| ByJackie Kunzmann
“These are times that try copy editors’ souls.”
With those words, Hank Glamann summed up what’s been happeningin the newspaper industry: Newspapers have been sold; previouslylarge companies have ceased to exist; staffs have beenreduced. And, through it all, copy editors have been asked to change the waythey do their jobs.
An unease is brewing in the ranks. We are concerned abouthow we maintain our standards as the newspaper industrychanges around us.
| Hank Glamannleads a "Copy Editors' Town Meeting" on the futureof the craft. | | “We are very much where we were when we met for the first time 10 yearsago in Chapel Hill,” Glamann said, referring to the initialmeeting of ACES at the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill. “We are coming together as a community and we have somethings that we want to get off our chests. We don’t have the option of saying we are not going to do this. A lot of people are experiencinga tremendous amount of stress. We need to talk about howto deal with this.”
And talk about it we did.
In a session Glamann dubbed a “Copy Editors’ Town Meeting,”copy editors attending the 11th ACES conference exploredhow the online explosion is changing their jobs, and whatthey can do about it.
“A hopeful way to look at this is that online is the CopyEditors’ Full
Employment Act,” said Deirdre Edgar of the Los AngelesTimes and ACES vice president for conferences. “We adaptedto pagination; we adapted to new systems. We can adapt toonline, too.”
Holly Kerfoot of the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolinaagreed, saying she found hope in the process of movingto a more online world after spending three days at theannual ACES conference.
And, it’s a world that many in the audience urged copyeditors to embrace. Tim Lynch of the Los Angeles Timesasked copy editors to think practically and strategically abouthow they will do their jobs in the online world.
“We can have a voice in saying how we do our jobs andhave a say in how we adapt to the Internet,” said Lynch,who received ACES’ Robinson Prize for editing excellence thenight before.
Jim Kavanagh of cnn.com, and a former employee at theAkron Beacon Journal, asked copy editors to think of theirfutures as they explore online.
“I took a pay cut, but not a step back or a step down,”Kavanagh said of his move from print to online. “I tooka pay cut for some more years. We have to be willing totake a risk, to game on our futures.” And, while he’s working in an onlineplatform, Kavanagh stressed that he is still a journalistand upholds the same journalistic standards as he did while working ata newspaper.
And, that, many in the room said, will help newspaperWeb sites gain credibility. Instead of lowering the standardsfor online copy, they were asked to maintain the ones employedin newsrooms.
They were also asked to remember the newspaper reader.As newspapers push more and more into the online world,Raleigh Mann, a former Miami Herald employee and former UNC-ChapelHill journalism professor, urged the copy editors to remember that customers of their newspapers should drive what is changed.
“If we stand up for the reader, we should be asking ourselveshow this change will affect the reader,” he said, addingthat he is optimistic that the printed newspaper will surviveas long as there are readers.
Glamann and others also noted that many online jobs are,essentially, copy editing jobs.
“As long as there’s a public that needs to be informed,there will always be a need for editors,” said MargaretCaracappa of Axiom Professional Health Learning in Yardley, Pa.
Jackie Kunzmann is a copy editor/page designer at theDaytona Beach News-Journal.
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