together to put out a daily product. People will forget small errors. Also, it takes two to tango.

 

Were all those errors you inserted caught and removed before the paper hit the press? I'm thinking a few of those had to make the print edition.

 

Are you fucking Kidding me, Mustangj??

 

Factual errors would be easier to spot if papers had more vets on the desk. Nowadays, there's a lot of jumping around. Institutional knowledge that would save some of these mistakes from getting in the paper is virtually non-existent.
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This is a terrific point.

When I started at my paper as a 20-year-old, my sports editor once told me, "assume you're going to get no help from the desk, because you probably aren't." Basically, he's been proven right. I take full responsibility for everything that I type, but there are times when I think, "fuck, did anybody even read this?" And, in most of those cases, the answer is that nobody did read it, including me.

But I've been a copy editor before, and that's a shitty role in which you get blamed for a lot of shit when you were lucky just to get a paper out.

 

That gets even more fun when the coach doesn't know. Next thing you know, he's yelling across the field asking how to spell his name.

But to the point of the thread, my mistakes are my own and I accept that and try not to do it. I just wish they would catch sometimes when I use the wrong form of to/too/two or when two becomes "tow." That's still my fault. Maybe I'm bitter because I catch those things and others don't.

Although this wasn't a mistake, my SE once added a sentence into a feature story about two schools combining sports programs and completely threw off the narrative.

But what really makes me mad is when I write what I think is a great story. The copy is clean and then the desk fucks it up with a mispelling in the headline.

I can't use this one for clips.

 

It's both your fault AND the desk's fault. They should have caught it, but so should you.

 

My philosophy: if I could have prevented it, it becomes my fault, whether I wrote it, rimmed it, slotted it, proofed it or cast eyes upon it in any other way. If I can't do my part to get it right, I serve you and yours no purpose whatsoever.

 

I think you were being sarcastic. And I was exaggerating, of course. But I would quit the business if I found myself as a career copy editor. That's not a slam on copy editors, because good ones are awesome. But I can't tell you how much I hate desk shifts.

 

You think he was being sarcastic? Really?

 

I blame page designers. ;D

 

interesting point. If they didn't put the story on the page, then people wouldn't see the story, and thus not see the error.