Chicago Tribune looking for agate editors

I made $12 part-time doing agate in 1991 as a high schooler at a major daily in Northern California.

At my first job at a major daily, the guys they hired to do agate made between $12-$13 an hour to start. Granted, that was in a market where it was cheaper to live than Chicago (but not by too much...).

 

A predecessor at one stop created tons of macros, which made putting together a full-page broadsheet agate page a breeze. There was a macro for everything, from horse racing to the CFL standings to TV listings.

 

I did that on our previous system some 15 years ago. They were called user-definable keys, and you could create one for any key, SHIFT-key or CONTROL-key on the keyboard.

Coolest one ran the wire horse results ... and automatically dropped just enough vowels from horses that ran long after justification.

 

So, what do you figure these jobs pay?

And, why wouldn't someone just answer the question?

The job is what it is. What's it pay?

 

at the papers I am most familiar with, in a moderate-cost-of-living environment, the jobs pay about $12 an hour.

 

That's why I think it's hilarious that he freaked the fuck out when I asked if it paid less than $12 an hour. If I had said $7 an hour fine...

Funny stuff...

 

And, if you were so completely wrong, he could have pointed it out.

He could have just said, "it pays $18.00 an hour." Or $20.00 Or Whatever.

And, if it pays $13.00, well than you were damn close.

 

We'd call them "strings" because they strung together several search and replaces. We used to joke that someday the agate guy would walk in at 10, push the right string command on his keyboard and the computer would automatically produce an agate page for him in about a minute.

Then he'd sit on the phone making personal long distance calls for an hour while playing games on the internet.

Second part's an inside joke.

 

That's the ultimate goal, Brian.

Life is a string of two things:

1. Search-and-replaces.
2. Copy-and-pastes.



Really, once you realize what a precisely correct set of search-and-replaces can do to a piece of raw agate, you can become an agate Picasso pretty quickly. You can curve a set of NHL standings around a corner if you want to.

 

Not counting internships and part-time jobs, before and during college, I was only in the office regularly at my first job after college.

I learned there that if you have the agate guys on your side, you were set. They checked in all the stories, could potentially route your story to a specific copy editor. When I was covering baseball, I'd file and they'd say, "Who do you want to read your story?" and I'd ask if they could sent it to one or two specific guys who were really good, would catch most mistakes and wouldn't broadcast it to the world if you missed something.

The agate guys at that place were just incredible and worked their asses off. At my second stop, I don't think they had nearly that much responsibility.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I'm good enough to do agate part-time for the Chicago Tribune.

But Mr. Kellams seems wound a tad too tight. I'll pass.

Usually I get a kick when someone blasts the great Mizzou, but Kellams need to switch to decaf.

 

My take on it.

Especially the part about getting a kick when someone blasts the great Mizzou.