Reporters and editors had to make make many decisions including:

• How high up in the story should the Penn State sex abuse scandal and his firing be mentioned?
• How should he be described in the headline: Was he the legendary coach, the fired coach or the disgraced coach?

Look at the headlines and the tops of the stories in the slideshow I’ve posted. And skim the complete stories I’ve linked to below. Pay particular attention to where in the story the scandal is mentioned. You’ll notice it varies from first graph to sixth or seventh graph in some cases.

Associated Press

Centre Daily Times

The Daily Collegian

ESPN.com

Pennlive.com

Philadelphia Inquirer

New York Times

Washington Post

Do you think the location of the news outlet (New York vs. Pennsyvlania, for instance)  or the nature of the news outlet (student paper vs. sports outlet, for instance) played a role in the editors’ decisions?

If you had been writing or editing the story and writing the headline, what would you have done? Why?

Post your answers/comments on the discussion board in the e-textbook before class on Wednesday or Thursday of this week (depending on when your class meets).  You also can respond to the comments of your classmates on this topic as well.

Editors work for a variety of organizations on many different platforms (print, broadcast, Web, mobile). The goal of editing is clarity, regardless of platform. Editors help readers navigate through information by distilling messages. Editors work for small and large newspapers, broadcast outlets, magazines, book publishers and newsletters. They hold communication jobs for corporate, academic and nonprofit organizations. Editing skills also are valued in public relations and advertising. Regardless of where they work, editors increasingly are responsible for work published on the Web.

Beginning editing students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln interviewed all different kinds of editors for their final projects in the fall of 2011 to ask them about their jobs, their advice for journalism students and their insight into how journalism is changing. Although the editors the students chose represented many different kinds of jobs, many editors offered similar suggestions.

Their advice included: Read all different kinds of writing, master the basics of usage and grammar, get internships and college publication experience, learn the Web and new technologies, and be open-minded about the future.

Click on the links below to read their reports:

• Ann Baker, manager of editorial, design and production, University of Nebraska-Press by Kelsey Baker
• Patty Busse, Oakdale, Minn., Patch editor, by Frannie Sprouls
• Bruce Crosby, editor McCook Daily Gazette by Matt Palu
• Bill Connolly, retired New York Times editor by Asha Anchan
• Mary Dearen, managing editor Midland Reporter-Telegram by Emily Deck
• John DiBiase, editor Jesus Freak Hideout by Francesca Torquati
• Darnell Dickson, sports editor, Lincoln Journal-Star by Ross Benes
• Patrick Ethridge, editor Beatrice Daily Sun by Jacob Sorensen
• Cate Folsom, metro editor, Omaha World-Herald by Chris Dorwart
• Felecia Henderson, assistant managing editor features and design, The Detroit News by Brianna Foster
• Todd Henrichs, city editor, Lincoln Journal Star by Liang Xiang
• Johnna Hjersman, copy editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Kelly O’Malley
• Neil Holdway, news editor, Daily Herald in suburban Chicago by Adam Kroft
• Catharine Huddle, assistant city editor, Lincoln Journal Star by Zach Tegler
•  Mike Konz, Kearney Hub editor by Abby Schipporeit
• Ruben Luna, associate sports editor, The Detroit News by Connor Stange
• Tim Lyford, news editor, Argus Leader in South Dakota by Elias Youngquist
• Pat McFadden, Page 1 editor, St. Paul Pioneer Press by Frannie Sprouls
• Scott Monserud, sports editor, Denver Post by Crystal Zamora
• Dawn Needham, deputy news editor, The Detroit News by Paige Cornwell
• Max Ortiz, multimedia producer, The Detroit News by Emily Walkenhorst
• Amy Palser, managing editor, Hastings Tribune by Chloe Gibson
• Zach Pluhacek, online editor, Lincoln Journal Star by Emily Walkenhorst
• Nick Piastowski, assistant sports editor, Omaha World-Herald by Connor Schuessler
• Scott Poese, station manager,  KBRX in O’Neill, Neb., by Marc Zakrzewski
• Heather Price, copy editor/page designer, Lincoln Journal-Star by Bethany Schmidt
• Mark Schwaninger, L magazine in Lincoln, Neb., by Kayla Stauffer
• Larry Sparks, a former online editor, Omaha World-Herald by Kyle Cummings
• Christine Steele, senior copy editor, The Capital Group Companies by Gabbi Nicole
• Kathy Steinauer-Smith, features editor, Lincoln Journal Star by Michelle Durham
• Kent Warneke, editor, Norfolk Daily News by Michael Menish
• Metta West, copy editor, Meredith Corp., by Cristina Woodworth
• Joeth Zucco, senior project editor, University of Nebraska Press by Jordan Kranse

Caricature of Bill Connolly

By Asha Anchan
University of Nebraska- Lincoln

Bill Connolly worked at The New York Times for 30 years: It was the paper where he spent most of his journalistic career and the publication from which he retired. Yet, Connolly said the best advice he received as a young Times copy boy was not to stick around.

‘Don’t stay around here, go get a job as a real journalist and learn your trade and then come back’ was the advice from one of his adjunct professors at Columbia.

And that’s what Connolly did.

He worked as a reporter and editor at The Minneapolis Tribune, The Houston Chronicle and The Detroit Free Press.  After striking out on his own, he returned to The Times as a copy editor on the foreign desk and other sections, but left again from 1979 to 1983 to work as the managing editor of The Virginian-Pilot.

Eventually, Connolly returned to The Times as a senior editor in charge of hiring and training copy editors. He wrote the book on style for The Times, literally, publishing “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” in 1999.

Retiring from The Times in 2001, Connolly now serves as a board member of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) and enjoys spending time delving in to his passion for art.

While he is no longer working in a newsroom, Connolly said his 45 years of experience has allowed him to see how journalism has changed. He said some elements of journalism will never change and others he isn’t excited to see change, but it’s all part of the evolution of the industry.

In a phone interview, he offered the following tips on style and working with reporters:

1. “There’s no such thing as useless information to a journalist because you never know what’s going to come up tomorrow.”

2. “Journalists ought to be observant and pay attention to the little things.”

3. “Things go up online long before they get in to print…. To some degree it’s a bad thing, in the sense that some things get published, I think, before they’re sufficiently edited and things get posted on the Web before they get the care and attention that traditionally things got before they went in to print.”

4. “There’s a logic to English grammar and you should understand the logic and be able to use it and therefore you should be able to write well.”

5. “You should discipline yourself to think fast and write fast.  I guess that’s even more true in this digital age then it used to; you have to do it in a hurry.”

6. “I think one of the changes is the editing isn’t as careful as it used to be, and that’s because staffs aren’t as big as they used to be.”

7. “An editor’s job is to improve the work while allowing the writer to save face.”

8.  “As an editor you have to understand the situation of the writer. Writing is an emotional process as well as an intellectual process. A writer makes a thousand tiny decisions…. That’s a pretty big emotional commitment and then the reporter has to turn the whole thing over to an editor…”

9. “I’ve always thought the world would be a better place if every reporter had to work a year as an editor and every editor had to work a year as a reporter, so that each side would understand the frustrations of the other side.”

10. “It seems to me that the world hungers for accurate information and that’s probably more and more true as the world shrinks. So it seems to me that there’s always going to be a place for good journalists, thoughtful ones.”

Metta West was born to be a copy editor. She developed a fondness for grammar, writing and reading at a young age. Following in the footsteps of her mom and grandma, who were both grammarians, West learned to love the fine points of grammar and punctuation that make most people cringe. It wasn’t until her freshman year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that West started considering a copy editing career, though. She was reading a newspaper one day in a journalism class taught by Professor Charlyene Berens when Berens asked West if she had ever looked into copy editing. West took some editing classes and never looked back.

West has been working for the past 3 ½ years as an associate copy editor for the Meredith Corp., which is a national publishing company that turns out magazines, books, cookbooks, digital content and more. Many people might think copy editors sit at their desks all day, reading content and making changes, but there is much more to it than that, West said in a phone interview. She is the lead copy editor for the magazines Renovation Style and Quilts and More. Being the lead copy editor means she sees these publications in two different forms: manuscript stage (rough draft) and proof stage (final draft). She is also the lead copy editor for all of the home decorating websites such as the Better Homes and Gardens website.

Metta West, far left, and fellow copy editors at the Meredith Corporation find time to relax at a company holiday party.

Being the lead copy editor for these publications is just one aspect of West’s job. She also helps copy edit basically any other content that comes in to Meredith. Whether it is a scrapbooking magazine, company newsletter, slideshow presentation or Facebook post, West  is there to read through and edit it. She proofreads the landing pages for all of Meredith’s websites once a week. Newsletters go out once a week as well; and there are always ongoing projects. Copy editors work on magazine content two to six months in advance. In the summer, they turn up the Christmas music and work on editing holiday stories. This may sound like a whole lot of work, but West said dabbling in lots of different publications is one of her favorite parts about the job. “You learn a little bit about a lot of topics,” she said. “I’ve done something in pretty much everything. It has inspired me to get into crafting and cooking. I’ve started experimenting.”

 Something else that West loves about her job is that she gets to read for a living. Sometimes she gets so immersed in different stories that she forgets to look at the grammar. “It’s great when a story does that for you,” she said. ”It means it’s well-written.”

 Although copy editing seemed like West’s natural career path, it has not been without challenges. West said the biggest problem she had when starting out was learning to trust herself. She would triple and quadruple check everything to the point that her efficiency was not very high. “I am a thorough worker and I had to learn to trust myself and the people behind me to check for errors,” West said. “I got a lot more confidence with time and experience.” Another challenge was learning that sometimes it’s OK to break the rules when it comes to grammar. When she first came to Meredith, West followed the grammar stylebook precisely, no exceptions. She said she has learned with experience, though, that breaking a rule can sometimes help with clarity or style. “Sometimes you just have to let go of a grammar rule,” West said. Although she backs this up by saying that she still “believes wholeheartedly in standing up for the English language.”

 West’s job has evolved over the years as the demand for digital content increased. She laughed as she talked about being an intern for Meredith in the summer of 2007 when she would look at websites and print pages off to highlight things that needed to be changed. “We weren’t tech savvy enough to just go in and make changes,” she said. “Now we have programs and the process figured out to change things online.” West also talked about the changes that came with the popularity of social networking sites.  The editors used to send all their tweets and Facebook posts through the copy editing department before publishing them, West explained. After a while, she said, people realized that this was an unnecessary step. “Now we have everyone send them off on their own,” she said of social networking posts. “We try to let them know if we notice mistakes. Copy editors have learned to let go of little mistakes. That’s a big change for us.” West says the overall workload and volume content has gone up as more things go digital. Stories can now come from all over the world via email and online sites. People also expect feedback to be faster, which forces West and her team to work faster. Other changes included learning new computer programs and incorporating search engine optimization into online stories.

 When asked if there was anything she didn’t like about being a copy editor, West paused for quite a while. “I guess there are some nitpicky tasks that are part of the copy editor workload,” she finally said. She explained how things printed and mailed from the office have to follow certain detailed postal rules, which can be a headache. West also works on the mastheads for all of the magazines. The masthead is the page in a magazine that lists all of the contributor’s information along with the corporate information. “That’s always so much fun to put together,” West said sarcastically. “No one really likes to do it.”

In 10 years, West said she still sees herself as a copy editor. Actually, she says she wants to be a copy editor for the rest of her life.

Some advice she has for aspiring student copy editors is to always be flexible and make things work. Copy editors need to remember that the overall goal is for consumers to understand and be clear on what a story is trying to communicate. She says one of the best skills a copy editor could have is learning the difference between web stories and printed stories. “It’s surprisingly different to understand how to write a beautifully written story as compared to a concise, digital blurb.”

"A well edited story should read smoothly," said Joeth Zucco, a senior project editor at the University of Nebraska Press.

By Jordan Kranse
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

“Editing is editing,” Joeth Zucco stressed in an interview when asked the differences between editing for a book publisher and editing for a newspaper. “Good editing, regardless of what is being edited, should be smooth and easy to read.”

Zucco, a senior project editor at the University of Nebraska Press and a graduate of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, understands editing of all kinds first-hand.  Not only does she work with all branches of the University of Nebraska Press (the Press, Bison Books, and  Prairie Schooner, a literary magazine), she also works as a freelance editor with Skateboard Mag, Mountaineers Books and several independent authors. Zucco, who started her career at the Daily Nebraskan, has been at the University of Nebraska Press for almost 10 years.

“It’s a great job,” she said.  ”I love working here. I initially wanted to be a writer, but I wouldn’t trade my job for anything.”

Having edited for several kinds of publications, she compared some of the responsibilities of being a book editor  and being a newspaper editor.

She listed six main differences:

• Responsibilities — “Most of our manuscripts are peer-reviewed, so our copy editors do not need to serve as fact-checkers, although many of our editors do to a degree. I once heard someone say that editors know a little about a lot, and that definitely rings true for me.”
• Length — “I’ve rarely had to think about length when editing, although I’ve had a few rare projects where I’ve been asked to cut 20,000 words or edit down to a certain number of words. Those situations are pretty rare. We don’t eliminate chapters to make a book fit within parameters. Any cutting or reorganizing is generally done before the project comes to my department. “
• Pace — “The deadlines are more generous, but of course, the material is much longer. I don’t know if I’d say the pace is slower, probably more relaxed. But considering that both are governed by deadlines and applying style, I think for the most part, editing is editing.”
• Style — “We use the serial comma, we spell out numbers from one to one hundred and approximations and we spelled out the names of states when used with cities. We don’t use abbreviations such as ‘etc.’ in running text.”
• Resources — “ The bible of publishing is ‘The Chicago Manual of Style,’ 16th edition. We also use the MLA Style Guide as well as American Anthropology Association and Society of Historical Archaeology, and other guides based on the Chicago Manual of Style. And every publisher has a house style guide, most likely based on the Chicago Manual of Style as well. At the University of Nebraska Press, we also use ‘Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.’”

As a senior editor for a book publisher, Zucco’s job includes quite a few responsibilities: proofreading, working closely with authors, checking captions and illustrations, preparing  manuscripts for copy editors, helping finalize the title and book cover and more. “At any one time, I’m working on 25  to 30 projects that span three seasons,” she said. Right now, she’s working on at least eight, including a book on Antarctic cuisine, the life story of a Crow Indian written in prose, a book on geometric abstraction in collaboration with the Sheldon Museum of Art and translations of several French authors. Her typical day is busy.

 “A typical day involves a lot of interruptions. On any given day, I’m answering emails from authors and copy editors, book designers and typesetters or talking to acquisitions about projects. Since we work on so many stages at the same time, I could be transferring author corrections, editing or proofreading an index, preparing a project for a freelancer, preparing a project for design, reviewing jackets/covers, doing a pre-proof review or dropping everything to deal with a problem that can’t wait. I guess a typical day is unpredictable.”

Not only does she have these responsibilities for the University of Nebraska Press, but she also has responsibilities for her other freelance editing jobs.

“Thankfully, I’m not working for all of them at the same time,” she said when asked how she juggles multiple editing jobs. “I work as a copy editor and proofreader for a monthly magazine. The work is steady and I have a 24- to 48-hour turnaround. The rest of the work is for other book publishers. I’ve worked for one of them for more than 10 years and they know how busy I am, so they’ll give me as long of a schedule as they can afford to. I work in the mornings for an hour or two, a bit in the evening and as much as I can on the weekends. But like I said, except for the magazine work, it’s sporadic, and when I have a job, I buckle down and do it.”

Having so many different project required her to set up an efficient editing process to optimize her time and edit correctly.

“For copy editing, I normally plan for two passes. On my first pass, I edit onscreen using (Microsoft) Word’s track changes. I concentrate on applying the house style of the publisher that I’m working for. I check for spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, punctuation and consistency, and I insert queries to the author. I also start a style sheet for rules and a word and name list. The style sheet is more for myself, so I can keep track of how words and names are spelled and if it varies throughout the manuscript. I print out the redline (a marked copy of the manuscript) for my second pass (or edit). By this time, I am more aware of what to be on the lookout for as far as consistency, spellings, etc. After I make my second pass on paper, I input those changes and print out a redline for the author.“

Still, amid all of her responsibilities, she manages to find time to read for leisure.

“I’m reading ‘Twilight’ with my daughter right now,” she said, accompanied  by a quick eye roll,.“Stephenie Meyer is an awful writer. I revise her writing as I’m reading it. But it is a relief to just get into a book that I can edit for fun of it.”

Dawn Needham has worked at The Detroit News since 2003

 By Paige Cornwell
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Dawn Needham will admit she isn’t a great reporter. Even at her first job working at a newspaper in Norway, Maine, Needham knew that reporting wasn’t for her. She just didn’t know what other kind of journalism job she could do.

That changed when she filled in for a copy editor during a shift. ”It became obvious that editing was better for me,” Needham said in a phone interview.

Now the deputy news editor at The Detroit News, Needham is responsible for developing the front page, editing copy and making sure reporters meet their deadlines. Her job requires flexible hours and working against a clock, but she said she enjoys never knowing what the next hour will bring.

Needham comes into work in the early afternoon. After an editors’ meeting, she assigns copy editors to stories and works on developing the front page, all while making sure reporters are on track to meet deadlines. The front page lineup is solidified around 3:30 p.m.

“It takes a lot of networking with other departments,” Needham said.

She jumps “right into work,” editing stories and headlines and making sure there is a proper allocation of space for each story.

“You don’t want to be planning for a story that’s 12 inches and have the reporter turn in a 30-inch story,” Needham said.

The final editors’ meeting is at 5:45 p.m.. Designers present the front page and editors give it final approval. Then, it’s a “mad rush” to the first press room deadline at 8:45 p.m. (The Detroit News has several editions each night).

“Everybody pushes until the last minute,” Needham said. “It’s a very active pace, but a very organized pace.”  She leaves around 9 or 10 p.m. For those looking for a job with regular hours, Needham said, “editing isn’t for them.”

The most difficult part of her job is convincing reporters to get their stories in on time, she said. Reporters often want to hold on to their stories until the very last second. ”We can’t invent or extend time, so we really have to push people for their stories,” Needham said.

As the journalism industry moves more toward online publication, Needham’s job has changed. She now has to be more responsive to the immediacy of online stories. ”We don’t want to just get the story out first, but get the story right,” Needham said. “We still have to make sure the tenants of journalism are met.”

Her advice to those who want to be editors: Start as reporters first.”There’s no substitute for experience,” Needham said. “If you learn the job from the bottom up, it gives you credibility with the other reporters. They know you’ve done the job.”

She has one other piece of advice: Read.

“Read, read, read,” she said. “You don’t want to get stuck in a rut.”

Mike Konz, managing editor of the Kearney Hub.

By: Abby Schipporeit
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Mike Konz is the managing editor of the Kearney Hub. He has been in this role for 22 years. His day as an editor typically starts at 7 a.m. and ends around 6:30 p.m.  His time is filled with reading, writing, meetings and everything in-between. One of his favorite tasks as editor is working on the editorial page. He writes most of the newspaper’s opinion pieces and also edits the opinion page. In a phone interview, Konz talked about his role as editor, how the industry has changed over the years and skills all journalism students should have.

Q: How has your job changed from when you first started to now?

A: The fundamentals have not changed. I can remember a month after I became a reporter I was driving down the highway after covering a story and I thought to myself, ‘Man, wouldn’t it be cool to have a job where you learn something new every day?’ Then it dawned on me that I have that job. I still have that job where I’m learning something new every day and seeing things that a lot of people don’t get to see.

The complexity of it has changed. Going from printing only a newspaper a day to what we do now has been a shift. Looking back it makes me kind of wistful. It seems like it was very easy to print a newspaper every day. You knew what the rules were and you knew you had a certain amount of time to get things ready for the next publication.  Now you are not only feeding paper product, you are also feeding the online and mobile products. You still have the same number of people and same number of hours in a day, but what you do with that time is a lot different and a lot more demanding.

Q: What are some of your greatest challenges as being editor?

A: The biggest challenges I face are keeping the people in my newsroom excited about what they’re doing. I want them to feel like they are really making a difference and that what they are doing is meaningful and important. I think there is no better pleasure in life than having a job where you feel like you are not going to work each day, but instead going to have a great time.

Q: What are some of the most common errors you find when editing?

A: I don’t find very many factual errors. Quite often I find grammatical errors where a sentence might be structured awkwardly or there might be a misspelling or a punctuation problem. Misspellings are probably the biggest error, but you can make an error in just about anything.

Q: How has your job changed as the industry has moved toward more digital news?

A: You have to be a bigger advocate and cheerleader for getting the news to the people as fast as possible and in an appropriate manner. You have to try to report in ways you may have never done before and that sometimes puts you ill at ease.  I think the rules for reporting online are slightly different than what’s allowed in print. Where I come from as editor of the opinion page, it seems like things are pretty laissez-faire online compared to the standards on the print side.

Sometimes it’s hard to have the sense of immediacy of getting things posted and using power of the web because you have so many things to do. The Hub is still really strong on the print side. We have a good daily product but we still have a lot of special editions that we print. That commands a lot of attention and resources. Sometimes you have to drag people away from print projects to do things online. It’s kind of a gamble; you always hope it works out.

Q: Do you have Twitter? And what are your views on it?

A: I do not have a Twitter account. Some of my reporters use it and I support that. Being a traditionalist, I’m a little bit worried about news going out that has not been filtered through an editor. We try to be conservative about it. We will tweet sports way faster than we would tweet a scandal at City Hall.

Q: What editing skills should all journalism students have?

A: You must be a critical thinker. You have to look at a story through readers eyes. You have to see that it is clearly written and follows a logical pattern of answering the first question that comes up, followed by the second one and so on. If a story does that, then it needs to be written in an easy to follow way without any tripping points.

I also think that if you want to be an editor, you darn well better know spelling and grammar. There is no substitute for it. However, I don’t know if that is the most important skill you will bring to bear.

Mainly, you just need to have a real questioning and critical mind toward things. In the deadline environment of the newsroom you are going to have to do your best to break out as many errors and holes in stories as you can. As the readers read the paper at their leisure they are going to be able to spot things that you may have missed.

Q: In addition to those skills, is there anything else you look for in a potential job candidate?

A: The most important thing you can hire for is attitude. Not everyone wakes up in the morning saying, ‘I want to sit and read stuff all day long.’ That just doesn’t happen very often. So you have to hire someone that feels like that is the important thing to do and that they are serving a good need.

Catharine Huddle works at her desk in the Lincoln Journal Star's news room.

By Zach Tegler
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

In 33 years at the Lincoln Journal Star, Catharine Huddle has turned an accidental career as a “death and weather girl” into a job as the assistant city editor. In an interview with Huddle, she answered questions about her job and her experiences.

The 57-year-old from Madison, Neb., came to Lincoln after graduating high school. Eventually, she would settle into a job in journalism, enroll in classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and raise two children. But first, Huddle took a secretarial position for the state.

Q: How did you get into journalism in the first place?

A: It was a fluke. I was a secretary for the State Department of Education. I absolutely hated being a secretary. Hated it. It’s a subservient role that comes with no respect whatsoever. I had a friend who worked here as a clerk. She picked up the court records and dealt in movies and stuff like that. And a job to do the obituaries and weather opened, and I thought it seemed like a cool place to work. Never been in a newspaper office before. Walked in here the first day and it was like, ‘Oh my God. I’m home.’ I was absolutely terrified. But I knew the first day I got here this is where I should be and where I wanted to be.

Q: When did you first know that you wanted to be an editor?

A: Not a journalist, an editor? I don’t know. I started working here as the death and weather clerk, and then I became a general assignment reporter. And, gosh, I think probably within maybe six years of starting to work here, I was working part time on weekends as an editor. And I really liked it because you get a chance to be in on decision-making about what direction things are going to go. It’s a leadership role.

Q: Did you know you would still be here 30 years later?

A: No! No…Look at my hands, I’ve got arthritis and my fingers are crooked. I said recently, ‘I never in the world thought I’d be here long enough to look down at a keyboard and see gnarled fingers on them and they’d be mine.’ But I’ve done a lot of different jobs here, and that has helped keep it interesting. And it’s not fun every day, but it’s a really fun job.

Q: How has your editing job changed since you started it?

A: Well, the Web has changed everything, and in some ways, for the better. When I first started working here, and I was an editor back then also, I worked for the afternoon paper. And so, we came in at 6:30 in the morning. Everything had to be done by 11:30 in the morning. And now, we’ve got, like, 16 hours to do the same amount of work in. So I really missed that deadline. Except when the Web came in, now we’re on deadline all day long, and I actually really love that. It gets the adrenaline going sometimes because you get something in and you need to get it up on the Web right away. In fact, on Thursday, I believe we were the first people up with the story that TransCanada had said, “We won’t try and put the pipeline in the Sandhills.” So, it’s changed tremendously, mostly because of the Web. It’s also changed for the better, I think, in that now every story that comes through on the news side of things gets two close reads by a city editor, which is better. It used to be, one person read it and moved it on and that was it. But I think we’re more sure than we used to be.

Q: How has the field of journalism as a whole changed since you began here?

A: Again, I think the Internet’s probably the biggest change. It just boggles my mind when I look back. When I was a reporter and an editor, just for example, say, somebody used ‘M&Ms’ in a story. And you want to know, is there a space between the ‘M’ and the ampersand and the other ‘M’? And you’d get up and go back to the break room and look in the candy machine and see if there were M&Ms. Or somebody used ‘Jack Daniel’s’ in a story and you wanted to know if there was an apostrophe. I’d have to call a liquor store and say, “Hey can you run over to look at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for me to tell me if there’s an apostrophe?” And now, you know, you jump on and off Google a hundred times a day. It’s also changed in that we require a tremendously larger amount of work from our reporters, I think, than we used to. We demand that they be more thorough and that they be more accurate. With layoffs, we have to demand that they be more productive.

Q: What are your day to day responsibilities?

A: I am one of a four-person city desk. There’s the city editor and then three assistants, and I’m in charge of the cops and courts team, and I also have general assignment/columnist. So I’m here by 9-ish in the morning, and those are the people on my team, but we jointly edit anything that comes through all day long. So even though I’m cops and courts team leader, I edit legislative stories, environmental stories, anything that comes through.

Q: What do you consider the coolest project you’ve ever been a part of?

A: Well I’m being harassed to clean out my old cubicle so I’ve been walking down memory lane the last couple of days. I was the editor for a project a few years back on medical ethics, and that was very cool. We did a really, really good job on that. It’s horrible to say this was cool, but one of the most memorable, and ‘exciting’ is also a bad word for it, stories I ever worked on was covering the execution of Wili Otey, who was the first person to be executed since Charlie Starkweather in 1959. And that was in, I think, ’95. And that was horrific and absolutely—no other way to say it—absolutely wonderful to be a part of.

Q: What is the toughest call you’ve ever had to make?

A: I don’t know if I can even say. There are so many. We had a guy who was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior who was a coach at a small school near here. And we had written about him once and didn’t use his name. Then his case went through the court system and we chose to run his name. And he called that evening and told me that if we ran his name, he would kill himself. I talked to him three or four times that night and I really struggled. And in the end, we ran his name. He didn’t kill himself, but that’s pretty tough.

Q: What is the worst decision you have made as an editor?

A: Well there’s a couple. One, I was working on the city desk on a Saturday and I had a very green reporter. I’ve sort of blocked it out—I think it was an intern, and he wrote a story about a cop. There was a death involving a police chase and we got calls from the friends of the dead person saying—it was a small town—the cop had a vendetta for this guy, yada, yada. And we ran with the story. And I was not careful enough. We ended up getting sued. Everybody here agreed that we could have won the lawsuit because there was absolutely no malicious intent involved, but the company decided to settle because they didn’t want to pay to defend it. And I was in a hurry and I didn’t pay close enough attention. And the other one’s a lot more recent. We had a shooting on a Saturday and again we had an intern—it was his first day. And I sent him over to the scene of the shooting. He came back and he was all excited and we got ahold of the name of the victim and the address. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we ran it, and we don’t run victims’ names. And nothing horrible happened, but in most cases it was not thinking it through too carefully.

Q: What do you consider the most challenging aspect of your job?

A: Ethics. As the cops and courts team leader we have to make decisions every single day. Whether to name a suspect if he or she is a minor, if you have a case of a guy who beats up his wife or an incest case where the guy sexually assaults a child. If we name the perpetrator, then we’ve identified the victim, and our prime directive is to minimize harm. But we have to grapple because you don’t really want to let that guy go through the court system without getting his name in the paper. So we really have to struggle with if we can name the guy and not identify the relationship to the victim. The problem with doing that: if you say you’ve got this guy who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old, then you’ve got people thinking that there’s some guy running around sexually assaulting 12-year-old strangers. So if you leave the relationship out of the story, then you might scare people. If you put the relationship in, then you run the chance of identifying the victim and doing more harm. So it’s ethical decisions every day.

Q: What is your favorite part about working here?
A: Well, you know, the easy obvious answer is: I love the people I work with. I really do. But it’s just a fun job. You sort of get to be—not to the degree that you do as a reporter, because as a reporter you’re out on the street, and I do miss that—but you kind of get to be behind the scenes in everything that happens. A reporter comes back with so much more information than ever makes it in a story, so we just get to know what’s happening. It’s really fun.

]]> http://editingmatters.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/lincoln-journal-star-assistant-city-editor-its-a-really-fun-job/feed/ 1 ztegler 001 http://editingmatters.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/denver-post-sports-editor-says-good-writing-matters-in-digital-age/ http://editingmatters.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/denver-post-sports-editor-says-good-writing-matters-in-digital-age/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:35:47 +0000 crystalzamora http://editingmatters.wordpress.com/?p=1193 ]]>

Monserud at the 2008 Beijing Olympics

By Crystal Zamora
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Combining short, concise phrases with long, intricate sentences, I listened closely to Scott Monserud during our phone interview. Monserud has been the sports editor for the Denver Post for the past five years. His choppy style reminded me of a coach calling out plays. He calmed my nerves with an encouraging “great  question,” and always tried using “we” instead of “I” when referring to his staff. Over the past 10 years of working for the Denver Post, sports has begun to rub off on him. The reporters and photographers are his team as he constantly reevaluates the coverage the Denver Post is publishing. The Denver Post is an award-winning newspaper  and the premier source for news about the Denver Broncos. Monserud stands by his belief that, “there will always be a place for good writing, good writers and the craft of writing” in today’s news industry.

“A great part of great writing is great editing.”

Heather Price sits at her desk in the Lincoln Journal Star Newsroom.

Story and photo
by Bethany Schmidt
University of Nebraska

News is everywhere and it’s hard escaping it, especially when it’s your job to cover it.

This is especially true for Heather Price. As a copy editor/page designer, she spends most of her evenings in the Lincoln Journal Star newsroom reading through stories and designing the newspaper pages they will be published on.

Although she works through the evening producing the next morning’s paper, Price’s day is consumed with news. “Even when I’m not working, I’m thinking about news,” Price said in an interview.  The Lincoln Journal Star staffers “have a shared Google docs page that has all of the (news) budgets listed on it,” so Price is able to check in on the list of the day’s stories while at home. She then begins to think about how her pages might look even before she goes into work.

This page that Price designed (from July 29, 2011) made the Newseum's top 10 pages of the day.

Her day begins earlier at home when she is looking through the Journal Star budgets, but Price generally goes into work around 4 p.m.  (the time most people would be leaving their own jobs). Upon entering the Journal Star newsroom, her work-night will be filled with proofing stories, arranging elements on her pages and making sure everything looks just right. Her trick for staying focused all night: caffeine—green tea, especially. “I go to the Mill (coffee house) probably two times a night,” Price said.

When asked about the odd hours, Price said that she had to get used to the time difference. “I can’t go to bed right away when I get home; I need time to wind down, especially if the night has been stressful,” Price said.

"This page was just a fun way to use some color on a rather slow news day and make a design pop more," Price said.

Price not only has unusual work hours, she also has an unusual workweek: She works Tuesday through Saturday nights—her weekend is Sunday and Monday. Also, the Lincoln Journal Star publishes an edition of its paper every day of the year: “The paper never stops and that’s one thing that people outside of the news industry don’t seem to realize,” Price said. This means that Price works many holidays. Price also said she sometimes misses out on concerts or hanging out with friends because of her unusual schedule.

Even though her schedule is out of the norm, Price hopes to stick with the odd hours in the future and continue as a newspaper designer. “I want to move to a bigger paper that’s known for innovative design,” Price said. A larger city is also an appealing option down the road.

These plans are a big change from her relatively small town newspaper career so far. Price started out as a slot editor at the Daily Nebraskan (the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student newspaper) and eventually went on to work as a copy editor and page designer at the Aberdeen American News in South Dakota.

Heather’s advice for budding editors: “(Editors) most obviously need a great knowledge of AP style. (They should also) definitely be able to adapt to a paper’s style.”

Heather finds inspiration from fellow designers like Colin Smith and also keeps up with innovative design through the Charles Apple blog.