Queue on 21/6/2010 at 15:37

---

*sighs*

Rest In Peace, Cincinnati Enquirer.

So ends yet another beacon of journalistic light.

Queue on 21/6/2010 at 16:58

---

I charge you with getting to the bottom of why Jennifer Aniston can't keep a man.

I'm betting on the smelly pussy rumor. Something about cabbage and Strychnine

Sulphur on 21/6/2010 at 17:00

---

Eww, Queue. Just... eww.

june gloom on 30/6/2010 at 23:02

---

Okay, it's a little later than promised, but here's how things work in Copy Editor land.

First things first, once we log into a program called CCI, we're given a big ol' list of stories. The default listing is stories that go to print in the morning, but you can switch to advance copy and look at what they got a few days down the road- up until Saturday, this is mostly occupied by Sunday stories, because several sections- mostly stuff that doesn't need to be changed if something happens, like the editorial pages- go to print early Saturday morning.

The first thing you'll notice are three columns are colour-coded. The first column is sorted by whether the design is finished or not- green means the designers have finished placing it on the page and done the necessary width adjustments, yellow means they have not. The next column is a series of blank green cells; when a story is in use by someone, it turns red and shows the person's network username. The final column is sorted by where it's placed on the "conveyor belt" of the different office positions. Most of these stories are usually tagged in a light gray "SourceEdited" which means, roughly, that the story is finished being written and needs to be copy edited. Once a story is copyedited and sent to the slot editor, the story disappears from the listing. Sometimes it'll come back as Slotted (green) or CopyEdited (dark gray), but it's usually not necessary for me to touch them again.

As to the copy editing process... we use what's basically a ginned up version of MS Word where each element of the story is divided up into different sections, each with some technical information in a gray bar above the section. The text starts off "unmeasured" by which it just displays normally. By hitting F5, the text is measured, and the appropriate line breaks are placed to give you an approximation of how it would look on paper. The info bar will tell you how many lines are required, and how many lines you are over or under the limit (though you can see this same info at the bottom of the story.) It's generally okay to be a line or two under the limit if you absolutely have to, though obviously this doesn't apply the other way around.

Editing the copy itself works like this- if you want to delete something, you highlight it, then hit ctrl-6 to turn it into red, underlined "note" text. Sometimes actual notes from designers, reporters, etc. will be written in this way- they're meant for people downriver like me to read. When the text is turned into note text, it is automatically excluded from the line count the next time you measure. The reason we use notes is so the slot editor can see what you deleted/changed, and revert the changes if necessary.

Headlines are another matter. There's usually a measure ruler of sorts that tells you just how long your headline can be, though you may be able to have more than one line. Writing headlines can be really easy, or it can be a raging pain in the ass. The worst are the ones that give you 3 lines, and you can't use more than 4 letters per word. When that happens I want to punch a baby. You can alleviate some of this bullshit sometimes, like if you have a word that is just one or two letters over the limit, by first adding paragraph breaks where the text itself would go to the next line on the page, then hitting ctrl+f1 to shrink the text just a tiny bit to squeeze the word in.

Typically we work from around 4:30 to anywhere between 9pm and 1am, though I was able to get out extra early last Sunday to buy my mother a book for her birthday. Regardless of when we finish getting the next day's copy done, and whatever advance copy there is, at least one person is stuck until 2am watching the news wires in case something crazy happens like a disaster or whatever.

I'm about halfway done- just two more weeks, and I get July 4th off (Mondays and Tuesdays are technically my weekends, as well.) Best part is by far the hours- I'm a night owl by nature anyway, and this works out real well for me because once I get home I can just play Duke Nukem 3D until 6AM and not have to worry about getting enough sleep.

Tonamel on 30/6/2010 at 23:28

---

I'm pretty sure headline writers are automatically put into the betting pool for (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050300374.html) the most ridiculous pun of the day.