Testy Copy Editors

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 Post subject: You're hired! Now go away ...
PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:51 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2004 1:01 am
Posts: 1025
Location: The Lexington Avenue Spaceship
From a story in the New York Times jobs section:

Quote:
... Brian Hegarty, who after just three months quit what seemed like a promising position with a Philadelphia-area Internet company that designs e-commerce sites for large corporate clients.

Last May, Mr. Hegarty, 34, was hired as the organization's senior copy chief, responsible for writing a series of copy and grammatical style guides that employees were supposed to follow when setting up and maintaining client Web sites.

But after several weeks on the job, he began to realize that no one was interested in consulting the manuals. "My jaw dropped when a co-worker approached me and said no one was ever going to read the guidelines," Mr. Hegarty recalled. "This had been the big selling point in taking the job. It was disheartening."

There were other signs that taking the position was a mistake. At company meetings, he was often introduced by the wrong job title, and other employees did not seem to have any idea what his responsibilities were.


I know it's not a newspaper copy-desk position, but it's still depressing.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:57 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:47 pm
Posts: 1734
Location: Washington
That's an Internet company for you. Everybody's too busy not knowing what they're doing, what they're producing or why they exist to actually do anything.

In early 2000, I worked as the city editor for a mid-sized daily whose previous CE had just quit to join an Internet startup, somthing to do with parenting advice from a male perspective. Seven weeks later, he asked to come back (this was in May, just when the dot-com bubble burst) ... and was hired as the ACE. The poor guy spent the next several months feeling like everything he said had no credibility because he'd made such a silly career choice. It was difficult because he didn't feel qualified any longer to tell reporters what to do. He was a broken, empty shell of his former self.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 4:51 pm 
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Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 12:01 am
Posts: 376
Location: Southern California
Brian Hegarty obviously doesn't know the $20-bill joke.


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