The ACES board decided months ago to create a new award recognizing people or organizations who have contributed so much to ACES and copy editing, and it decided to name it after Hank Glamann, an ACES co-founder and former longtime board member. And the board kept it secret from Hank until Friday night, when the first Glamann Award was given to the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund in its 50th anniversary year.

The presentation of the award followed the Friday night keynote speech by Edward Trayes, co-founder and director of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Editing and Minority Intern Program (hmmm, didn’t we arrange that *conveniently*). Trayes had just spoken on the power of copy editors and their enduring presence, and future, no matter how the industry changes. He later accepted the award on behalf of the fund.

The Dow Jones fund has generated hundreds, maybe thousands of quality copy editors over the years—a great many of whom stood up when called upon at Friday night’s banquet. It was the vision of newspaper editors, Trayes said, who believed in supporting generations of budding journalists, and who believed in quality editing. It’s a fine first recepient of the Glamann Award.

Ed Trayes’ speech

Good evening.

Editing and editors have been a big part of my life from an early age. I did not always appreciate nor fully understand who they are and what they do but when looking in the rear-view mirror of more than a half century of working in and walking through news rooms across the U.S., in Mexico, Central and South America, I can think of no other words more appropriate than thank you.

Thank you and others like you who choose one of the most underappreciated yet rewarding callings one can answer.

It happens one step at a time, perhaps beginning with a special high school teacher, a college professor or a mentor and it eventually leads one day to a professional life that demands everything you can give and then some. A sharp editor would have made that last part simply more.

As a co-founder of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing intern training program, I have been fortunate to run more than 50 editing residencies. Each one included about a dozen, sometimes more, young people, undergraduate and graduate students, from across the U.S. Each was selected in a national competition where today nearly a hundred are chosen each year for summer internships at news organizations large and small throughout the country.

For the Temple program those newspapers have included The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, The Boston Globe and a number of others. Today, and in addition to Temple, there are seven other training sites: Missouri, Nebraska, Penn State, San Jose State, Texas, the University of Central Florida and Western Kentucky University.

These residencies are much like boot camps where the interns develop their editing skills prior to heading out on their own for a summer or at least 10 weeks of editing at a partner news organization. The residencies provide intensive training, often day and night, for two weeks. The partner news organizations do the rest as they not only agree to support intern training expenses but also agree to pay each editing intern the going rate at their news operation.

What an opportunity. What a program. What a wonderful example of journalism at its best in terms of trying to attract and nurture some of the best collegiate journalism talent available and giving them a chance to consider editing at the start(s) of their respective careers.

This has happened since the summer of l968, when pilot programs were run at Temple and Nebraska. Since that time there has been this outstanding partnership that involved The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, the residency training sites, and the newspapers and news organizations who supported what was from the outset a bold idea: to view editing instead of reporting as a place for at least some to begin their careers in journalism.

Not everyone embraced the idea initially, but the proof came not only in how well so many of the interns did during their summers on copy desks pretty much the length and breadth of this country, but in how many wound up taking full-time editing jobs following graduation. Moreover, it was not uncommon for a news organization to hire someone who had previously served as a Fund editing intern. In other instances, someone who did well in an internship in one part of the country might well have been hired by a participating newspaper elsewhere.

Regardless, what started as an experiment took hold, and over the years the editing program has grown to what it is today: a place where college and university students interested in editing can get a chance to develop their skills and get a first-hand look at what it takes to do the job.

You may know or have heard of some of those who came through the Temple editing residency, recognizing that each program director could offer similar rundowns:

Carl Sessions Stepp, a journalism professor at Maryland and a senior contributing editor of the American Journalism Review, was in that first Temple residency in l968.

A classmate of Carls was Jennie Buckner, who 21 years later, in l989, was named vice-president of news for Knight-Ridder. From l993 until retirement, she was editor of The Charlotte Observer.

Still others include:

Wanda Lloyd, executive editor of the Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, Alabama. She was formerly a senior editor at USA Today and more recently executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute.

DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for USA TODAY and the Gannett News Service. Earlier he was a Capitol Hill correspondent for U.S. News and World Report.

Paul Soucy most recently of USA Today and in 2006 the first ACES/Robinson Prize winner. Paul was joined at that time by another former Temple editing intern, Diego Sorbara, recipient of the ACES-sponsored Aubespin scholarship. Today Diego is on his way to the national desk of The New York Times.

Jay Smith, former publisher of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and since then president of Cox Newspapers.

Gina Acosta, editorial page copy editor at The Washington Post, who just completed a year as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard.

Jerry Schwartz, news features editor of The Associated Press, who went from AP intern to AP staffer more than 30 years ago. It is the only place he has ever worked.

Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize and a biography of Thurgood Marshall, went directly from college to the Washington Post where he worked for almost a quarter century in a variety of roles including columnist and White House correspondent. He has an Emmy for television documentary writing. More recently he has worked as a senior correspondent for National Public Radio, Fox News and the Public Broadcasting Service.

There are hundreds more and I am proud of each of them; delighted to have had the privilege to work with them, to help them explore editing as a career possibility.

Just know that today there are literally thousands of Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing program alumni. Some, perhaps many, are in this room tonight. Many others, wherever they are, continue to edit, continue to follow the path that once included time as a Fund editing intern.

In its half century of service to journalism and the profession, The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund found and placed nearly six thousand college students in reporting and editing internships. In addition, The Fund provided workshop opportunities for roughly thirteen thousand high school students and fellowships for about five thousand high school journalism teachers and advisers.

One piece of this decades-long story is the part so many of you past and present have played personally to make this happen. You have done this as slots, as experienced copy editors, as news room managers. You and yours have welcomed 40 years of editing interns, worked with them, trained them, and shown them by example as well as shared intellect what it takes to do what is arguably the most important job in journalism: making sure that whatever gets published is, among other things, true, accurate, fair.

There is so much to know about copy editing and copy editors—and it can only be understood one person at a time. For while there is a common core, I have found no two copy editors to be quite the same. And while there is a standard of excellence in editing, it seems that each editor brings a set of attitudes and values that count way more than the number of zeros on a pay check. There are far easier ways to make a living, yet for some there is no other option; for them, no other choice. Make them the keepers of what journalism must stand for in a free society. Now more than ever.

Copy editors I know do not quit and will not be marginalized. Their ownership transcends the brick and mortar, the presses, the online venues. Their ownership lives and breathes in the power, yes power, they wield every day as they choose one word over another, one story over another, in an effort to let readers know enough about their worlds so they might make better, more informed choices, live better lives. This alone is a gift no one should ever take for granted. Again, the words that fit best are these: Thank you.

Copy editing is not an easy job. Instead it is an unending challenge where in most cases the editor and reader never meet. Yet the trust is there day in and day out in a business where perfection is the ideal, but not the reality; where just doing ones best sometimes is just not good enough, and where sometimes credibility is damaged through no fault of our own. Where else are yesterdays misses part of today’s news?

Credibility and integrity, standing for something, can not be overrated especially in journalism, especially with those who make the call regarding what the rest of the world reads or does not read; for this is power indeed. And while we know it, perhaps we do not fully appreciate it—perhaps we do not use it well enough or in the right ways. Perhaps we no longer think that what we do truly matters. Perhaps we are tired of standing up and instead step down, becoming more acquiescent—less engaged in ones craft, ones calling.

Thankfully, the editors I know, and I know a number of you, are just the kinds of people needed to keep journalism—journalism. Smart, confident, capable and fair. Dedicated to doing the right thing. Not looking for a pat on the back as much as for the next big hole that needs to be plugged in a story.

Editing has come a long way, even from 50 years ago. And in that time there are some people I would like to mention who helped lay some of the foundation on which we build today:

Barney Kilgore, an editor and later publisher of The Wall Street Journal, who had the idea of starting The Newspaper Fund in the late l950s in an effort to promote careers in journalism.

Paul Swensson, for 10 years managing editor of Minneapolis Star and Tribune newspapers before becoming the second executive director of The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund in l961. It was Paul who came up with the editing intern program idea.

Tom Engleman, who succeeded Paul at The Fund, is to be credited for seeing things through and building the editing program as well as running The Fund for so many years.

Today the Funds team includes Rich Holden, for years an editor at The Wall Street Journal; Linda Shockley and Phil Avila. They travel throughout this nation in behalf of journalism education and the profession.

Pam Robinson is no stranger to you as a founder and past president of this organization. I also know her as a talented editor as well as one who has done much to encourage and train others in editing.

Merrill Perelman and Bill Connolly of The New York Times are outstanding examples of talented editors who continue to do so much to grow the next generation of journalists, particularly those who edit.

Ann Glover, of The St. Petersburg Times, for all the years I have known of her has lived and breathed being an editor, a copy editor, a journalist—one who writes effectively and knowingly about what it takes to do what she and you do so well.

John Bremner, a distinguished journalism professor at the University of Kansas, and for many years my friend, touched many who work in the world we share, the world of words.

John in the last 20 years of his life, he passed in l987, became widely known for his efforts to sharpen the skills of editors on the job as well as those of students who thought that someday they might like to go there as well.

Those who knew him would agree that he had high, if not rigid, editing standards. He had expectations to match when it came to his teaching, his work in professional seminars and on-site consultations across the country. John cared. John cared deeply about journalism, but especially about editing.

We miss him, Paul Swensson and many other like-minded individuals who valued copy editors, the importance of editing, and the ability to use the right words in just the right ways.

Fortunately, we have all of you and others like you who share the idea that copy editors matter more than a little.

That publications must publish, and that so much of the responsibility for this falls to you and individuals who do what you do in places large and small across the United States and elsewhere.

This is not a time to be down on ourselves, our calling, while so much change blows across the world of journalism as we know it today.

So much of this unsettling change is driven by technology. Technology that has its pluses and minuses. Technology that enables some people to wait for news to come to them rather than their going out and finding it, reading it, and taking the best of what is offered to help them lead better, more informed, possibly more fulfilling, lives.

Perhaps two quotes from a recent New York Times story give some helpful insight. It is an article on how young people use online technology in terms of political news: If the news is that important, it will find me. Another said, Id rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.

All of this points not only to how technology is being used but to how at least some people, make that a lot of people under 30, tune in to their self-defined worlds of what is important and what is not.

There is competition from the Internet and other all-news-all-the-time venues. Everything we do seems to compete with everything else. So often the competition is we ourselves, for it includes newspapers and other print publications who slice and dice their content and present it in any number of ways, at any time, online and off line, thus casting an information net intended to reach all manner of audiences—often going broader and broader looking for numbers while at the same time making it possible for consumers to focus narrowly and to the exclusion of what otherwise could be a richer diet of news, other information and entertainment.

And it is, for the most part, free—to the consumer—the reader, the viewer.

Try giving away newspapers and other paid circulation publications. I’m thinking there would be more than a few takers, that perhaps it could be one of the boldest, some might say heretical, moves a publisher or news organization could make but in some cases it is worth considering, worth trying. For when audience penetration numbers go south, there is a point where advertisers look for alternative media. I’m not saying this would work in all situations, or even in many or a majority of situations, but perhaps in some. Perhaps in some way.

At my train station in suburban Philadelphia there is in the center of the platform a green box loaded with certainly hundreds of free daily newspapers. By around 9 a.m. they are gone, yet still the commuters come, flip down the front panel of the box, find nothing and walk away disappointed. Nearby are at least six other boxes, all with daily newspapers waiting to be purchased. Even the disappointed do not seem to go there, to dig deep for some quarters for the privilege of grabbing a newspaper.

Sometimes, when waiting for the train, I sit near the free box and watch the people come, all manner of people, just the kinds of people who ought to read newspapers. Coffee or a bagel in one hand, now a free newspaper in the other. Sometimes I have closed my eyes and listened to the steady drumbeat, the thump-thump, of that free newspaper box being opened and lightened, opened and emptied. On the train, it seems very much like the old days with many there reading newspapers—some are the traditional or more specialized ones, a great many more are the much smaller one from the green box, the one that has only one consumer cost: Time.

Today there is not enough time for us to do everything we would like to do, need to do, must do. There’s work, school, children, Dancing with the Stars—so many things that take time. So much so that some things must go. And it wont be the job—and lets hope it isn’t the children—perhaps it will be Bruno. This means working out lifestyles and strategies that will mesh in a multitasking world.

The commuter paper has a short but useful life. It is not for everyone, yet it grows, thrives even, because people want to read it for any number of reasons. Cost and availability are two. Lets hope content is there as well.

Turn around today in almost any given corner of the country and the competition for an individuals time includes publications with new(er) technology presences—many in a race sometimes with themselves to try to maintain or grow print circulations while recognizing that they may not be reaching a majority of their potential readership, that there are so many out there who live their lives and spend their time so differently from even a decade ago. I call this a 21st Century time-warp where things happen so fast and then change—again and again—all within what used to be a twelve- or twenty-four-hour news cycle. Today, in some instances and in the online world, this news cycle is less than an hour and perhaps more like twelve or twenty-four minutes. Probably less.

Technology as it relates to journalism, as it influences how news is gathered, edited and presented as well as how readers read what we have to say, will not kill us. As long as there are words to be written, there will be copy editors with whatever at the time is the technological equivalent of a sharp pencil

With this in mind, technology and the lifestyles of today, how people choose to get news and information, how they choose to spend their time, will change us.

The green eye shade of another era is pretty much gone, but the best of that time lives on—in you. You would not be here, miles from home, attending a national convention of professional editing colleagues, if it did not. Even this, a national convention of copy editors, was not even a thought when newspaper and magazine circulation numbers were at their height. What a great idea Pam Robinson, Merv Aubespin (Awww-bis-pin), Lynn Louie (another Temple editing intern), Hank Glamann (Glayyy-man), Bill Cloud, and a number of others had more than a dozen years ago.

Copy editors know about change. It is the theme of this convention. And anyone who has been in or around the slot for much of the past half century will tell the rest of you how much change there has been especially in regard to how news is edited and presented. Arguably no area of print publication has changed as much as the copy desk as it moved from hard copy/sharpened pencil/paste pot/scissors and just maybe a manual typewriter to all the whistles, zippers and bells of today. No journalists job has changed more than the copy editors—and no group has handled change better, been more nimble—ever going forward, ever adapting, succeeding.

Charles Handy is a widely known organizational theorist. He writes about those who try to face the future and inevitable change while walking backwards into it, thus allowing them to continue to look at and hold on to familiar things, the known, for as long as possible until they eventually drop over the far horizon and are no longer in view.

Copy editors have a history of facing forward. Copy editors have engaged massive changes in the past 50 years and are still here, perhaps stronger than ever, and still facing forward into the next waves of change as they begin to break. It is up to each of you to meet the challenges as they come while taking an active role in determining what copy editors can and must do in the years ahead. You have a right to participate, you must claim a say, in whatever decisions are made, whatever strategies are employed, as they affect editors and the all-important editing process. Continue to face forward. Do not miss this opportunity. Seize it.

For at least some of you, if not most of you, the next great battle is online editing. Editing for Web sites and other venues must have the same standards as print. There is no doubt about copy editing being under attack in this area. Perhaps this is an effort to marginalize what is done and those who do it by those who neither fully understand nor fully appreciate all that copy editors do, and can do. Perhaps it is at least in part an effort to economize, to save money. Regardless, this can not happen. This is not acceptable; for every writer needs an editor. Every publication, online and otherwise, needs editors.

If ever there were a time to speak out against such wrongheaded and sometimes insidious thinking, it is now. And you must get out of your comfort zones to do this, collectively and individually, not only because you believe in yourselves and what you do, but more importantly for what it means to practice good journalism each and every day—because readers, online and otherwise, count on, depend on, what copy editors pass along as true, accurate, and fair.

Thank you.