Copy editor/designer -- Salt Lake Tribune

The Salt Lake Tribune/sltrib.com has an immediate opening for a sports copy desk slot person to join the production team at Utah's most respected and largest independent news organization — and an annual APSE top-10 daily and Sunday sports section. Qualified candidates must be able to demonstrate impeccable editing and page-design skills. Candidates also must have the ability to lead our sports copy desk through tight deadlines and a workload that includes the NBA's Utah Jazz, Major League Soccer's Real Salt Lake, Utah, BYU and Utah State college athletics and extensive high school sports and recreation coverage. Page design skills are essential and slot experience on a daily newspaper is mandatory. Send a cover letter, resume and examples of work to Joe Baird, sports editor, a jbaird@sltrib.com

http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1613339

 

An honest question: Can someone define what a "slot person" does?

I've been in the business for more than 20 years, have worked as a copy editor and laid out pages at daily newspapers, from A1 to sports to obits and everything in between, for many of those years ... but I've never heard the word "slot" used in any of the shops where I've worked.

Just wondering what that term means. Hell, maybe I've been doing it all along!

 

You might have. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always taken it generally as the person who shepherds the section along at night, the person who decides story placement and makes decisions when the SE isn't around. Some places call it the night sports editor, others call it lead designer.

 

The old-school etymology works kind of like this (I wasn't around then, but close):



At the largest operations, the copy desk was a big U-shaped monstrosity. Rim people sat along the outside of the U (on the rim), marking up stories and cutting-and-pasting wire (teletype) and local copy together with their glue pots. They wrote headlines using counts supplied by the makeup editors (3-48-2 meant 3 columns, 48 point, 2 lines, following the flirtj count rule and all of that).
When a rimrat finished a story, it was passed along to the slot, who sat on the inside of the U. The slot would do a final edit, send it back for changes if needed, and then route the story to composing and keep track of how the pages were shaping up, etc.
So the slot person was the decision-maker on the copy desk for at least a portion of the nightly operation. It's the same today, with different responsibilities that vary from shop to shop, of course.

 

Learn something new every day.

 

Add to job description: Answer nasty e-mails about any errors/omissions from supervisors while also having the copy editors' backs.

Can be a very thankless job.

 

Meaning varies by paper. It looks like this one wants a designer who can make overall decisions.