Is this a good editor?

[Smallpotatoes]

Since being laid off at my last full-time newspaper job six years ago I’ve been freelancing for a few different publications. Now that I’m employed full-time (almost 3 years at my current job) I still do some writing as time permits just to make a little extra money and help out some friends who are still in the business.

One of the publications I’ve written for is a local weekly, run by a nonprofit organization. When it started one of co-workers was one of the editors. Since my previous employer’s shift toward regional coverage this paper was something I really wanted to support It fills a void that the other publication left when it became more regional in nature.

About a year ago my friend left. In mid-January I sent them a feature on a team. I was paid for it in a timely manner. About 5-6 weeks later I received an email from the new editor. She said the story, which was still unpublished, had “aged out” and asked me to make some revisions. This was already a few weeks after that team’s season ended. I made a few minor tweaks and they eventually published it.

In the spring I did a feature on a college athlete. I ended up revising it three times so it had the most up-to-date information in it. I was paid within two weeks of my last revision but the story wasn’t published until six weeks later.

After that I figured out the key was to pitch evergreen stories. I did one such story in December. I was paid for it in mid-January and now, in mid-March, it has yet to be published.

Is any of this normal? I appreciate getting paid in a timely manner but when the subject of the story asks if it’s been published yet a month or two later it’s not a good look for me. As I related in my thread about doing a book, I like to know I’ll get paid and I like to know what I do is published. I don’t like the idea of wasting other people’s time. I suppose I could always figure I’ll probably never see them again so who cares if they think I’m an asshole but that’s not who I am. I do care and this lag in publishing puts me in a bad spot.

 

[playthrough]

Is it normal? Sometimes. I accept evergreen stories at my shop but make no promises on when they'll run due to the news cycle and all, it might take several weeks (but once I have the copy I start the payment process). I've worked with most of the writers for a long time, they understand and I tell them it's OK to nudge me for updates.

But as the writer I think you have to make peace that publishing is out of your hands.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

In 2002, I handled all the sports stories for a weekly. I'd email the stories and the editor would lay them out. I wrote what I thought was a pretty good column on Pete Sampras struggling at a pre-US Open tuneup and how he wasn't able to turn back Father Time. The editor, a very nice person but not at all into sports, said she ran out of space but it could run the next time.

Friends, Pete Sampras never lost again.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Once you get paid as a stringer and the publication has it, it's theirs to do as they wish with it.

From a newspaper standpoint, that's great if you've got an unlimited freelance budget. But at a small paper, I wouldn't make a stringer assignment unless I absolutely intended to use it.

Sucks for the stringer too, but nothing is contractually stopping them from pitching the story to a competitor or posting on Substack, etc.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

If I submitted a story, got paid and it aged out because of the editor's inaction, any required revisions would come with another invoice. And yes, it's a bad look for the writer when the subject has to wonder when the piece is going to be published. So much so that I'd be reluctant to write anything without a hard pub date.

 

[MTM]

When I was a reporter, I figured once I finished writing, I did my job, and it was out of my hands. It did suck when I would put time and effort into interviewing and writing and the article never got printed, but oh well.

I had an editor who always held stories for a "rainy day" and most of the staff had stuff age out. I think she still had two when I left for another job.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

People get walked on without regerts in this business. If you let it happen, it's on you. I've given this advice to other people who expected their editors to be looking out for them.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

At the same time, there might be blowback. In 2017 I called out some unprofessional conduct in my room to my superiors, and 11 days later I got laid off.

The chef's kiss was the unprofessional conductee got promoted at the same exact time.

 

[ChrisLong]

Bad editor:
I was a veteran sports reporter, covered some teams and took on whatever came around. I asked my SE for a column, maybe once a week. He pondered it and told me to write three sample columns that he could analyze and make a decision. I did. They sat in the computer system. I don't even remember if we had any discussions about them. A little while later, he got fired because of his incompetence. The replacement was the former sports editor, who came back. He was looking through the computer queues and saw my sample columns. In the next few weeks, all of them ran as centerpiece features, with minor edits to convert them from columns to features.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

For a number of years I had a jack-of-all-trades job on the night city desk. I served as news editor for the various zones of the local section and handled late breaking news. I also hired some part-time student reporters to cover the night cops beat. On one occasion the dayside public-safety editor handed one of the student reporters an assignment: a guy had come to town from Oklahoma in search of his sister, who had gone missing in the city's dope houses. She was an addict, of course, and the police didn't seem to be working too hard to find her.

My student reporter worked up a compelling story basically laying out the lives of brother and sister, but it was way long, and it languished in overset because the dayside editor didn't advocate for the story he assigned. I finally dug into it and cut it in half while doing my best to retain its sensitivity. It still sat around for days on end.
Finally, one of our least competent editors, doing fill-in for me, butchered it into 12 inches of night-cop fodder and stuck it in a Monday morning edition. My student reporter was crestfallen, but to her credit she accepted it as a learning experience.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

The other thing I’ve found somewhat annoying about this editor is that it seems like they want me to interview the subject before pitching the story idea to them.
Yes, I do my homework about the subject and learn as much as I can about them before interviewing them or even asking if they agree to be interviewed but when I pitch the story the editor comes back with questions that can only be answered by talking to the subject. I get the idea that “I’ll find out when I talk to them” is not the answer they want to hear.
Again, it comes back to I don’t want to waste the subject’s time or my time with something that might not be published.
I’m not sure if that’s the sign of a good editor (and/or me being a lazy writer) or if they’re being difficult. It’s great that they have standards but is it worth working with that difficult?

 

[Slacker]

Why don't you have that talk with your editor?

 

[swingline]

I reworked a resume for a woman recently and charged a lot of money. For that, I told her she could have one free revision. She has given me work before, and I hope she does so again, so one free was me looking out for my future (writ really small).

She had no revisions.

 

[Severian]

charged a lot of money.

How much?

 

[swingline]

More than you'd think but less than I could have.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

They’re running a story this Friday that I filed in May. The editor emailed me to check kn a few time-sensitive things to see if they were still true.
I was paid for it about a week after I filed it.

 

[MNgremlin]

If it was a daily paper, I would probably be much more concerned. But being a weekly, it's obviously a different calendar that they run by. Many event coverage stories you really only have one chance to get it into the paper. So more evergreen stories are more likely to be pushed back.

When you pitch these ideas, are you given any sense of a timeframe? Would it make sense to ask when the editor will likely have a need for a story, and use that knowledge to guide what kind of feature you'll write?

 

[MNgremlin]

The other thing I would think about is whether this story is meant to be in the sports page or a front page feature. I think on the front page, it is more quickly to be pushed back. The risk is still there if it's printed on the sports page, but it could be mitigated possibly by weaving in game/season info.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

And in the big picture, if you get paid for it in a timely manner and the delay doesn't make you look foolish, I'm not sure your opinion of whether this is a good editor or not is especially valued. Or even needed.

 

[baddecision]

Once they pay you, the deal is done. Move on to the next.