Most people who know me fairly well at the Kansan know that I have one journalistic love that comes before the Web -- copy editing. I had a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing internship last summer at The Indianapolis Star and will complete a second editing internship this summer at The Columbus Dispatch. I edited the Kansan last semester and edit the opinion page and special sections as needed this semester.
I came to editing by accident. Throughout high school, I was a reporter through and through. A triple major and a year in England kept me from reporting for the Kansan, and also kept me from getting the clips necessary to get a reporting internship at a paper. I took the Dow Jones exam in October 2007 for the purpose of getting an internship -- a good one. I wasn't even in Journalism 419 yet, but I took the practice exams and got the gig at the Star.
When I received my internship, I quickly found out that most people have no clue what a copy editor does. Most of my friends and family think of it as fancy proofreading. I can't remember how many times people I know praised "the sports writers" at newspapers for clever headlines, when the praise should've been directed at the copy desk.
I can't write enough about what attracts me to editing or why I love it, but I can share some experiences. Today, I judged copy editing for KSPA regionals, flipping through a story that earnest high school journalists inked up for their contest entries. A few gems stood out -- removing an inflammatory quote, catching a tricky spelling error, knowing quote attribution. Most were a disappointment. Some students left a completely inappropriate quote in the story, and all but maybe three missed that World War II was fought in the 1940s, not the 1950s. Eek.
I have hopes that many of these high school students will stick with editing, especially the clearly talented ones. God knows we need all the good ones we can get, and I'm thankful that programs like Dow Jones encourage young journalists to see other careers in journalism besides reporting.
To close, I'll leave you with two articles that express my unease with the industry better than I can. The first, from last June, is an elegy for copy editing as we know it. The second, published on the American Copy Editors Society site, admonishes those in the industry who'd outsource editing to places like India.
Happy editing.
I came to editing by accident. Throughout high school, I was a reporter through and through. A triple major and a year in England kept me from reporting for the Kansan, and also kept me from getting the clips necessary to get a reporting internship at a paper. I took the Dow Jones exam in October 2007 for the purpose of getting an internship -- a good one. I wasn't even in Journalism 419 yet, but I took the practice exams and got the gig at the Star.
When I received my internship, I quickly found out that most people have no clue what a copy editor does. Most of my friends and family think of it as fancy proofreading. I can't remember how many times people I know praised "the sports writers" at newspapers for clever headlines, when the praise should've been directed at the copy desk.
I can't write enough about what attracts me to editing or why I love it, but I can share some experiences. Today, I judged copy editing for KSPA regionals, flipping through a story that earnest high school journalists inked up for their contest entries. A few gems stood out -- removing an inflammatory quote, catching a tricky spelling error, knowing quote attribution. Most were a disappointment. Some students left a completely inappropriate quote in the story, and all but maybe three missed that World War II was fought in the 1940s, not the 1950s. Eek.
I have hopes that many of these high school students will stick with editing, especially the clearly talented ones. God knows we need all the good ones we can get, and I'm thankful that programs like Dow Jones encourage young journalists to see other careers in journalism besides reporting.
To close, I'll leave you with two articles that express my unease with the industry better than I can. The first, from last June, is an elegy for copy editing as we know it. The second, published on the American Copy Editors Society site, admonishes those in the industry who'd outsource editing to places like India.
Happy editing.
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