As the top candidate among the applicants, Barone was named the Aubespin scholar. The scholarship is named for Merv Aubespin, the former Louisville Courier-Journal editor who is considered the “godfather” of ACES. As the Aubespin scholar, Barone receives $2,500. Other winners each receive $1,000.

ACES has now awarded 59 scholarships since 1999.

Meet the winners:

Joshua Barone  – Josh is a senior at the University of Missouri, where he is assistant news editor of the Columbia Missourian. He had a Dow Jones internship in summer 2010 at the Wall Street Journal and was an editorial intern last summer at Standard & Poor’s. He also won an ACES scholarship last year. Judges thought his headlines were by far the strongest of any candidate’s, they were impressed with his editing example, and they gave him bonus points for his involvement with ACES. He even quotes Merrill Perlman’s Phoenix conference speech in his essay, which is headlined, “If the copy editor is dead, is this heaven?”

Zachary Aldrich – Zack is in his first year of grad school at Northwestern University, after graduating from Mizzou. He was a Dow Jones intern last summer at the Naples Daily News in Florida. In a recommendation letter, a professor says that Zack was one of only a handful of editors who worked to put out the Missourian after a blizzard that snowed in much of Columbia, Mo. In his essay, Zack says his goal in pursuing a master’s degree “is to better understand the nuance of copy editing.”

Matthew Draper – Matt received his master’s degree in December from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He was a Dow Jones sports copy editing intern last summer at the New York Post, where in his first weeks on the job, he wrote a back-cover headline about the Mets: “Balk of Shame.” In his essay, Matt says he “worked for nearly a decade in another field before leaving to attend graduate journalism school in the hopes of spending the rest of my career editing.”

Margaux Henquinet – Margaux is a junior at Mizzou, where she is on the “interactive copy editing desk” at the Missourian. The desk edits for both the website and print. She had a Dow Jones internship last summer at the Tribune in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Her supervisor at the Missourian says Margaux was already working at a professional level in her print copy editing, and she now has gained experience writing SEO headlines and producing content for the Web.

Arielle Retting – Arielle is a senior at Radford University in Virginia, where she is editor in chief of “Whim,” an online campus magazine. She had a Dow Jones internship this summer at the Virginian-Pilot. One of her headlines was chosen by the Virginian-Pilot’s copy editors as one of the best headlines of the month (of July): “16-pound newborn affirms everything’s bigger in Texas.” Arielle says in her essay that if awarded the scholarship, she will use it to help pay for graduate school, where she plans to study interactive editing.

Mekita Rivas

Hello all. I am pleased and honored to serve as the corporate communications intern for ACES this semester. The bulk of my work will involve orchestrating the publicity campaign for the 2012 national conference in New Orleans.

I am a journalism and English double major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, slated to graduate on Cinco de Mayo this year (which also happens to be the 60th birthday of my father, a native Mexican).

When I’m not in the classroom, you can find me in the newsroom of UNL’s Office of Communications, where I work as an online news and editorial assistant. As a reporter, I get to cover a wide range of campus events and faculty/staff profiles. As an editor, I’m continually mastering my editing prowess, specifically for Web publication. I am also the corporate communications intern for a regional engineering firm. There, I have the opportunity to refine my journalistic skillset in the private sector environment.

Needless to say, I like to stay busy.

In the coming months, I’ll be working closely with the ACES Executive Committee to develop a cohesive publicity plan for the conference. While we’ll be using traditional marketing tactics like email blasts and media placements, one of my goals is to establish a stronger social media presence surrounding NOLA 2012.

See you in April!

email: mekita.rivas@gmail.com

twitter: @MekitaRivas

Danae Lenz

Danae Lenz, a junior news-editorial major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been selected as ACES content intern for 2011-12. She will be writing stories for the ACES newsletter and website and helping proof the newsletter.

Lenz is a junior news-editorial major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was born and raised in Billings, Mont., where she spent her younger years terrorizing her little brother. Eventually, she moved on to other forms of expression, namely reading and writing. Lenz says the book that ignited her love of English, and her first chapter book ever, was J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

After graduating from high school, she went to Northwest College in Powell, Wyo., to major in photography. She got involved with the Northwest Trail, NWC’s award-winning weekly student newspaper, as a photographer, but ultimately ended up rediscovering her true love: words.

Lenz’s introduction to ACES happened in October 2010 when she was a co-editor of the Northwest Trail. She and the other editor took a road trip from Powell to Lincoln, Neb. (approximately 811 miles, according to Google maps), for an ACES regional conference because of a pressing need to improve their paper’s copy.

The experience led her to transfer to UNL this year.

In addition to the ACES internship, she works as a copy editor and general assignment reporter for UNL’s student newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan.

Now her grammar guide has found a new home on the ACES website.

On Monday, Dec. 12, her blog joins Charles Apple’s blog as a prominent feature on the ACES website. It is available at http://grammarguide.copydesk.org.

“Pam and Charles are a great one-two punch,” said Andy Bechtel, a former colleague of Nelson’s in Raleigh, N.C., and an ACES Executive Committee member. “Taken together, they represent so many aspects of what editors do.”

Nelson joined ACES when the organization started in 1997 and attended its first national conference in Chapel Hill, N.C. She also has been a presenter at ACES regional conferences over the years.

She studied English in college but got into journalism and, for 35 years and counting, she has never looked back. While she started out as a reporter, Nelson eventually began working on the copy desk.

“I was good at fixing other people’s work, fixing other people’s copy. I was good and fast about making decisions about news values,” Nelson said. “So that’s how I got into desk work. Once you get there, it’s kind of hard to go back to writing.”

Copy editing as a whole came very naturally to Nelson.

“I was really born to be a copy editor, I think,” she said. “It’s really what my real profession was meant to be all along.”

Her original blog — Triangle Grammar Guide — started when her then-editor, Will Sutton, suggested she start a blog for the N&O website. The guide was set up to help readers — more than journalists — understand why newspapers do what they do as far as grammar goes.

When a reader wrote a letter to the editor about something he or she thought the newspaper did wrong, Nelson would show the reader why it was right — or would admit to the error.

Earlier this year, Nelson moved from the N&O in Raleigh, N.C., and she is now a “universal editor” at the McClatchy Publishing Center in Charlotte, N.C. There, she edits copy for features sections of The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and The Herald of Rock Hill, S.C.

After making the move, she had considered just doing her own thing with blogging. That’s when Bechtel suggested she move her blog to the ACES website.

Nelson has several goals with the launch of her blog on copydesk.org.

“I want to show regular people outside of journalism that people inside journalism think about these issues,” she said.

She wants readers to know that journalists really do try to pick up on the small details and they don’t just focus on the big things. She says that she has a teacher’s impulse to want to show people new things and this is a great way for her to do so.

She also wants “to give copy editors another forum for talking about grammar and usage and language issues, not just communicating the ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ stuff, but also the bigger issues of how the language affects the way we think and how the changes that we go through affect our language. It’s not the finger-wagging kind of site.”

Nelson said she hopes the blog serves as an open forum about language.

She admits she’s a little bit nervous about the launch of the blog on the ACES website.

“They’re sending me more people out there writing about language issues, and I’m just one little person,” she said. “But I hope that that gives people a reason to feel comfortable about bringing up things in the comments or wherever.”

There’s a statement being made – that producing vast amounts of content is more important than whether that content is professionally checked and edited. The Internet era has led us to flood the zone, even if the water’s really muddy. There’s no doubt the Post would like to have everything, but with ad revenue continuing to shrink faster than the water-doused Wicked Witch, choices have to be made.

We at ACES know this. Most of us live with this every day. Many of our members have fallen victim to cuts. We don’t think the Washington Post should have 90 copy editors and only 40 reporters, although it would be nice if it had 90 copy editors. Were copy editors thought of in terms of what people like them do in other organizations – in some companies they would be the equivalent of brand managers – the massive cuts might not have happened. But they did.

So when the current ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, writes about an error that made the Natural Resources Defense Council into the National Resources Defense Council, we want to cheer him on, saying this is what we told you would happen if you cut back on copy editing, and it did – though we know no publishers today have money enough to throw at even half the problems facing them. We want to cheer because Pexton does not end by saying, get used to it. He says the opposite: Something must be done.

Yet at the same time, Pexton’s statement indicates that in some ways, nothing has changed. He notes that the freelancer who wrote the story got it wrong, the assigning editor missed it, and the copy desk missed it, in part because too many stories came in after deadline. And then he says, there’s a problem on the copy desk, and “something needs to be done to shake up the copy editing system at the Post.”

To a person who makes a living from the precise use of words, “to shake up” is troubling. It has many meanings, one of which might be: Heads on the copy desk must roll. Another might be: Let’s get a committee together and talk about workflow on the copy desk, and leave everything else alone. We don’t think that’s what Pexton meant. (Perhaps a less-burdened copy editor could have helped clarify.) But it sounds suspiciously like the “let’s blame it on the copy desk” that was often heard back when newspapers were flush.

The description of how this error happened seems to be: We, the Post, have a lot fewer people everywhere, and a lot more to do. And anyone can make a mistake. But we’re still depending on the same cadre of people to catch those mistakes, though their numbers are vastly depleted and their task lists severely overloaded. And we’ll STILL let people move copy late if we want to, even if that means the overworked cadre has little time to do its job. So let’s say there’s a problem on the copy desk instead of saying there’s a problem at the Post.

As ACES member Vince Tuss wrote to Pexton: “…This blunder started long ago with the Post editors, who pushed for fewer touches and who saw copy editors as a cost to be cut, not a key component in the paper’s credibility, all while assigning them more work and buying out their experienced colleagues. It’s obvious that Post readers care about this topic, since you write about it so much. But do Post editors?”

One Post editor once explained to an ACES audience a previous move to “shake up” the desk (by dramatically reducing its numbers) as: Since the safety net doesn’t catch 100 percent of errors, it’s not a safety net at all and can be done away with. Ridiculous then, but now being shown for its real problem: A safety net that catches 99 percent is better than one that catches 98 percent. One that catches 90 is better than one that catches 80.

But if you’re going to do this anyway, you at least have to make sure that the people you have left are able to pick up the load. You can’t just say, “We removed the safety net, but we don’t need to give the acrobats more training.” Pious hopes will not substitute for what experience has shown.

As newspapers (not the Post, interestingly) increasingly put up pay walls to collect circulation revenue from their loyal online readers, those readers will in turn ask: Am I getting what I am paying for? One can but hope that the companies that pay people to commit journalism will realize that those readers want accurate, readable, verified content, and not just something thrown onto the Web so a reader can spend 10 minutes after lunch avoiding his job, and the publisher can sell a remainder ad to pick up a couple of pennies. If we do not sell quality, we have in the end nothing worth selling.

National Conference, April 12-14, 2012, New Orleans

Preliminary Schedule

Note: Days, times and speakers are subject to change.

Thursday, April 12

8 a.m. – Registration begins, Rhythms foyer, second floor

 9-10:30 a.m. – Opening general session, Rhythms Ballroom, second floor

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Tiny Acts of Elegance: Editing Like a Writer: Bill Walsh, The Washington Post

Afraid of Math? Take a Number: Rich Holden, Dow Jones News Fund

Copy Editors as Curators: Gerri Berendzen, Quincy Herald-Whig; Sue Bullard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

A Keen Eye for Graphics: Bill Cloud, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

 12:15-2:15 p.m.– Lunch on your own (theme lunches meet with leader in Sheraton lobby)

2:15-3:45 p.m. – Breakout sessions

The Power of Proofreading: Sherrie Voss Matthews, John Braun and Sherri Hildebrandt

Even Porn Needs Style: Eric Althoff, freelance editor, New Jersey

Writing for SEO, Writing for Social Media: Frank Russell, University of Missouri

Editing in the Academic World: Margaret Alford Cloud, moderator

4-5:30 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Nuts and Bolts Punctuation: Lisa McLendon, The Wichita Eagle

Freelance Editors’ Forum: Mark Allen, Erin Brenner and Sherri Hildebrandt, moderators

Online News Editing: What Works: John Russial, moderator

Small-Staffs Forum: Tim Yagle, Rick Dyer and Julie Marra, moderators

6:30-9 p.m. – Reception, Lagniappe, second floor

Friday, April 13

8 a.m. – Registration begins, Rhythms foyer, second floor

9 a.m.-5 p.m. – Silent auction, Rhythms Ballroom III, second floor

9-10:30 a.m. – Breakout sessions

Editing Study Update: Fred Vultee, Wayne State University

Presenting Yourself: Resumes, Interviewing, Networking: Bill Connolly, retired from The New York Times; Rich Holden, Dow Jones News Fund

Surviving a Redesign: Sherrie Voss Matthews, David Brindley

Legal Language: Charles DelaFuente, The New York Times

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. – General session: Style Q&A with AP and Chicago, presenters: Carol Fisher Saller of CMOS; David Minthorn and Darrell Christian of AP

12:15-2:15 p.m.– Lunch on your own

2:15-3:45 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Business Editing in Depth: 10 Things You’d Better Know: Merrill Perlman, editing consultant

Editing at a Hub: Todd Kistler, Thom Wright, LANG; Pam Nelson, McClatchy

Alternative Story Forms and How to Get Them into Your Paper: Rob Schneider and Josh Crutchmer, SND

Ethics of the Last Editor Standing: Rick Kenney, Florida Gulf Coast University

4-5:30 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Triage for Editors: Nick Jungman, Wichita Business Journal

Missourian Transition Follow-up: Maggie Walter and Frank Russell, University of Missouri

Lessons from SND’s Best of Print Design/Best of Digital Design: Josh Crutchmer and Rob Schneider, SND

Fault Lines: Dori Maynard, Maynard Institute

5:30-7 p.m. – Silent auction moves to Armstrong foyer, eighth floor

7-9:30 p.m. – Banquet, Armstrong Ballroom, eighth floor

Keynote Speaker: Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute

Saturday, April 14

8 a.m. – Registration begins, Rhythms foyer, second floor

9-10:30 a.m. – Breakout sessions

Making sense of “study says”: Fred Vultee, Wayne State University

Financial Editing: The Words you Choose: Christine Steele, Capital Group

Editing Military Coverage: Renee Petrina, Sarah Clagett, Jared Marquis, Amy Gunnerson, all of Defense Information School

Women in Management Forum: Teresa Schmedding, moderator

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Inside Readers’ Heads: “Headlinese” : Alex Cruden, editing consultant

Editing Maps and Graphics: David Brindley, National Geographic

Speed Bumps in Editing: Merrill Perlman, editing consultant

Avoiding Burnout: Becca Dyer, Arizona Republic; Rick Dyer, Independent Newspapers

Editing Books: Jim Thomsen, freelance; Katya Jenson, Peachtree Publishers

12:15-2:15 p.m. – Lunch on your own

2:15-3:45 p.m. – Breakout sessions

Jimmy’s World (limited to 20) Bill Connolly, retired from The New York Times

Math is Everywhere! Neil Holdway, Daily Herald

How to Learn a Style Guide in 10 Days: Colleen Barry, IDG Enterprise

How Do I Get There? Copy Editing Beyond the Newsroom: Doug Ward, University of Kansas, et al.

Copy Editors to Multiplatform Editors: Teresa Schmedding, Lisa McLendon

4-5 p.m. – Closing general session, Rhythms Ballroom, second floor

6-8 p.m. – Social, Napoleon House, 500 Chartres Street

Questions? E-mail ACES conference vice president Lisa McLendon at lisamc@copydesk.org.

This year’s exchange was organized by Jill Van Wyke of Drake University. Topics include using social media, writing better captions and using Post-It notes to brainstorm story ideas.

“The breakfast is a great way to get people to talk about what works in the classroom,” said Andy Bechtel, ACES board member and moderator for the breakfast, which is co-sponsored by ACES. “I always come away with something new that I can use in the fall semester.”

Here are some handouts he brought back from this year’s event (right-click and save to your desktop):

First-day introductions: Why students need to know more than someone’s name and hometown

Captions: Stepchildren of the Newsroom: The picture may speak for itself, but do our cutlines do them justice?

Edit with Post-Its: An exercise for students to focus writing, headlines and other display elements.

DIY Grammar: Jan Leach’s take on how to bring grammar into the classroom discussion.

“J-Epiphanies” and Who Needs Newspapers: An outline from Southern Oregon’s Paul Steinle lecture

Download the entire set

For more teaching ideas from previous breakfasts, check out EditTeach.org‘s article on the breakfast at http://www.editteach.org/specialprojects?id=69.

“We hope to bridge the gap between academia and working journalists,” said Teresa Schmedding, president of ACES. “Research in editing is even more crucial as the media landscape changes as managers are faced with tough decisions — decisions that shouldn’t be made based upon instinct or past practices. We need the strong data that comes from research to guide us.”

The award is sponsored by ACES and administered by the Newspaper Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Here’s how the award works:

• Professors and graduate students will be invited to submit research papers for submission to the annual AEJMC conference, held in August of each year.

• The Newspaper Division will assign judges to select the best research paper that focuses on story editing, headline writing and other areas relevant to editing.

• The winner will present the research at the AEJMC conference.

• The winner also will receive a $100 prize and complementary registration to the ACES conference for the following year.

The idea of paper competition about editing generated a great deal of interest at the most recent AEJMC conference, said John Carvalho, a journalism professor at Auburn University and head of the Newspaper Division of AEJMC.

“Our goal is that our academic research also benefit the profession,” he said. “Partnerships with groups like ACES help us focus our research in specific areas, like copy editing, that encourage high levels of professionalism.”

A formal call for research papers will go out this fall, and the first ACES award will be given at the AEJMC conference in Chicago in August 2012.

» Read about the panel on new roles for copy editors at the AEJMC Breakfast of Editing Champions

Editing consultant Merrill Perlman (right) works to define what used to be called a copy editor while fellow panelist Teresa Schmedding, checks in with her newsroom at the Daily Herald. Joy Mayer of the University of Missouri (left) had previously discussed what students are doing in the new editing model. Photo by Renee Petrina

Merrill Perlman isn’t wallowing in sorrow about the so-called death of the copy editor. Instead, her consulting business gets calls like this: “You know, we let all our copy editors go — now we need help!”

Perlman, the former head of copy desks at The New York Times, shared this story Aug. 11 to a room crammed with more than 75 editing educators at the annual Breakfast of Editing Champions. She was joined on a panel by Joy Mayer, who teaches at the University of Missouri, and Teresa Schmedding, president of ACES.

Andy Bechtel, who teaches editing at UNC-Chapel Hill and is a member of the ACES Executive Committee, organized this year’s breakfast and moderated the panel discussion. The event was part of the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, which was held in St. Louis.

The role of copy editor is no longer what it was when ACES began in the 1990s. But as all three panelists attested that morning, the copy-editing profession is evolving rather than dying.

“The skills involved in social media are so perfectly suited to copy editors in a lot of cases,” said Mayer, whose student newsroom at The Missourian has tasked its copy desk with monitoring community conversations online and moderating Web comments. The paper also created a fast-tracked rim-to-Web queue for news updates throughout the day.

But it’s not just students who are adapting. Schmedding is a professional example of multiplatform changes.

At The Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, Schmedding explained that she is now AME of content systems — “Does anybody know what that is?”

Here’s what she did: She broke down the barriers – and floors of a building – that separated the Web producers from the newsroom. She used ACES-sponsored research on the importance of editing to get copy editors into the posting routine. Now, her copy editors consider themselves multiplatform performers.

She said newsroom morale has gone up, with reporters feeling better about their work, especially because it’s not going into “a black hole” on a website with “unseen people” – Web producers — touching it.

Schmedding was “always on” during the breakfast, checking DailyHerald.com on her tablet device and sending a quick email to her staff about photo choice and a potentially confusing headline.

No one on the panel — or in the room for that matter — felt confident affixing a label to what Schmedding was doing.

It’s an evolving role. It’s just what copy editors do, and everyone seemed to agree on that. A job title, however, proved elusive.

“I don’t know what to call us,” said Perlman, who also leads the ACES Education Fund. “We’re communicators. We are the people who make other people’s messages clear.”

A few possible new titles were tossed around. Content editor was one — though Perlman and others frowned over “content.”

“I hate that word,” she said.

An attendee’s suggestion of “reader advocate” drew loud applause.  There’s still no consensus, of course. (Perhaps a session at the next ACES conference is in order?)

But if the term “copy editor” is indeed dying — what will we call this phoenix that is rising?

» Read about the ACES Award For Research on Editing

The intern will work from home and will be paid $600, with the time frame and hours flexible, but equivalent to a semester’s work during the 2011-12 school year.

The primary duty will be writing stories related to copy editing. The intern also may help edit and proof content and work with the ACES Education Fund.

Applicants must be members in good standing of the American Copy Editors Society, however, students may join the society at the time of application. Applicants also should be currently enrolled in college, seeking a degree in the journalism/communications field. Graduates who received their degree in the past three months also are eligible.

The application deadline is Sept. 26. To download an application and for more information, click here.

For more information, send an e-mail to gerri@copydesk.org.