Testy Copy Editors

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J Kaufman
 Post subject: This and that
PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 10:37 am 
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Joined: Mon Nov 14, 2005 3:47 pm
Posts: 4655
Location: New York City
Copy editors disturb the monastic quiet of the newsroom with their yelling. Who knew? Bonuses: Of course there's banter. And after you've fixed typos with "pens on paper," then what? Run down to the pressroom and mark up each copy?

Quote:
Todd Milles’ Friday started at 8:30 a.m. It will end at … well, it won’t be Friday anymore when Milles walks out the door.

As The News Tribune’s prep sports coordinator, Milles is captain of his own small team. His first job tonight will be to provide live coverage of 29 local high school football games. His rabid online audience will hit our website about 9,000 times expecting updates. After the games end, Milles’ team has about two hours until its own final whistle – the press deadline for completing pages full of scores and stats, stories and standings for the Saturday editions of The Olympian and The News Tribune.
***
At 7:54 p.m., copy editor Kenny Via calls out: “It’s Rogers 19-0 over Curtis right now.” The banter on the sports desk is lively but relaxed as editors finish other stories to make way for the final preps push. The baseball playoff game ends mercifully early; the ice skating competition runs frustratingly late.
***
At 9:42 p.m., tonight’s chief copy editor, Scott Oberstaller, shouts: “Bellarmine game story in.” The Bellarmine-Olympia game is of interest in Olympia and Tacoma. It will go in both papers.
***
With 17 minutes until The Olympian deadline, copy editors fix typos and write headlines, produce a highlights box and update league standings. Page designer Adam Thaler places photographs transmitted from the field.

Even with a page designer, five copy editors, two Scoreboard editors and Sports Editor Darrin Beene coming back to help, the desk misses deadline by 12 minutes.

“One down, one to go,” Beene says and sighs.
***
At 11:29 p.m., Milles walks to the copy desk.

“How are we doing on the Top 10?” For this, we use Associated Press scores from across the state. Via compiles the list while others proofread pages the old-fashioned way, with pens on paper.

Just spelling the names right is painstaking; these athletes aren’t household names.

“Yes, it’s S-t-o-e-h-r,” they finally agree.

[News Tribune, Tacoma]
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What They're Saying


"This is like group therapy with prisoners in the Poynter Institute's dungeon." ... "You take a vocation that the simple-minded consider to be mere drudgery, and you exploit every bit of fascinating and humorous nuance imaginable." ... "Delicious" ... "Ask your professors? The only professors whose opinions matter are named Walsh, Blanchard and McIntyre." ... "What I come here for, I can find ONLY here. Phillip, you've built a great place." ... "Nothing gets us hotter than reading bitchy discussion threads from over-exhausted copy editors endlessly debating the merits of "theater" versus "theatre." ... "I love this site. It's better than the Kool-Aid acid tests." ..."I'm awed at the efficiency with which matters of opinion get hashed out in this forum." ... "Phil is the bomb!" ... "I'd wager that it's exactly your sort of hidebound thinking that contributes to the problems newspapers are having attracting readers." ... "I'm totally obsessed with this site. It's like porn--if you get off on Scrabble." ... "It reveals the backstage carping and vindictive emotions that roil the souls of those trapped at the copy desks." "When they say "testy," they certainly mean it. Whether it's reporters, editors, or the general public, no one is above their savage snark." ... "An apparent crack in the thin grey line." ..."Testy Copy Editors is a bitchboard for journalism's underclass." ... "My desire to read 'Testy Copy Editors' is only rivalled by my desire to pop "Constipated Call Girls" in the DVD player." ... "Phillip Blanchard is not just a testy copy editor, but a prophet scorned in his own time, and those of us who defend wordplay will be punished for it come the Judgment Day." ... "Phil Blanchard is as dashing in person as he is at the TCE board." ... "As far as writing and editing go: Read this board, read Bill Walsh, memorize the style book, read William Zinsser, and read the New York Times. That's a good start." ... "You should let go of your bitterness. You were not the oppressed talent you thought yourself to be. You were a miserable, brooding, silent, joyless grind, lucky to have a job at the Sun-Times, and we're lucky now that you've moved on to afflict others."



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