| Joel Pisetzner joined the copy desk of The Star-Ledger in Newark,
N.J., in 1996. Two years later he became the first headline writer
to sweep first, second and third prizes in the same year in the Society of
Professional Journalists' New Jersey Journalism awards. In 2000 he
was a first-prize winner in ACES' initial headline-writing contest. In 2002
he conducted his first workshop at an ACES conference and was allowed
to leave the room safely after his 90 minutes were up.
Pisetzner is a New York City native and onetime Cornell University
engineering student who has drunk deeply from many sides of the newspaper
cup since 1974, when he began his career with a night-desk job
in Jefferson City, Mo. He was the first full-time sports columnist for The
Record in Bergen County, N.J., and, after taking two years to travel the
country, he returned as its television critic. (Satisfactions during the sports-and-TV
years ranged from a private lunch with Mickey Mantle to a seat in the
captain's chair of the starship Enterprise.)
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 Joel, left, with Jeffrey Kleinman at the 2002 conference. Some of Joel's Star-Ledger heads: Pisetzner created a weekly puzzle page at one newspaper, published crosswords at two others, wrote a handful of editorials for yet another, had Page 1 bylines at four newspapers and even had an editorial-page cartoon published. (Don't ask.) When he chose the copy desk in the 1990s (during a misguided attempt to write a novel), it was with the dual determination to settle down and to treat other people's copy the way he'd want his own to be treated. No complaints so far.
In his spare time, Pisetzner is a pianist who spent one summer during college playing nightly at a resort in the Adirondacks. A prospective athletic career fizzled when his body refused to budge past 5-foot-8,
and he now takes out his disappointment on the trees of various golf
courses.
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