Headline goes here

Finally, the July 16 edition of the fine Sun Herald newspaper arrived in our office.

Lo and behold, "Headline goes here" does not appear above the junior college recruiting story.

Whaddya know?

As it turns out, it was paired with another story on the cover under a common centerpiece headline.

Both stories had subheads, of course.

So it was indeed a Web site error, probably caused by the way the layout was uploaded to the site.

Why it wasn't promptly corrected is a good question. As for my original question, it's answered.

 

hell, it's already been jacked.

dye, why don't readers want purdy pages and why don't you want designers to do their jobs and pull someone into text, even if they don't know why they're being pulled in?

are the only good layout folks 'brick layers?'

 

thanks for your 2 cents james jones.

 

Thomas:

I actually want them to do their jobs properly. They aren't, and no one calls them on their bullshit.

 

I hear ya, Dyepack. Boy, you'd hate our shop.

Our copy editors work with writers to catch errors, improve grammar and make stories readable without changing emphasis and meaning.

Our designers try to showcase a story, giving big stories their full effect and keeping secondary stories from being buried.

Designers and copy editors work together to put out a great product, we don't fight petty little turf wars, and we get along.

What the hell are we doing wrong?!

 

A-D H-O-M
I-N-E-M

A-D H-O-M
I-N-E-M

Keep on chanting
to the rock n' roll

Of Ad Hominem
Ad Hominem

Whenever posters
can't think for themselves

It's Ad Hominem
Ad Hominem

Ad Homin -eeeeeeeeemmem
Ad Homin -eeeeeeeeemmem

 

dye - i'm interested to read your take on this. please pontificate.

 

My take, the short version, is that many of these positions are "copy editor/designer" positions, but too many people treat them simply as design positions.

Then they compare their design masterpieces as if they are solely designers. I'm not impressed. If someone can spend the whole shift dicking around with layout and not editing copy or writing a decent headline, their page had better be a fucking masterpiece.

Way too many mistakes either get into the paper or are caught at the last level because of this crap, too. It's a fucking delusional, inefficient way to run a newsroom, yet many MEs act as if they are destined to worship at this altar. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a designer urinate into a small specimen cup at their altar so they can drink it later.

 

Re: Dye's response

I wasn't asked to pee in a cup. ;D

But I was hired as a "page designer," only two weeks after I got here, it turned into a "copy editor/page designer" position. Now it seems to be a "jack-of-all-trades-at-a-cubicle" position. Maybe some papers have designers who just design. But I doubt it.

 

wow, in retrospect, you make a helluva good point. at my last stop, i actually witnessed the whole 'drinking from the cup of the urine' effect. the guy i'm thinking about could lay the shit out of pages, but couldn't edit to save his ass. every saturday, i'd get in early and he'd always ask me to look over his copy and i'd proceed to make at least 10 red marks on each page he designed ... your last line of defense reference sent me back down sunday editor memory lane.

just before i left, he was promoted and has been promoted at least once since then.

but now i'm at a place that puts all emphasis on copy and not enough on design, which, i guess, has left me longing for a bit of pizazz.

 

Thanks for checking in, James.

 

They do. They're called 100k circulation and higher papers.