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

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by beardpuller, Feb 13, 2008.

  1. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    NOW you're cookin' with gas, Jeremy ...
     
  2. Jeremy Goodwin

    Jeremy Goodwin Active Member

    Gotta be careful. If you play (or cook) with fire, you're going to get burned. Just like the readers when errors get in the paper.
     
  3. In Cold Blood

    In Cold Blood Member

    I always, always, always kick myself for for my errors. Even on nights when I know there have been other sets of eyes on my story.

    As a reporter, it's my job to report things accurately and in an interesting way. And I think it should be in that order. Get things right first. Then work on the fancy writing.

    I'm the only one responsible for typos, misspellings, grammatical fuck-ups or any other brain farts. The desk is simply a safety net for what never should have been there in the first place.
     
  4. Jeremy Goodwin

    Jeremy Goodwin Active Member

    Good call on the desk being a safety net. They are there, but you shouldn't rely on them and assume they will catch and fix all your mistakes.
     
  5. That's a good attitude, ICB.

    I would argue the desk is more than "a safety net," but I get what you mean.
     
  6. times38

    times38 Member

    for some reason this made me think of the time last year when I'd only been here for a couple months and the sports editor wrote a column where he said "What if" about 90 times, only he wrote it "What-if" and then tried to tell me that was the newspaper's style.
     
  7. daveevansedge

    daveevansedge Member

    Copy editors should certainly catch grammar, general misspellings (names, particularly on deadline, are on the writer), sentence structure, etc. But as to the question of what are we getting paid for? I'll tell you what:

    Stripping the wires all night
    Putting together national roundups, national notes packages and agate
    Doing a boatload of design/pagination in this day and age of understaffed desks
    Stripping, editing and placing photos
    And, oh yeah, we occasionally get to spend adequate time editing copy! Imagine that.

    My title is sports copy editor. If you divided up my paycheck based on the responsibilities I hold at a mid-major metropolitan, copy editing would probably comprise the smallest portion. Not saying I like or dislike that fact; just saying that's how it is. So there's your answer to what we're getting paid for.

    And to whomever noted the section is "our" product, that's a good call. The writers need to remember that fact when they're collecting awards, whether its APSEs or just the statewide popularity poll, just as the desk needs to keep that in mind when writers help make their job even the slightest bit easier.

    End rant.
     
  8. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    In between posts.
     
  9. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Mustang - I'm just going to assume you were kidding.
     
  10. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    I gotta tell ya, I've been working desk for 25 years, and I have never heard about stripping anything.

    And I feel like I've been missing something.
     
  11. daveevansedge

    daveevansedge Member

    Nah, shotglass. You haven't missed much.
     
  12. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    So, the god of karma came and bit me in the ass today.

    After posting in this thread that you've got to man-up for your mistakes, guess what happens? Major (in my opinion) mistake.

    So, let me start by saying that we're a chain of six weeklies. I'm responcibile for stories, copy editing, e.t.c of two of them. On the one i take the most time with (bigger circ, tougher competition in the market), I have two pictures for the main story, one my main action shot of the week and one a secondary (and slightly smaller) photo.

    I finish my pages and send them off only to discover later that night that the guy responcibile for reviewing the photos/color correcting/ sending the pages to the printing press changed the second photo with .....get this....the same one as the first.

    So, my front page has this shot of three defenders making a block as both the main art shot and ---right directly under it---the same shot as the secondary.

    Needless to say that when I walked into the office today, i was not pleased.

    Moral of the story? I'll man-up to all the mistakes I ever make, but when someone does something this stupid, I refuse to take the blame.
     
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