The secret life of the copy editor

By Seth Prince
Summer 1999 Scholar

Posted: Sept. 3, 1999

The first thing (Newspaper Executive) Michael Gartner said to me during orientation week was: "Copy editors are God's children."

I thought of that many times this summer.

I thought of it when a copy-editor colleague who had been around the newspaper about 20 years told me this story, which I tell to you:

Once, when this guy was on the sports desk, there was an old reporter (meaning been around for years) and a brand new copy editor (meaning his first night on the job). The reporter, who didn't have a grain of faith in the new copy editor, finished his story, which had gone through a round of editing, and announced, in an authoritative tone rather than a question:

"Nothing wrong with my story!"

"Yes, there was something in the lead," the sports editor said," but the new copy editor took care of it."

The reporter nearly lost it.

"The new copy editor? He changed MY lead?! He's on his first night, and he changed MY lead?"

"Yep," the sports editor said. "You wrote 'the Wranglers beat the Sox TODAY.' He changed it to 'Wednesday,' so it'll be right for tomorrow's paper. That OK with you?"

The reporter walked away without saying another word.

I know it's kind of sick, but that would be such a beautiful thing to experience on the first night at work on the desk.

Did I say sick? What I meant was: Copy editors are a weird and totally misunderstood bunch. Did I say abused, taken for granted and underappreciated? I didn't mean to. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. In truth, I feel a little leery of writing this at all, because copy editors fix mistakes for a living, and I almost feel that talking about the mistakes of others is something I shouldn't do. It feels as if some unwritten rule is being broken.

But in the spirit of greater understanding between the species – reporters and copy editors – here goes:

This summer I figured out that a copy editor is like a seamstress. No one notices us until a strand breaks and everything falls apart. Then all hell breaks loose. People go nuts. Reporters complain that we are out to get them. That we secretly harbor dreams of making them look bad. Meantime, in the real world, day in and day out, we nip and tuck at the rough, unfashionable edges, making the ill-fitting somehow look professional. We learn the tendencies of each writer and allow for their "writerly" extravagances (especially with columnists).

Somewhat like Ms. Johnson really believing that she looks great in purple. We know she doesn't, but we make it the best shade of purple possible.

Usually, our work is forgotten. But that's expected. Standard. To the writer goes the glory. The one-column head on a story about "electrocution" is somehow overlooked in the next day's critique. The desk worked and worked and tried to make it fit, to no one's satisfaction but our own – and that of the reader, we hope. But that's OK. As I said, we're a weird bunch. We like to fix others' mistakes. We secretly enjoy working in almost complete anonymity.

From my experience, copy editors bond over that shared work and try to commend one another, because we know, more than likely, that no one else will. We discuss transitive verbs. Using "compare to" when you mean "compare with" makes us cringe. We count among our great moments of pride (and you call us nutty) those one-column Page One headlines that nobody notices but us.

Like my first one of the summer:

High court

ruling limits

disability

act's range

It's not a great head, but it works, and it tells the story. In one column.

Try writing one yourself.

For some strange reason, we enjoy the "thrill of monotony," as I'm told a great editor once said. There's some truth in that. We fix the same errors over and over. And , as I heard or read the other day, we defuse 99 bombs only to have the 100th kill us.

Like my one major screw-up for the summer. On a cutline.

I hung it on my monitor for the duration as a reminder to be more cautious. Now it hangs on my monitor at the campus paper. The cutline was about a family whose father had served in the South Vietnamese Army until 1967, when the family fled the country. The story mentioned that Vietnam fell in the 1970s. The cutline moved to the desk very late. In the rush -- OK, my rush -- it came out reading that Vietnam fell in 1967. Ouch.

Of course, the reporter came to the desk on that one. He had written an incorrect cutline to begin with. But I hadn't fixed it. I made it worse. So I heard about it, big time. I never heard a word the rest of the summer from that reporter about the dozens of things that went right, that made the difference between correct and incorrect, that made the whole operation appear seamless rather than haphazardly stitched together.

The truth is, we know going in that copy editing is largely a thankless job. Even if we don't realize it from the start, we quickly figure it out. That's part of the deal. We might like the pat on the back from time to time, but receiving it somehow would rub the mistake in the reporter's face. And that isn't the best atmosphere to create in a newsroom. More than likely, that pat on the back isn't going to come.

Ninety-nine times out of 100, when reporters come to the desk about a story, they are upset and want to know why something was cut or changed or moved or tweaked or thinned or rearranged. They don't want to know how we figured out that the odd name of the manager of the new pasta restaurant was misspelled. (Here's how, by the way: On the off chance that the reporter hadn't double-checked the spelling, I looked in the phone book. That's what the desk is supposed to do – be attentive when no one else is. There was no one with that spelling in the phone book, but there was one with one letter added. I called the number and spoke to a woman who happened to be the wife of the source. I corrected the name and shipped it to the slot. The reporter never noticed the change.)

Same thing in news meetings. Someone on the desk spends a lot of time coming up with a great headline, yet no mention of it is made in the next day's review. But when editors don't like a head, without fail, it gets discussed.

In an ideal newspaper world, reporters wouldn't shy away from approaching the desk to compliment a copy editor, and editors in news meetings wouldn't hesitate to highlight a well-executed head. We're human, just like writers. We have feelings, too. Most of the copy editors I know would be floored if a reporter came to the desk in a non-confrontational manner the day a story is published, wanting to learn why the changes were made so that the reporter could improve her/his writing.

That is, after all, why the desk was created – to improve the quality of the newspaper, to uphold standards of style, consistency and (we hope) accuracy.

Well, that's my take on the weird little corner of the world known as the copy desk. I hope this serves to shed some light on what we do and to smooth relations between the species. And I hope I haven't angered anyone in the process.

Oh, yes – one more thing: You don't have to agree with Michael Gartner, that copy editors "are God's children." But the next time your story comes out error free, give us a wink or a pat on the back or mouth "thank you" across the city room.

It will make our hearts glow.

Seth Prince is a copy editor at The Oregonian in Portland. He was a Summer 1999 Scholar at the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. He wrote this essay while at the University of Oklahoma, where he was night editor for the campus newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily. Contact him at stprince@hotmail.com

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