What exactly does desk work entail?

[da man]

The job often entails making chicken salad ...

 

[da man]

Oh, and anyone who says there's little stress on the desk should stop by a few minutes before deadline when the All-Star game is in the 15th ****ing inning. Or when something breaks late and the section gets blown to smithereens.

There's a deadline every night, and very often the desk finds itself taking it down to the wire.

 

[buckweaver]

Oh, and anyone who says there's little stress on the desk should stop by a few minutes before deadline when the All-Star game is in the 15th ****ing inning. Or when something breaks late and the section gets blown to smithereens.

There's a deadline every night, and very often the desk finds itself taking it down to the wire.

Very good point.

That said, I seem to thrive in those situations. The stress, for me, comes from the factors Frank_R listed (bad bosses, office politics, impossible zoning.) But deadline pressure? Going down to the wire? Can't beat it. That ****'s fun, man. ... But I'm kind of weird.

 

[SportySpice]

Yeah, in a way, it's fun. But not for every deadline, every night of every month of every year.
The real question that should have been asked at the start of this thread is what exactly DOESN'T desk work entail?
The first few years I started on the desk was at a smallish paper and after I got home and finally fallen asleep, I constantly would wake up thinking I had botched the lead headline or made a huge fact error in a big graphic or something.
You have to learn to let things roll off you -- in that way, it's like being a beat writer or columnist -- but it still wears you down and I've seen many, many, many desk folks whose relationships, marriages, family lives have gone in the crapper in large part because of the cumulative stress. You don't even realize it's building up and affecting you until one day, you're like, "Damn, I never used to be like this." And this is where the people you work with and our good friend, Mr. Beer, come in after the shift.

Guess it beats having a boss like Lumberg, though I think some shops would probably benefit from having the two Bobs come in and ask questions. "So, what exactly would you say....you do here?" Gotta be better than the way they're targeting people now.

 

[RedCanuck]

Sort of a thread jack, sort of not...

For the deskers, what is typically your page load and how many hours average do you spend per page? (Obviously section fronts and agate may take longer than other pages you do). Do you edit stories and design at the same time, or are they (whenever possible) two separate processes in your shop? Also, how long do you have typically between receiving the dummies and deadline?

 

[captzulu]

Sort of a thread jack, sort of not...

For the deskers, what is typically your page load and how many hours average do you spend per page? (Obviously section fronts and agate may take longer than other pages you do). Do you edit stories and design at the same time, or are they (whenever possible) two separate processes in your shop? Also, how long do you have typically between receiving the dummies and deadline?

Page count varies depending on paper size and whether the paper separates the copy editing and design functions. Both shops I worked in used combo copy editor/designer on the sports desk. At the smaller shop (about 50k), I had anywhere from 2-4 pages a night (usually 3). At the large shop (about 180k), we rarely had more than 2 pages apiece. That was 3-4 years ago though, so I'm sure the workload has increased some since then.

As for time between dummies and deadline, when I slotted, I went into the office at 4 or 4:30 p.m. to get the page dummies, and the first deadline was 11:30. On nights when I worked rim, I usually went in around 5:30 or 6.

 

[dixiehack]

Sort of a thread jack, sort of not...

For the deskers, what is typically your page load and how many hours average do you spend per page? (Obviously section fronts and agate may take longer than other pages you do). Do you edit stories and design at the same time, or are they (whenever possible) two separate processes in your shop? Also, how long do you have typically between receiving the dummies and deadline?

Usually three was average, two meant someone else was in to help that night, and four was cause for celebration because you had enough room to get everything in for once. But I've done 8-10 page Sunday sections solo before.

And as far as actually laying out agate (not counting typing in local boxscores or setting up the TV listings), that was cake. There were many times I got to 11:28, opened up the Quark page, and had proofs ready two minutes later. If you could have seen my hands on the keyboard, it probably looked like I was picking Foggy Mountain Breakdown in double time.

 

[beardpuller]

I've done both, though it's been a long time since I worked the desk.
I came to feel that on the desk, you're always reacting, trying to fix something that has been created by someone else.
In writing, you're acting instead of reacting, you're creating something (which someone else maybe has to fix).
I don't claim that to be a universal truth, but it was true for me.

In cruder terms, better to be the ****ter than the ****ee.

 

[jlee]

Sort of a thread jack, sort of not...

For the deskers, what is typically your page load and how many hours average do you spend per page? (Obviously section fronts and agate may take longer than other pages you do). Do you edit stories and design at the same time, or are they (whenever possible) two separate processes in your shop? Also, how long do you have typically between receiving the dummies and deadline?

At an 18K in a rural northwestern area:

News side: Two or three copy editors edit and lay out about seven pages per night on average. If there's a big mid-week paper when only two are on staff, which happens a few times a month, they'll tackle 12-14 pages in a night.

Sports side: We're a four-man staff with an intern. Either the SE and one writer do layout and editing. The other two full-time writers do editing, and the intern just writes (he's unpaid and he does a hell of a job) though sometimes he likes to stay and read proofs. A general night is 3-4 pages, and the desk resposibilites of the night usually include agate and compiling local digests -- generally rewording e-mails we get from events we didn't cover, watching the gametracker of an out-of-town game and making a phone call or two.

 

[a_rosenthal]

Sort of a thread jack, sort of not...

For the deskers, what is typically your page load and how many hours average do you spend per page? (Obviously section fronts and agate may take longer than other pages you do). Do you edit stories and design at the same time, or are they (whenever possible) two separate processes in your shop? Also, how long do you have typically between receiving the dummies and deadline?

I do between 28-32 pages a week. Midweek is slower than the weekends, obviously. We have slot editors who edit all copy. I typically read all local stories, but trust the slot to have read and checked wire stories. I receive dummies before I'm in the door, but they often change (****ing ad people).

I get in at about 4:30. I print out the dummies, sit in on our little sports budget meeting and start cranking out the section. On Wednesdays, I have a 6 page book usually. Thursdays I'm regularly at six pages, but sometimes we get to 8 during the prep season. Fridays during the summer is 6. During the prep season we're at 8 or 10. Saturdays are 8 at a minimum and even in the summer we're up to a 10. During college football season we're at around 10. Sundays are almost exclusively 4.

We're down one desker from where we're supposed to be, upping my workload quite a bit. At my shop, I don't think there's anyone who pumps out the number of pages that the sports designer does (there have been nights where, because of sections done in advance, I have done as many pages as each of the news designers/copy editors combined. Those are the nights where I reward myself with a glass of scotch when I get home).

As far as the stress levels go, each night (during the heavy sports season) is a struggle, particularly for me when we're down a person. I enjoy it most nights, but there are nights where it grinds on you. But I knew that going in, as does every desker whose worked at least a year in this business. You keep on truckin'.