Mistakes

Plenty of $ for page design, though. Seems the priorities may be out of whack.

 

Newspaper design is pretty easy compared to other forms of graphic design. My background is in graphic design. I was a production artist for a company in SF that produced packaging for the wine industry. Creating artwork and producing mechanicals for a 500K run of spot color wine labels is much more intense than slapping together a 4/color, 8-page sports section that will run on newsprint.

At least that's my take, having done both.

 

This may be slightly off topic, but my first newspaper job, we had to put our names in the correction and say we regretted the error, as in reporter Slip Shod regrets the error. I had so many people thought regrets the error was my last name.

 

This thread is the equivalent of an extra birthday for DyePack. ;D

 

Finding people who actually want to read copy as a profession is getting harder and harder. I get the feeling that copy editing is seen as the assembly-line aspect of newspaper production by many. I do both but prefer the creative outlet from page design. I think many people who do both may feel the same way, and I'm sure design, in its myriad forms, is more appealing to college kids when they start moving in the direction of what they want to do as a career.

I also think it's a hell of a lot harder to learn to be a good copy editor than a good designer.

 

Here's an interesting take on the subject of typos from a book author:

http://www.johntreed.com/HTWPtypos.html

Even in newspapers I tend to agree with this statement:

"...typos hide with great skill before the book is printed. But after it is printed, they leap out at the reader."

 

The pay for this position is fine.  The problem is the person responsible for this isn't very experienced or skilled and shouldn't have been hired.

A few weeks earlier there was a correction which said "the word ‘taught’ should have been ‘teacher’," she misidentified an assistant principal as a principal and made some jurisdictional mistakes, by putting buildings and cities in the wrong cities and counties.

There also doesn't seem to be a sufficient commitment to quality.

 

I'm often torn between the urge to spell out how a mistake was made so readers understand it, and the knowledge that readers don't want to know how the hot dogs are made.

But I've got to admit, it's irritating when a reader calls in about a mistake and thinks they know exactly how it was made and who should be fired IMMEDIATELY for it.

 

I've heard all of this before, but somehow the "getting harder and harder to find people who want to read copy" fails to translate into any kind of demand-based benefit.

If the newspapers don't care about what's in the paper, then why should the readers? This idea that eye-popping pages will lure them in/back is the prime example of idiocy.

 

Shouldn't the goal be to have both?

EDIT: Struck him dumb. (Which wasn't that hard.)

 

I certainly won't argue that point, sportschick.

Further, I agree with shotglass that we OUGHT to aim to have both good design and properly written material. I'm just not sure they should be the responsibility of the same person, unless that person has Superman-like powers on deadline. I know that when I'm designing and proofing at the same time, one or both will suffer.

I think my profs in school just beat into us how important it is to understand the written word, and be able to use it properly. It was far more important than the design aspect was.

But hey, I'm a photographer, and everyone knows we can't write anyway...

 

Sure can't argue with that. In an ideal world, a designer would not have to read copy, and vice versa.

But of course, only the select few have that "luxury." So you have to try to "be Superman." And once in a while, it works -- on both ends. And to me, that's why when you can pull it off in that manner -- doing the whole job -- it's even more of a high than if you just have your hands in one area of it.