It's another Tuesday at the Greeley Tribune, and Nicole, one of the copy editors/page designers here, keeps on breaking computers. She says the first time she did it, it was on purpose. The second time, all she had to do was sit down in front of the computer we use for photoshop, and it spazzed out. She went to open the program and the screen went BLLAAAAAAACCKKKKK.
I feel happy that I haven't killed anything yet. I suppose the day will come.
I feel like this internship is going pretty well so far. I mean, I haven't done anything incredibly stupid, and when I do miss things, they're usually special Greeley rules, or things I haven't been told to pay attention to in the past.
One of my projects earlier this evening was to edit a short article written by another intern named Jessica. She goes to UNC; I met her a couple of weeks ago and she seemed like the energetic, go-getter type. This idea was confirmed when I was told that she, unlike most every other intern here, is an English major.
I don't want to say that she's not a good writer. I think basing a person's writing ability off of a single example of newswriting is really kind of mean. But this piece. Oh, this piece. I read the lead (the first line). Twice. Three times. She'd never interviewed anyone before, and it showed: The entire article read the same way I'm sure my newswriting did when I was in Reporting 1. Dull. Very little personality.
That was the moment I realized I've turned into a newswriting snob. I don't think I was like this two years ago. It made me feel bad, like I'm a mean person who only finds joy in demonstrating my writing superiority over others. I told Casey this (he's one of my mentors) and he almost laughed and said, "Well, that's a good quality to have if you're going to be an editor."
The tiny snort of a laugh that Casey gave while keeping his eyes on his computer screen didn't exactly make me feel better. Editing some mini briefs he had written and finding mistakes in them did. So it seems like I'm either a very mean person....or I am going to be a fantastic editor, because I don't care about feelings when I edit. I care about the words sounding right.
Then again, I feel like a sort of diseased something is churning in the pit of my stomach. I never wanted to be one of "them." I've always hated pyramid-style articles -- hated writing them, hated being forced to read them -- and I have to confess, I'm a tad horrified with myself right now. It doesn't matter so much that I really did make it better. What matters was my first instinct to push the pertinent information to the top. Like my French prof would say, I've started my "chute au mal." My fall to evil.
But at least I really did make it better, at least, Casey said I did. I'm a big fan of reading things out loud, sometimes I'll plug my ears after editing a piece and whisper it to myself. It's a little difficult to do that and not feel weird, since the newsroom is really quiet after 5:03. With just sports and the copy desk still sitting around and working, the only loud things that happen mostly concern bantering and the police scanner. I had to do the ear plugging thing a couple of times with Jessica's article to get it right. See? Fall to evil.
Hopefully I can get to the point where I can just glance through things and not have to look up punctuation entries in the AP Stylebook. Oh, and concerning the Stylebook? Oy. I'd always been convinced that it was simply the collocation of strange rules written by a bunch of completely sloshed news editors trying to change the world of journalism.
Now that I've been using it more frequently, I am almost positive that my hypothesis is correct. How do you decide that in all American newspapers, "traveling" will only get one "l"? Or, for that matter, that all punctuation (except for that question mark) goes inside quotation marks? Oh, but there are even more exceptions.
I don't really know what they are yet. I just know that they exist. That's the most frustrating part of what I do: knowing that there may or may not be something wrong with a sentence, and knowing that its correctness lies solely in the hands of a bunch of drunkies. That if the sentence appeared in almost anything besides an article in a newspaper, it would be perfectly fine.
I can understand why being a copy editor isn't really on the top of the list for careers. You have to follow rules. Lots of rules. Some rules don't even have an explanation. In the Stylebook, they're just listed as a single word. Like "seesaw," or "'hooky' Not 'hookey'."But why isn't is "hookey?" Who decided? Was it a linguistics thing? Is "hookey" actually a bad word? How can normal people know these things, unless they had a hand in creating the Stylebook?
They can't. And that is why we editors are the elite (haha!). Although, the elite as compared to who, I'm not exactly sure. Who knows. But I'm sure that somewhere in the world, there exists a career that is the proletariat to our bourgeoisie.
10 February 2009
05 February 2009
The best pictures
It's Thursday again, and the worst thing about today is that it was nice enough to wear shorts. I almost feel sad that I live in Colorado, and we seem to be completely skipping over winter this year. Whatever happened to the February flurries, the blizzards trapping my car in the driveway (at least, that's where it would be trapped if my parents let me park in the driveway, instead of on the street)?
Then again, I'd better not complain too much. Driving in snow and ice up to Greeley twice a week ...yech. That doesn't exactly sound fun. Or safe. And then I would never get here before 5, as it is my eternal goal to do, and then one day, one fateful day, I will have to ring the doorbell. It laughs at me whenever I leave work at night (or is it morning?) to go to my car. Someone put a piece of fake fauna on top of it, probably as some cruel joke to camouflage something truly evil with the reassuring presence of green vine leaves. But I see through the guise. I know what it really is.
Today, as with most Thursdays, I started the evening by checking the wedding, birthday, and engagement announcements. The first problem I ran into was totally me. I forgot how to enter the search commands so that all of the announcements show up at once, in a neat little row. I sat in front of the computer and wiggled my mouse around a little, perhaps hoping that I would accidentally click on the magic command. I didn't.
I should have just asked, but I've done this three times already (yes, three. Oh, so many times), and, as I've always known, I'm rather proud, and I like to figure things out on my own. This is probably something I should work on, i.e. change. I'm trying to ask more questions more often, but it's hard for a person who is used to being able to assume knowledge, if not fake it outright. If you haven't noticed, I'm somewhat ridiculous.
After I managed to find all of the announcements (though through a different means than normal; I'm glad I was actually able to figure it out), I found the best wedding photo ever. Well, maybe it's not the best ever, but it was so much cuter than all of the other pictures. I always make sure to look at the photo attachments when I check the engagement and wedding announcements. I think I do it for the sake of being girly. Or something. I don't really know. I just really like looking at these photos, and knowing that this is how the world is going to remember this couple.
Sometimes they're not very good pictures. Sometimes I look at them and inadvertently grimace, because neither subject looks very comfortable, or because the photographer thought that it would be oh-so-adorable to have every single one of his clients stand with the girl holding her hand on the guy's chest. Maybe it was cute the first time.....but the twentieth time? Not so much.
But today, the picture was of a December 2008 wedding, the Carrico-Dieke wedding. The woman had long blond hair, swept into long ringlets reaching halfway down her back, and she was smiling the smile that comes halfway between laughter and trying to hold a serious face. Her groom had long dreds tied at the back of his head, and his nose was pressed into the woman's cheek. He was grinning, and the white blocks of his teeth made me want to grin with him. A painting of two praying hands pressed together was in the background.
The reason this picture stood out to me is its moment. All the other pictures are too simple. The bride and groom stop, turn to the camera, and smile. Click. This photo wasn't staged. It was like the bride had asked for one more picture, the groom wanted to walk away, he wanted to kiss her. They started talking, they started laughing; the bride wanted to be serious and take the picture, so she turned to the photographer and started to smile.
Sometimes the best pictures are the ones where no one cooperates.
Then again, I'd better not complain too much. Driving in snow and ice up to Greeley twice a week ...yech. That doesn't exactly sound fun. Or safe. And then I would never get here before 5, as it is my eternal goal to do, and then one day, one fateful day, I will have to ring the doorbell. It laughs at me whenever I leave work at night (or is it morning?) to go to my car. Someone put a piece of fake fauna on top of it, probably as some cruel joke to camouflage something truly evil with the reassuring presence of green vine leaves. But I see through the guise. I know what it really is.
Today, as with most Thursdays, I started the evening by checking the wedding, birthday, and engagement announcements. The first problem I ran into was totally me. I forgot how to enter the search commands so that all of the announcements show up at once, in a neat little row. I sat in front of the computer and wiggled my mouse around a little, perhaps hoping that I would accidentally click on the magic command. I didn't.
I should have just asked, but I've done this three times already (yes, three. Oh, so many times), and, as I've always known, I'm rather proud, and I like to figure things out on my own. This is probably something I should work on, i.e. change. I'm trying to ask more questions more often, but it's hard for a person who is used to being able to assume knowledge, if not fake it outright. If you haven't noticed, I'm somewhat ridiculous.
After I managed to find all of the announcements (though through a different means than normal; I'm glad I was actually able to figure it out), I found the best wedding photo ever. Well, maybe it's not the best ever, but it was so much cuter than all of the other pictures. I always make sure to look at the photo attachments when I check the engagement and wedding announcements. I think I do it for the sake of being girly. Or something. I don't really know. I just really like looking at these photos, and knowing that this is how the world is going to remember this couple.
Sometimes they're not very good pictures. Sometimes I look at them and inadvertently grimace, because neither subject looks very comfortable, or because the photographer thought that it would be oh-so-adorable to have every single one of his clients stand with the girl holding her hand on the guy's chest. Maybe it was cute the first time.....but the twentieth time? Not so much.
But today, the picture was of a December 2008 wedding, the Carrico-Dieke wedding. The woman had long blond hair, swept into long ringlets reaching halfway down her back, and she was smiling the smile that comes halfway between laughter and trying to hold a serious face. Her groom had long dreds tied at the back of his head, and his nose was pressed into the woman's cheek. He was grinning, and the white blocks of his teeth made me want to grin with him. A painting of two praying hands pressed together was in the background.
The reason this picture stood out to me is its moment. All the other pictures are too simple. The bride and groom stop, turn to the camera, and smile. Click. This photo wasn't staged. It was like the bride had asked for one more picture, the groom wanted to walk away, he wanted to kiss her. They started talking, they started laughing; the bride wanted to be serious and take the picture, so she turned to the photographer and started to smile.
Sometimes the best pictures are the ones where no one cooperates.
03 February 2009
How much do you read?
Instead of jumping right into work today, the people who make up the copy desk sat down and watched a "webinar" podcast created by Poynter Institute and News University. First of all, I had no idea that "webinar" was a word now. When will we stop making up words? How long until the entire English language is nothing but a monstrous conglomeration of compounded words?
Not that it isn't already, I mean. I suppose it's just the natural course of a language: Rise, fall, flounder, renaissance. At least, it's probably something like that. A girl in my International Communication class was complaining today about the French, and how American students are taught French, but it really isn't French, since we're taught to say "Je suis" but they actually say "[shwie]"......
It was a lovely rant, and I just want to point out, it had nothing to do with the topic of the degeneration of language, because, as other French-speakers might want to point out, "[shwie]" is pretty much like saying "I'm" in place of "I am".
Back to the webinar. Poynter did a study on people's reading habits and the most interesting piece of information was that people read more text online as opposed to in print. I think it has something to do with speed, like it takes longer to read something in print, especially if the story involves a jump. I know that is one of the reasons I stopped reading print things, at least, it's why I stopped reading the longer stories. I hated searching for the correct page to continue the article. Once I do find the page, the story is never in a similar place.
Does that make sense? If the story has to jump to a separate page, isn't it just common courtesy to start the story again on a similar area of the page? Maybe it just has to do with whoever did the designing. I know that so far, at the Tribune, I don't really see a rhyme, or even a logical rule of syllable counts, to which copy editor does which page. It's more like, "Who wants this one?" "I do." "OK."
This probably means I'm missing something. I'm sure people have their regular pages to edit.
The more I see of newspapers, the more I realize how much DOESN'T get into the paper. I've edited a lot that doesn't appear for a while, or that doesn't appear at all. Maybe they're just testing my editing style. I don't know. But papers are really quite small, in spite of the enormous amount of information that's out there to read. And then when I start thinking about how many different ways there are to spread that information, I'm amazed.
Just think about all of the different front pages that were created for Obama's inauguration. The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky put together a page of historic front pages from around the world. It's a strange feeling to remember that day, it was my first day working here, and I placed a couple of the pictures that made up the Tribune's front page. And now it's on page A7 of the Courier-Journal, under The Washington Post, and next to Le Journal de Montreal and The Jerusalem Post.
I worked on that page, even if it really was only adjusting a couple photo boundaries and using Google to find some clearer images. But still.....it's there. It's permanent. People will look up front pages from January 2009 and find something that I touched with my fingertips before anyone else did.
Not that it isn't already, I mean. I suppose it's just the natural course of a language: Rise, fall, flounder, renaissance. At least, it's probably something like that. A girl in my International Communication class was complaining today about the French, and how American students are taught French, but it really isn't French, since we're taught to say "Je suis" but they actually say "[shwie]"......
It was a lovely rant, and I just want to point out, it had nothing to do with the topic of the degeneration of language, because, as other French-speakers might want to point out, "[shwie]" is pretty much like saying "I'm" in place of "I am".
Back to the webinar. Poynter did a study on people's reading habits and the most interesting piece of information was that people read more text online as opposed to in print. I think it has something to do with speed, like it takes longer to read something in print, especially if the story involves a jump. I know that is one of the reasons I stopped reading print things, at least, it's why I stopped reading the longer stories. I hated searching for the correct page to continue the article. Once I do find the page, the story is never in a similar place.
Does that make sense? If the story has to jump to a separate page, isn't it just common courtesy to start the story again on a similar area of the page? Maybe it just has to do with whoever did the designing. I know that so far, at the Tribune, I don't really see a rhyme, or even a logical rule of syllable counts, to which copy editor does which page. It's more like, "Who wants this one?" "I do." "OK."
This probably means I'm missing something. I'm sure people have their regular pages to edit.
The more I see of newspapers, the more I realize how much DOESN'T get into the paper. I've edited a lot that doesn't appear for a while, or that doesn't appear at all. Maybe they're just testing my editing style. I don't know. But papers are really quite small, in spite of the enormous amount of information that's out there to read. And then when I start thinking about how many different ways there are to spread that information, I'm amazed.
Just think about all of the different front pages that were created for Obama's inauguration. The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky put together a page of historic front pages from around the world. It's a strange feeling to remember that day, it was my first day working here, and I placed a couple of the pictures that made up the Tribune's front page. And now it's on page A7 of the Courier-Journal, under The Washington Post, and next to Le Journal de Montreal and The Jerusalem Post.
I worked on that page, even if it really was only adjusting a couple photo boundaries and using Google to find some clearer images. But still.....it's there. It's permanent. People will look up front pages from January 2009 and find something that I touched with my fingertips before anyone else did.
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