Testy Copy Editors

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 Post subject: Satisfied customers demand good copy editors
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 7:56 am 
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Joined: Fri Jun 07, 2002 12:01 am
Posts: 840
Location: Ashland, Ore.
COPY EDITOR

Prescott Newspapers, Inc., is looking for an experienced copy editor. The right candidate will have a degree in journalism or commensurate experience, an eye for detail, excellent grammar and proofreading skills. Knowledge of Associated Press style, and strong verbal and customer relation skills essential. Excellent benefits. NSE EEOE Send resume and clippings to Human Resources, Prescott Newspapers, Inc., P. O. Box 312, Prescott, AZ 86302 Fax 928-777-8625 or Email to pnihr@prescottaz.

Yeah, I'd love to work the comment line while fixing errors.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 8:00 am 
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Location: Alabamer
Don't knock it till you try it. Not that uncommon for the night crew to end up being ombudsmen.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:21 am 
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Location: Bethesda, Md.
One of the good things about being a copy editor is that you don't have "customers."


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:04 am 
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Location: Cusp of retirement, grave or both
I leave the night "ombudsman" work to the late cop reporters. They actually have time to handle nuts calling about stupid shit.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:20 am 
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Location: Texas
Don't forget about "internal customers".


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:22 pm 
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Location: New York City
Bumfketeer wrote:

Quote:
I leave the night "ombudsman" work to the late cop reporters. They actually have time to handle nuts calling about stupid shit.


You should be so lucky. The copy desk received [or rather had routed to it] all the calls from a) drunks in bars wanting bets settled; b) Guinness book wannabes trying to get the paper to report that they bounced a basketball for a few hours; c) paranoids reporting on their tormentors, including [these are the tormentors, not the paras] Donald Trump, the CIA, the FBI, the Trilateral Commission, and the Pope.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:48 pm 
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Location: Cusp of retirement, grave or both
On the rare occasion I get stuck with a call (my phone broke three or four years ago and I have not reported it yet), I find a simple 'Sorry...gotta run" followed by a gentle return of the receiver to cradle does the trick.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 4:57 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:47 pm
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Location: Washington
Over 20 years of professional observation, it's my experience that the most anti-social among us are the best copy editors. The finest word surgeons I know are surly, snarly and monosyllabic. They also usually have the biggest hearts in the newsroom, though they'll deny their occasional good deeds under the most exotic of tortures.

A copy editor who is required to deal with the public, I submit, is a copy editor who is not being allowed to be the best he or she can be at what most needs getting done.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 8:15 pm 
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Location: Alabamer
I agree with (not to mention resemble) that Wabberjocky, but it's not that bad dealing with the public most nights. Usually fewer than 10 calls get through our Byzantine voicemail system. But nights and weekends we're the only live people in the building, so it's nice to be able to tell folks who to call on Monday or what the football game score was.Sometimes its kind of annoying, but most of the time I picture an earnest Mee Maw in her rocking chair out in the country and am happy to help.

Plus, readers are learning that if they call or e-mail me when they see news or spot an error on the Web site I'll get right on it. That part's very cool to me.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:54 pm 
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Wabberjocky wrote:
Over 20 years of professional observation, it's my experience that the most anti-social among us are the best copy editors.


I don't think copy editors should be answering phone calls from the public. But, over a similar number of years in newspapers, I've observed otherwise among copy editors: The best aren't anti-social.

Of those I've known at various papers, the best headline writers tend to be the strongest editors as well. The best headline writers I've known also tend to be quick with funny comebacks. I've noticed that their minds make interesting connections and that reporters and assignment editors work well with them.

Of my current crop of copyeds, the strongest also are those most popular with others in the newsroom. I hear good things not only about their catches and questions but about how pleasant they are to work with. My only concern is that they will be recruited away.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:00 am 
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Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:05 am
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Location: Chicago
Quote:
But, over a similar number of years in newspapers, I've observed otherwise among copy editors: The best aren't anti-social.


Couldn't agree more. The best I've worked with have all been generally friendly and helpful, and thus, more apt to be popular with reporters and other editors. In this way, they are better placed to be taken seriously when disputes and discussions arise, esp. regarding reporters. (Being good at what they do helps, of course.)

The willfully anti-social among the copy editors I've worked with, even the really good ones, have tended to be marginalized and shunned ... though sometimes they seemed to be content with that.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:13 pm 
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Location: Alabamer
Yes. Our "best" copy editor has gone through one too many nervous breakdowns and can't communicate at all anymore. When left to himself, his work's good, but his corrections and feedback are unintelligible, so the only thing we can do on deadline is ignore him. That kills me because we need his brains bad on the copy desk, but so far nobody's figured out how to use them effectively.

A modicum of anti-socialness makes sense ... otherwise a copy editor would've chosen to be out schmoozing and working a beat. But a newsroom's so cooperative that there's no way to sit in a corner and do your own work. At least if you want to contribute to the paper.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:16 pm 
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Location: Cusp of retirement, grave or both
I worked with a copy editor who used to carry a handgun to work in a holster strapped to his calf. You could see it when he was editing wire copy.

Eventually, someone told him that it wasn't nice to be sitting in the office with a visible handgun. He argued back that he had a carry permit, so he had a right to carry it in the office. Finally, he was told it was against company policy to carry a lethal weapon to work. And he was also given a newly created job - overnight wire editor, midnight to 8 a.m. This was at an A.M. paper, so you can just imagine how great a job that was.

I don't know how often he picked up the phone on that shift, but I hope it wasn't very often.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:34 pm 
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Location: Champaign, Ill.
J Kaufman wrote:
The copy desk received [or rather had routed to it] all the calls from a) drunks in bars wanting bets settled ...


An actual exchange from a call after deadline for a Sunday paper (about 1:15 a.m.):

Elderly woman caller: Hi. I was wondering if you could tell me, who's that man who sings and does those crazy dances, and it's not Michael Jackson, but he does crazy dancing and kind of sings like a girl, and some people think he's, you know [voice drops to a whisper] gay, but he's not?
Me: Um, what?
Caller: Well, I was talking with some friends about this and we figured this was the best place to call at this time of night. You know, he does crazy dances and is very sexual. Who is that?
Me: Um ... Prince?
Caller: Yes! That's him! Thank you. [Click]

It was only then that I pulled out an old copy of the paper and found the copy desk's main number listed in the masthead as the nights and weekend number to call.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 12:44 am 
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Location: Alabamer
And I thought the 2 a.m. call I took from a woman asking for the time of Pavarotti's funeral was weird. Our main phone number makes callers jump through a lot of hoops to get to the newsroom after hours, so I give anyone who gets me credit for perseverance.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:54 am 
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Location: New Brunswick, Canada
My favourite (in Saskatchewan yet) was the drunk who wanted to settle a bet about the height of the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge over Halifax harbour. I asked him if he wanted the figure at high or low tide and that shut him up.
Don't get me started on full moons.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:52 pm 
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Location: 6,500 miles right and down a lot
I once had someone call to say if we didn't stop saying nasty things about her in our astrology column she was going to go to her solicitor (attourney to you) ...


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:16 pm 
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"Our" most interesting was a fellow who kept calling to demand some kind of changes be made in our Sunday TV magazine.

One night, upon going to their cars a bunch of people found bricks on their windshields with notes attached that said "FIX THE TV BOOK!" One woman, a sports agate clerk, found her windshield smashed with the brick.

I'm not sure what our "security" department was doing during this breach. I don't believe the vandal was heard from again.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:13 am 
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Location: Baltimore
I enjoy hearing people call to complain about what's on TV and then order the copy desk or city desk to see that a program is taken off the air. They assume the media IS, not are.

I'm told this goes on around the country. The way corporations have been acquiring and consolidating, the public's faulty assumptions are understandable.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 1:10 pm 
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How long has it been since you've been on a desk, Wayne? When I am through in slot for the evening, I direct "My Name Is Earl."


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:17 pm 
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zythophile wrote:
I once had someone call to say if we didn't stop saying nasty things about her in our astrology column she was going to go to her solicitor (attourney to you) ...


Reminds me of the Douglas Adams character Dirk Gently, who read the horoscope every day without fail, and the fellow who hated Gently and got a job writing the horoscope column, putting nasty entries under Gently's sign. The book noted that circulation was down 8.3% since this had started.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:29 pm 
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Location: Baltimore
Bumfketeer wrote:
How long has it been since you've been on a desk, Wayne? When I am through in slot for the evening, I direct "My Name Is Earl."


Way to synergize, Bumf! Which do you treasure more--your Pulitzers or your Emmys?


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:36 pm 
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My string of poloponies.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:38 pm 
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That seems to wrap it up nicely.


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