Denver Post to cut possibly two-thirds of copy editors

Not a stretch. If you are working in, say, an NFL market and are going to have a ton of stories --- local or wire --- to deal with, you need that sort of manpower.

Whether that is actually harder than flying solo on a 4 or 5-page Monday section where you do everything from design the cover to coding (and possible typing) agate and everything in between is a different question to ponder.

 

I know of places where one person puts together a 6-page section, but those places usually have mostly wire stuff and maybe 1-2 staff-generated stories on most days.

 

While it's great half the Denver Post copy desk managed to keep their jobs, it's depressing to see big-time, national heavyweight papers staffing their newsrooms like the podunk places I have worked.

For the 25K circulation and under papers, there haven't really been "copy editors" for a long time. The people with that title (like me) read the stories before they go on the page, write the headlines and design the pages. Then upload everything to the web.

And of course, some of us postpone the onset of insanity by occasionally filing stories, features, columns, even photos.

Jack of all trades, master of none. See also: newspaper journalist.

In other words, looks like this will be the pattern at every daily paper, Mark, not just the "smaller shops."

 

True. Heck, when I was doing news, I often did 10-11 pages solo.

What a lot of laypeople fail to understand as the big difference between news and sports is that in sports so often you get slammed late in the shift. Stories, photos, agate, etc. You might get 75 percent of your stuff after 9 p.m..... maybe more if you're in the Eastern time zone.

When I was newsside, we placed an importance on page flow. Certain pages needed to be moved by a certain time. If I was going to hold a page, much less call one back after it was sent, it needed to be something pretty damn important that could not hold until the next day. Sometimes we would have a major story break that needed to go A1 and, as a result, some other story got pushed elsewhere... sort of a domino effect. We would normally have one late page that could be a mix of local and national for that sort of thing. That way we didn't have to call back page A9 (which was moved at 7 pm) and remake it to accomodate the story that got bumped off A1 at 10:45.

Sports rarely allowed me that luxury. Newshole was so tight that, in an effort to maximize space and get in as much as I could, I rarely could move a page early, unless it was Christmas or some sort of special feature package that I KNEW wasn't going to change. There was normally some late NHL/MLB game, a late prep event, late agate, late photos, etc. Or I just go so far behind in the flow that I was struggling to catch up that night.

Sundays in sports were pretty easy most times for the reason Mizzou said. Mostly national wire stuff, most of it done before sundown. So one person could edit the stuff, design the pages, do the agate and still make deadline --- usually with breathing room.

 

At one of my former papers, it was almost laughable because pre-press would complain that sports was sending all of their pages at once.

They'd want color positions set three hours before, and at least one or two early pages. We weren't doing so, and of course, upper management wanted to know why. We'd have to explain that 90 percent of our news happened right at deadline. It caused some grumbles from the non-sports siders.

Now of course, deadline's pushed up so far that the main stuff doesn't even get in.

 

Sorry to hear that. Seems that is becoming more and more common.

Back when I first started years ago and we had a manual pasteup backshop (before pagination), we would have to send color early. So that eliminated any late tinkering.

It's sort of ironic. Papers complain about losing readers to the internet. Well, duh. I can get the score and highlights of the Kings-Coyotes game at any number of websites 20 minutes after the final horn sounds. Then you compound your problem by pushing up deadlines and leaving things out as a result.

I agree with the person earlier on this thread that suggested if newspapers survive, they will probably fill the role that magazines have for so many years, offering features, commentary, etc., but little breaking news. It creates an interesting dilemma for papers. Are they going to sell "Obama drubs Romney" the morning after the election when everyone knows the night before?

I suspect there will always be small-town weeklies and websites. There is a certain audience that wants to read about the school board meeting and see a picture of Little Johnny Bedwetter's little league game. But I am converting to the belief that modern metro newspapers will become web only entities within the next decade. The majority of problems papers seems to be having are linked more to production and distribution than editorial content.

So, if this family crisis ever blows over, I suspect I will reinvent myself as a web content producer rather than an editor/paginator. At most, it might mean 1-2 classes on web programming at a community college. Anyone from the Washington Post to the Podunk Press is still going to require reporters, editor and data entry people. Press operators? Maybe not.

 

This is the second major buyout at the Post in six months. The Post has lost almost all the circulation it picked up from the Rocky Mountain News. Am I wrong in concluding that place is sinking far more quickly than other comparable newspapers?

 

There are a lot of people who think Denver could be the first major city without a newspaper.

I think that might be a bit overstated because there was a long stretch where papers all over the place were hacking away at their staff and The Post actually was hiring people from the Rocky when it closed.

I think the only real difference between the Post and most other big papers is that the Post has made the bulk of its cuts in the last year.

 

I was always pretty sure the "first major city without a newspaper" was going to be Miami. Now, it could be one of many places. Metro newspapers are kind of stuck in that awful middle ground -- not as broad and deep as the NYT or Wall Street Journal, but not as essential to the local community as small-town newspapers.

 

Miami? So you would expect three papers to fold or do you only count the Miami Herald?

 

Does the Sun-Sentinel circulate in Miami? I thought they stopped at the county line.

 

My money was always on San Francisco. That thing has been slashed again and again and again. Very light on local coverage and area-wide, it's near non-existent.

Plus that seems like an area that would migrate from print relatively quickly.