I was just emailing Debbie Dills (who despite the name is not a porn star) about quitting the Walmart and she asked me if it would be possible to get a job at the paper doing copyediting...
And I just laughed and laughed....
See...Get this! At our local paper....there isn't a copy desk.
Not one single copy reader whatsoever. You would not believe how many typos and errors there are in each edition. Nor could you fathom how many stories run not once or twice but three and four times, sometimes in different sections of the same edition.
And this paper only comes out twice a week. Can you imagine the insanity if it was a daily??
AND you newsies out there won't even believe this...
Not only is there no copy desk, there is no managing editor. There is no personnel director, there is no assignment desk, there are no editorial meetings but that's mainly because there is NO EDITOR IN CHIEF.
Our one and only editor quit last winter and they just never replaced him. Ever.
The publisher is now the "editor" and the gal who types up the community briefs and the obits and one of the five reporters do the layout for the main paper. Isn't that NUTS?
Of course, there is no shortage of ad staff. Ha! There are no less than five ad sales people and I think there are now four or five ad designers. Plus the four gals up front selling classifieds and the ad manager. Ah, the almighty dollar.
Gotta frame in that news hole.
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Ha! It is everybody's hobby up here to rip on the local newspaper The Juneau Empire. When we first moved here, hubby worked at the newspaper as the Classified Ad director. He said every so often, some guy would send in clippings from the paper with a note attached that read, "The Empire Strikes Out," and he'd point out all the errors.
i think you could easily point out the value of a copy editor: pulling out duplicate stories gives you extra room to place yet another ad!
or, you can borrow a skill volunteered by amy's hubby and start circling all the errors you see.... send them in anonymously, then after a few weeks, let them know that you're willing to provide your mad copy editing skills, should they want it?
p.s. you can borrow my name and start a porn career, if it'll help ya out financially. =)
I went to high school with a Debbie Dilday. I think she has the porn name licked... so to speak.
I believe she's married now, and I'm guessing she changed her name. She didn't much care for it in high school.
That is shocking! What is the next closest newspaper to you? Surely they will have a copy desk!?
I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure the next closest paper with a copy desk is out of Flagstaff...about 2.5 hours away.
Yipes!
Believe it or not, the venerable OC Register (yak) got rid of its copy desk last year. Only front-page stories are now copy-edited. Reporters and editors are expected to copy read their own stories. Ri-goddamn-diculous, if you ask me. So very glad I'm no longer employed there.
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