Anybody else with helpful co-workers?

On our news desk, we cross-proof the pages (full-time proofreader? What's that?), and this thread reminds me we have one guy on the staff we have who makes a big deal out of a small easily-correctible mistake for everybody to hear.

Me, I'll make the mark with my red pen and assumes the person who did the page understands and if not will go over and explain it to him/her one-on-one and maybe bring it up for conversation among all of us if it's a debatable point.

The guy I'm talking about will catch something that we all know is a mistake and just slipped through and know how to correct it but he'll go on for everyone to hear "Hey, mpc, you got e-mail hyphenated here. Isn't it just one word now? Didn't we talk about the AP changing the style a few weeks ago?" Meanwhile, I'm thinking "Dude, the mark it on the damn page for me to see. I'll make the correction when I get it back."

 

I pissed off a sports editor early in my editing career when he asked why we were late and I said, "It was a team effort." But usually it is. In my experience, if you have a good track record of making deadline, usually you don't have to explain much beyond a shrug. As for people pointing out lateness, my feeling is that if they want to race me, most times I would win, so I do not let it bother me.

Places vary in how much they care about 3 to 5 minutes late. One place wanted me to log the time for every story I slotted. The sports news hole there averaged 70 columns daily and 120 Sundays, so you are talking 50 to 80 files. Huge waste of time. If they wanted to know what time I sent the NBA roundup, the computer could have told them.

Many of you are probably too young to have dealt with composing rooms. In a bad one, it could be like watching your section sink in quicksand. You were utterly helpless once you had shipped your layouts and stories and walked into the monkey cage where retardos wielding X-ACTOs had their way with you.

 

Oh, God, those were the days!! Thanks for the memories!!

When it comes to proofing and making corrections, I always take the approach that it is ultimately the responsibility of that page's designer. When I am proofing a page, I always do so with the idea I am making suggestions, not demands. Ditto for when someone else is proofing my pages. Some news side editors aren't overly familiar with sports terminology. On the other hand, I don't want to talk over the heads of readers, either, so if they don't get it, chances are a reader might not, either. But the final call always rests with the designer of that page.

 

When I was a newsie, I worked with one person who seemed to delight in wanting to rewrite stories after I'd proofed the pages out. At that shop the front page was my main responsibility. I'd give the copy a cursory read, but always figured it had been through at least two editors before I touched it, so probably didn't need too much work. But with this one, it was SSDD.

Here, mostly check cutlines, heds and jump words. On the agate page, keep an eye out for widows and am a bit of a nut when it comes to the TV listings. Another copy editor taught me long ago that the little things matter. You can have the six column photo of the mayor in bed with the city clerk, but that doesn't matter if you screw up the lottery numbers.

 

But composing rooms were so helpful! They always had these around to fill the odd hole on your section front!

 

We have a universal desk, and all the deskers do proofing and design...sports design typically trades off between two people on that desk (we have a 3-page section, 5 or 6 on Sundays). With that being said, we have a desk girl who is absolutely horrible at her job.

First off, she would fit in quite well with what others have described here...she thinks out loud, so she points out every single catch she finds verbally, then turns everything into a rambling explanation. However, she never finds anything when she proofs sports pages, and she finds epic ways to fuck up when she designs them. When the SE or I tell her what to fix (we proof all our pages, even though the EIC wants us out of there, because we're the only ones who will make catches and, dammit, that's the way it's always been), she *always* has a whiny excuse, rationalization, etc. Just make the damn change and move along.

Her most common excuse is, "Well, I don't have time," or its variation, "Well, if I have time I'll fix it." Well, stop taking 1 1/2-hour lunches and claiming 1 hour, trying to get involved in every single conversation in the whole damn office and going off on long diatribes about how liberal you are, how much Sarah Palin sucks and how things were in your last shop (where you were laid off, I'm guessing in your case on merit) or at your college paper (I know, you have a master's, but that clearly means nothing) and...well...do your fucking job.

My solution is, instead of saying this whole rant to her face, just not talking to her at all. And ranting about it on here. Thanks, guys.

 

It's really hard for non-sports people to do sports section and not have a colossal disaster.

 

That's hostile??? Geez, some folks I work with would have been long gone at that paper.

 

The newest member of our newsroom is a English major not journalism. I try to avoid giving her the pages when I design sports. We are a morning paper, I'll give her the 1-2 pages at 9:30-9:45 with our deadline at 10:30. I'll typically get it back 10:20-10:30. No idea what takes her so long but the worst part is she constantly marks things that are sports terms in AP style. It doesn't waste much of my time because I know what the AP style is for it but it is really annoying and a big factor in her taking 30+ minutes to proof 1-2 pages.

 

Several years ago, on Election Night, I got my pages done a half-hour before deadline, just to get out of the news department's way. I then sat there for more than a hour before they got done. Didn't complain, didn't say a word.

The next night was our first night of high school football playoffs. We had six games, and from two of them our writers had trouble sending their stories. I'm finishing up pages right on deadline, when the news editor who made us so late the night before just starts bitching up a storm about us being late. At that moment, I hit the button to send the last page, then turned around and unleashed a tirade that included multiple F-bombs. The guy shut up, and didn't speak to me for almost three weeks.

 

Guess who went running to Big Daddy crying like a bitch that I had said nasty things to him?

 

I'm losing something here. You got out 30 minutes early on election night. How did the news editor make you late?