Anybody else with helpful co-workers?

[Starman]

Who shout out to the whole newsroom if you send out a page three minutes late?

"Hey, that page was supposed to be out at 11, right? It's 11:03."


And no, it is not part of their job. They aren't supervisors, editors, even assistant editors. They don't rank you on the food chain; in fact, they don't really rank anybody.

 

[RickStain]

I think most copy-editors go through a phase when they are young when they start yelling out every mistake they catch. Most grow out of it. A few may need some Starman justice to get over it, though.

 

[Mark2010]

Yep, ever since they laid off our proofreaders we sort of cross proof pages, as time permits. One newer guy would take like 40 minutes to go over a page and note every single possible item, suggestions, etc. While I appreciated his thoroughness, I was like "Mate, I have six pages to finish in the next 40 minutes. If I spend an extra 20 minutes rewriting every headline you suggested, we'll be here until sunrise. Just check the major stuff, OK?"

 

[jr/shotglass]

Amen on dat one.

And BTW ... don't catch an "it" vs. "their" mistake in the 23rd graf and then miss a misspelling in the headline. That won't score points, either.

 

[Mark2010]

When I'm tight for time, I always look at headlines first, then cutlines, then refer boxes. Anything else is down the priority list.

Back to the original post.......

One night last winter we had a typical heavy sports load and much of it coming in late. I thought I did a hell of a job getting the section out five minutes past deadline. Got some flack from the news editor, to which I replied "Do you want to sit in this chair next Saturday?" The silence was deafening.

Seriously, whenever we have an election night, the newsroom goes nuts.. and understandably so. I even do everything in my power to clear sports pages early (even when it means leaving out West Coast NHL/NBA/MLB games) in order to help them.

But, we have the equivalent of an election night about once a week. Late local, late regional, late national, stuff we have to write up off faxes, phone calls, etc. Our staff isn't big enough to allow the luxury of someone doing exclusively pagination. We all do a little bit of everything. Some nights it comes down to damage control, as in "how close to deadline can I possibly make it without screwing something up/leaving something important out?"

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

I work on the quietest desk I've ever been on, which weirds me out a little given a few of the animal houses I've been at, and the one moment anybody talks is (a) if a page is done or (b) if the clock is ticking.

 

[MightyMouse]

Yeah, because the person blowing deadline never knows he's running late.

 

[Starman]

It's a combination of blatant grandstanding/brown-nosing, like they're the only one in the office who cares about deadline.

It's also a kind of indirect agitation that they should be in the management chain, since obviously they care enough to call people out about deadline to the whole newsroom when nobody else gives a ****.

We have a couple people in our office who do it a lot. With each of them, I've used the line, "And when is YOUR next page due? Oh yes, that's right, they don't allow you to put out pages on deadline."

That got me called in for supposedly making "hostile remarks" in the newsroom.

We have people whose job it is to make sure deadlines are hit. They are called "department editors." If any of those people have problems if I miss deadline by 3 minutes (I usually don't, BTW) and want to tell me about it, that is fine, that is part of their job.

But basically this is just the peanut gallery.

 

[Ace]

I'd rather have an annoying copy editor than a designer who takes a generous approach to deadlines.

 

[jr/shotglass]

We have a couple people in our office who do it a lot. With each of them, I've used the line, "And when is YOUR next page due? Oh yes, that's right, they don't allow you to put out pages on deadline."

That got me called in for supposedly making "hostile remarks" in the newsroom.

I can't put into words how much I loved that line. Possibly because I'm one of those designers who totally disregards deadline. :

 

[Turtle Wexler]

Here's my take on the election night comparison, having worked busy Friday/Saturday nights in sports and a few election nights in news:

Yes, it's an accurate comparison. Every Friday is election night in sports. Same quantity of content, same deadlines, same rush to get it all in.

But the big difference is that sports has its routine down -- every Friday is the same, everyone knows their role and rarely is the big boss breathing down your neck.

On news side, it's chaos -- you've got day-siders working at night, so their schedules are off; you've got extra hands on the desk and maybe not enough workstations; you've got a handful of big bosses who normally leave at 5:01 p.m. hanging around because it's ELECTION NIGHT and they feel they must micromanage; you've got people who aren't used to dead time waiting for all the results to hit at once.

It's not that the workload or pressure is different, it's the routine vs. novelty factor that makes it harder.

 

[BYH]

It's a combination of blatant grandstanding/brown-nosing, like they're the only one in the office who cares about deadline.

It's also a kind of indirect agitation that they should be in the management chain, since obviously they care enough to call people out about deadline to the whole newsroom when nobody else gives a ****.

We have a couple people in our office who do it a lot. With each of them, I've used the line, "And when is YOUR next page due? Oh yes, that's right, they don't allow you to put out pages on deadline."

That got me called in for supposedly making "hostile remarks" in the newsroom.

That this happened gives me great comfort, for some weird reason.

 

[mpcincal]

On our news desk, we cross-proof the pages (full-time proofreader? What's that?), and this thread reminds me we have one guy on the staff we have who makes a big deal out of a small easily-correctible mistake for everybody to hear.

Me, I'll make the mark with my red pen and assumes the person who did the page understands and if not will go over and explain it to him/her one-on-one and maybe bring it up for conversation among all of us if it's a debatable point.

The guy I'm talking about will catch something that we all know is a mistake and just slipped through and know how to correct it but he'll go on for everyone to hear "Hey, mpc, you got e-mail hyphenated here. Isn't it just one word now? Didn't we talk about the AP changing the style a few weeks ago?" Meanwhile, I'm thinking "Dude, the mark it on the damn page for me to see. I'll make the correction when I get it back."

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

I pissed off a sports editor early in my editing career when he asked why we were late and I said, "It was a team effort." But usually it is. In my experience, if you have a good track record of making deadline, usually you don't have to explain much beyond a shrug. As for people pointing out lateness, my feeling is that if they want to race me, most times I would win, so I do not let it bother me.

Places vary in how much they care about 3 to 5 minutes late. One place wanted me to log the time for every story I slotted. The sports news hole there averaged 70 columns daily and 120 Sundays, so you are talking 50 to 80 files. Huge waste of time. If they wanted to know what time I sent the NBA roundup, the computer could have told them.

Many of you are probably too young to have dealt with composing rooms. In a bad one, it could be like watching your section sink in quicksand. You were utterly helpless once you had shipped your layouts and stories and walked into the monkey cage where retardos wielding X-ACTOs had their way with you.

 

[Mark2010]

Oh, God, those were the days!! Thanks for the memories!!

When it comes to proofing and making corrections, I always take the approach that it is ultimately the responsibility of that page's designer. When I am proofing a page, I always do so with the idea I am making suggestions, not demands. Ditto for when someone else is proofing my pages. Some news side editors aren't overly familiar with sports terminology. On the other hand, I don't want to talk over the heads of readers, either, so if they don't get it, chances are a reader might not, either. But the final call always rests with the designer of that page.

 

[HanSenSE]

When I was a newsie, I worked with one person who seemed to delight in wanting to rewrite stories after I'd proofed the pages out. At that shop the front page was my main responsibility. I'd give the copy a cursory read, but always figured it had been through at least two editors before I touched it, so probably didn't need too much work. But with this one, it was SSDD.

Here, mostly check cutlines, heds and jump words. On the agate page, keep an eye out for widows and am a bit of a nut when it comes to the TV listings. Another copy editor taught me long ago that the little things matter. You can have the six column photo of the mayor in bed with the city clerk, but that doesn't matter if you screw up the lottery numbers.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Many of you are probably too young to have dealt with composing rooms. In a bad one, it could be like watching your section sink in quicksand. You were utterly helpless once you had shipped your layouts and stories and walked into the monkey cage where retardos wielding X-ACTOs had their way with you.

But composing rooms were so helpful! They always had these around to fill the odd hole on your section front!

 

[Petrie]

We have a universal desk, and all the deskers do proofing and design...sports design typically trades off between two people on that desk (we have a 3-page section, 5 or 6 on Sundays). With that being said, we have a desk girl who is absolutely horrible at her job.

First off, she would fit in quite well with what others have described here...she thinks out loud, so she points out every single catch she finds verbally, then turns everything into a rambling explanation. However, she never finds anything when she proofs sports pages, and she finds epic ways to **** up when she designs them. When the SE or I tell her what to fix (we proof all our pages, even though the EIC wants us out of there, because we're the only ones who will make catches and, dammit, that's the way it's always been), she *always* has a whiny excuse, rationalization, etc. Just make the damn change and move along.

Her most common excuse is, "Well, I don't have time," or its variation, "Well, if I have time I'll fix it." Well, stop taking 1 1/2-hour lunches and claiming 1 hour, trying to get involved in every single conversation in the whole damn office and going off on long diatribes about how liberal you are, how much Sarah Palin sucks and how things were in your last shop (where you were laid off, I'm guessing in your case on merit) or at your college paper (I know, you have a master's, but that clearly means nothing) and...well...do your ****ing job.

My solution is, instead of saying this whole rant to her face, just not talking to her at all. And ranting about it on here. Thanks, guys.

 

[Mark2010]

It's really hard for non-sports people to do sports section and not have a colossal disaster.

 

[MightyMouse]

We have a couple people in our office who do it a lot. With each of them, I've used the line, "And when is YOUR next page due? Oh yes, that's right, they don't allow you to put out pages on deadline."

That got me called in for supposedly making "hostile remarks" in the newsroom.

That's hostile??? Geez, some folks I work with would have been long gone at that paper.