One of the great things about ACES and the national conference is the chance to meet and mingle with fellow editors. As much as I adore my fellow newspaper journalists, I especially like chatting with editors who work outside of the news media.
Karen Martwick of Travel Portland is one such editor. She has a background in Web news and book editing, and she now works on editing magazines aimed at luring tourists to Portland, Ore.
Karen, Sara Hendricks and I collaborated on a session at the 2010 conference about untangling garbled prose. As we prepared for the session, it was clear that Karen’s work on this level is very similar to what copy editors do at newspapers and news sites. We aren’t that different.
After the conference, I did an interview with Karen for my blog, The Editor’s Desk. My final question was about ACES and its efforts to appeal to editors beyond newspapers. Here’s what she said:
The 2009 ACES conference was my first experience with the organization, and I really didn’t know what to expect — I just knew that I craved interaction with other editors. I came away energized, filled with practical tips and new ideas, and feeling like I’d found my people. The editors I’ve met through ACES are all intelligent, inquisitive, engaged and hilarious — just like me, if I do say so myself!
While the day-to-day work of an editor on a magazine or at a nonprofit tourism organization (talk about niche), may be quite different from that of a newspaper copy editor, we all speak the same language. We are problem-solvers. We multitask like the dickens. We have opinions on the serial comma. We thrive on deadlines. And we are passionately committed to clear communication.
I am so thankful that ACES had the foresight to include non-newspaper editors in its fold. We all have a lot to learn from each other, and the productive and inspiring 2010 conference just underscored that fact for me.
We on the ACES board are looking at ways to continue to reach out to editors like Karen. Let us know what we have done well — and what we can do better. That’s why we are here.
In that spirit, ACES congratulates Vince Kasper, Jon Weir, Ed Weiner, Don Groff, Ken Lockerby and Nina Sachdev of the
Can a computer program replace you?
Posted May 18
Sometimes, you read about a business venture and it’s important to take it seriously — even if you think it’s utter BS. And sometimes, you just can’t help yourself.
A recent article in Businessweek talks about a new software program by Narrative Science that’s designed to replace reporters and copy editors.
The company has only been in existence for five months and is located in my backyard in Evanston, Ill., which is ironically the home of Medill School of Journalism. The company describes itself as specializing in “machine-generated content” that requires no human writing or editing. (more…)
Posted in Commentary, Musings | No Comments »