100 Confessions: Jokes

(88) I will make jokes at a certain expense of personal professionalism.

Example from an event the other night. An alum of the Washington Journalism Center began describing a story he chased that took him into gay bars. Students aren't allowed to drink in the program. So he asked legitimately, and to the interest of other students.

Alum: "I'm not sure I was allowed to enter a bar. Did I break policy?"
Me: "No. You brokeback policy."

Other examples: here, here.

100 Confessions: Nicknames

(87) I create nicknames for people. Sometimes the nicknames don't even make sense. But I find that people get excited about having a nickname. It makes them feel like their part of some elite club.

Examples:
-Kid in my youth group who plays lots of video games and likes to read. One day I'm riding in his car and am surprised by the smell of ramen noodles. I noticed that he has bowl sitting on the floor of the passenger side seat, with the dregs still sloshing a bit at stoplights.
Me: "You eat ramen noodles in the car?"
Kid: "Yeah, I got hungry on the ride home three days ago."

And we called him Noodle. Or Wild Man. Both are true.

-Student from southern California. Had a conversation with her one time while watching the remade 90210 series. My question switched from academic to "is this what you people are like? What's in the water down there?" And so we call her 90210.

-Coworker who was shy. But despite her shyness, she delivered really solid journalism. To build her up, I would call her Big, Bad Brandi. This was inspite of the fact that she was neither big, nor bad. In my defense her name was Brandi.

-Student who didn't know how to cook. She confided to me one day that she'd been eating sloppy joes since she left home. And thus, we called her Sloppy Joe (She wasn't actually sloppy).

100 Confessions: What I Have to Be Thankful For

(86) I have a lot to be thankful for:

- A beautiful, caring wife.
- The Washington Journalism Center and the bright, passionate students there.
- Terry Mattingly
- A chance to go to graduate school at a top-20 school.
- Julie and Jared James
- Mike Plunkett
- The CCT program and the awesome people I know there
- I live in Washington DC, which may be the greatest city in the world.
- Sean at the front desk of the Clara Barton.
- Royal Poinciana Chapel and the Norris family
- Grace DC
- My little sister
- The craziness that is my family
- My dog (formerly my wife's dog), Mia
- The Palm Beach Post
- Josh Manning at the Town-Crier, for taking a chance on me as a writer.

100 Confessions: Thanksgiving

(85) I have a Thanksgiving Ritual.

In the morning, I wake up and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Mimi and I always stay in town for Thanksgiving. We go everywhere else for other holidays--Thanksgiving is our holiday. We stay home and invite any friends that are in town to come join us. We make too much food (it allows for turkey sandwiches later in the week). And after we're done with our meal, we watch my favorite movie, (And the movie really should be a rite of passage between Thanksgiving and Christmas) It's a Wonderful Life.

Then we can begin listening to Christmas music publically. As in the case this year, I cheated the weekend before Thanksgiving, but you've really got to save 90% of the Christmas music until Christmastime otherwise you get tired of it before the end of the season. It's just math. There's only so much Frosty and Rudolph a man can take.

100 Confessions: Elevator Practices

(84) I jam the "close-door" button to keep other people out of elevators. Elevators can be awkward. The only time people usually make conversation is if I have a dog. Conversations are usually like "What's your dog's name?" "What kind of dog?" "How old is she?" Notice that there is never any recognition that I exist. I don't know why people think it's less awkward to ask for a dog's name than a person's, but whatever.

So I'm an awkward avoider. If given the opportunity to get in elevator alone (and with no one watching), I try to keep my ride solo.

100 Confessions: Coach and the Player

(83) The coach and player lesson. One of the greatest lessons in my life came when I was kid, taking karate lessons. I was trying to figure out some move or something. I kept stopping and asking the instructor and myself, "Am I doing this right?" Finally, my instructor stopped me. He said, "You can't be the coach and the player at the same time."

Since then I've applied that lesson to just about everything in my life. My writing, my lectures, my work projects. It's hard to judge your own work until you've actually done the work.

Why Copy Editors Matter

Hilarious. In the above, a Toronto Star editor copyedits the publishers memo announcing layoffs. It was the editor's subtle clue that the publisher could benefit from editorial aid and that outsourcing copyediting to freelancers might not be the best idea.

There's no doubt that newspapers are in trouble. Copy editor layoffs haven't gotten much attention -- certainly not as much as the reporter layoffs. After all, copy editors are invisible by nature. They're layoffs are the unacknowledged part of the larger loss of "journalism jobs."

Unfortunately, the marketplace now eliminates journalism jobs at a rate in excess of 1,000 a month.

That's a lot of people out of work, and in the case of copy editors, a lot of people who served a valuable function to the community. What do we lose with copy editors?

(1) We lose people who know their community- During one stint as a copy editor, I had a piece of copy come across my desk that said that an informal but influential village council was dissolving itself because the council members all hated each other. I'd only been there a month or so, but sounds like BIG news right? Wrong. Turns out they used to do that every six months or so. They'd take a month off and when people started talking about electing new council members, the old council members would go back to work.

I had no sense of how important the news was. And I don't doubt that there are the occasional geeks who know all sorts of random information about their community. But in my experience those geeks want to be paid (there's not a lot of interest in "Citizen Copyediting"--not a ton of perks). More likely you'll get cheap editors who can do some story structure, some grammar editing but aren't going to be the best when it comes to deciding what goes on A1. Here's Poynter:

Copy editors matter. They bring news elements together to make the whole more than the individual parts. They think about news packages, news pages and overall content and credibility.

(2) We lose people who care about getting accurate information- As the copy editor said in his edit of the publisher's memo, to lose your salaried copy editors is to lose people who, well, care if an error gets into a story. Here's another adventure from that same, very weird newspaper.

One time I got a 6000-word story on a council meeting. It was supposed to be 600. And I had to edit it. I was pretty sure I was going to quit. But I didn't. Am I a hero for not quitting? I can't really say. But yes.

Once I trimmed it down to about the right length, I found a little gem. In this middle of the story with no context, no explanation, there was an unattributed quote: "She does it so good. I really love it when she does it for me. We don't even have to pay her. Let's have her do it more."

To this day, I have no idea what that quote was about. But the fact is, I didn't have to care. And in many situations -- far more serious than a random quote -- salaried copy editors serve to protect misinformation from getting into the hands of the public. Losing stakeholders, losing copy editors is loosing a hold on misinformation. And you know, after that story (which I essentially rewrote), I didn't even get a byline. The reporter got calls telling her how good her story was.

Karen Dunlap's post does make copy editors sound like superheroes, but she does make a good point:

They know that some of their best work is invisible. Writers and editors might admire the flow of a story without noting the deletion of an article, a change in punctuation, or the upgrading of verbs that helped the story flow.

Copy editors know that their work is also among the most read and influential copy in newspapers or online. Even television news turns increasingly to headline writers to produce news crawls across the bottom of the screen.

The industry is changing and it's hard to argue that cuts have to be made. But in the case of copy editors: their contribution was invisible, but their exit will be very evident.