The Editor’s Desk

Katherine Latshaw, a 2009 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, is an editor at Stonesong Press in New York. In this interview, conducted by e-mail, Latshaw discusses what she does, what it’s like to work with writers and what she learned in journalism school.

Q. Describe your job at Stonesong Press. What do you do on a typical day?

A. We are book packagers, which means that we turn rough-hewn ideas into either manuscripts or entirely finished book files for publishers. If a publisher hires us to create finished book files, we do everything from finding writers to editing manuscripts to making sure that photos to be included are in the correct high-resolution format. My job varies with each day, but I’m currently working on a six-book series on human diseases (talk about uplifting!).

Here is some of what I accomplished today:

• Scoured the Internet, searching for appropriate photos for our tuberculosis title. For each photo I found, I wrote an informative caption to go with it.

• Edited our influenza manuscript. Our client, an educational publisher, was worried that some of the text discussing flu vaccines was unclear, so I reworded the offending material. Because the flu epidemic is still ongoing and the facts are always changing, I also updated some statistics on H5N1 deaths.

• Called a client to politely demand an overdue payment for a completed manuscript that we delivered.

• Started developing a book idea I had, first by seeing if there were existing books like it on the market already (nope) and then finding editors to whom I could possibly pitch the idea.

Q. You recently finished editing your first book. What was that experience like?

A. It was a very interesting experience, not completely unlike editing a news article. I had to not only check spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but also ensure that the authors’ points were made clearly for readers. When there were issues with the writing, I had to edit carefully, making sure that the writers’ voices weren’t lost in the process.

This book was a humorous nonfiction guide to business writing, and the most recurrent problem I found was that the authors often repeated the same “Star Wars” jokes in different chapters. When that happened, I had to gently let them know that the multiple wookie references would need to go.

Q. You graduated from a journalism program known for more for news editing than book editing. How does that education help you in your job, and what do you wish you had learned more about in your coursework?

A. All of my courses taught me to write precisely and to consider words carefully, which are valuable skills for any type of editor. There were a few things I actually had to “unlearn,” discarding some AP Stylebook rules along the way. One example that immediately comes to mind is using that darned serial comma because publishing follows the Chicago Manual of Style.

Although I believe my journalism education was excellent, I do think it would have been helpful to have more direct contact with the writers whose pieces you’re editing. I occasionally get calls from writers who wonder why I made the edits that I did, and it takes skill to reassure them that, yes, they did a great job, but something they wrote just didn’t work. Then I have to explain why my edit effectively fixes the problem. I’m still working on that.

Q. Many students would like to land a job like yours. What advice do you have for them?

A. I have always loved words (when I was younger, I wasn’t chastised for watching TV during dinner, I was yelled at for surreptitiously bringing books to the table). When envisioning a career as a child, I wanted to be a librarian!

To have a career in book publishing, you need to harbor an enthusiasm for written word that goes beyond polite enjoyment. And when you’re on the selling side of the business as I am, you need to see a book in everything – that funny blog you were laughing at the other day? Book idea. That magazine article that was so fascinating? Expand it, and maybe there’s a book there. That celebrity whose favorite hobby is horseback riding? Pitch her to see whether she’d like to do a picture book on the subject.

Generating book ideas is an incredibly important facet of the job, so you must always be on the lookout for inspiration. Many people have romantic ideas about writers: They toil at their craft, tucked away in a garret (or perhaps a Starbucks nowadays), making sure that every sentence on their coffee-stained pages is perfect before sending their child out into the world to be judged by editors.

I hate to dispel that notion, but it’s not really like that for a majority of authors and their books. Motivated by popular trends of the day, editors and packagers very often invent ideas, write entire book synopses and then hire writers to execute their ideas. For example, the astoundingly popular “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” was conceived by a packager in precisely this fashion (sorry, Ann Brashares).

If such a love for books is ingrained in you and you think you can regularly come up with exciting new book ideas, then go for it. Take as many internships that you can get because practical knowledge is the most valuable asset in this business. Whenever applying for an internship or job, let the person in charge know that you have great book ideas that you want to share. That’s what I did!

TV journalism has “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley. The magazine industry has “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” by Dr. Hook.

What about songs about newspapers? Paste magazine offered this list, which is pretty comprehensive. The inclusion of “Newspapers” by Stan Ridgway is essential. (Read the lyrics to that song here.)

But what about songs about other topics that mention newspapers in one form or another? Here are four five examples that come to mind:

ARTIST: The Bee Gees
SONG: “Staying Alive”
LYRIC: “We can try to understand The New York Times’ effect on man.”

ARTIST: The Clash
SONG: “The Leader”
LYRIC: “The people must have something good to read on a Sunday.”

ARTIST: The Who
SONG: “Another Tricky Day”
LYRIC: “What the papers say just seems to bring down heavier rain.”

ARTIST: The Smiths
SONG: “The Queen Is Dead”
LYRIC: “Charles, don’t you ever crave to appear on the front of the Daily Mail dressed in your mother’s bridal veil?”

ARTIST: Bob Seger
SONG: Night Moves
LYRIC: “Trying to make some front-page drive-in news, working on our night moves.”

Have other examples? Please add them to the comments.

Monday was a terrible day for journalism. McClatchy put its layoff plan into effect at The News & Observer and elsewhere. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that it would publish its final print edition this week.

Yet there are signs of hope. The P-I will continue online, and some journalists from the recently deceased Rocky Mountain News have launched a similar venture called In Denver Times.

Some people, of course, would prefer to see no hope for newspapers, regardless of the medium. They find glee in the struggles of print media, often from an ideological perspective. Some claim that bloggers have killed a newspaper. Others leave comments on newspaper sites, arguing that the decline of newspapers is tied to slanted coverage. Here’s a typical one:

Readers have become more and more concerned by the consistent, strident Leftist agenda promulgated within the pages of the N&O. Now the chickens continue to come home.

Such comments are misguided, based more in schadenfreude than reason. In reality, readers are not rejecting professionally produced news. They are seeking it out, just in different forms. The Los Angeles Times, for example, has seen scary declines in its print circulation in recent years — but tremendous growth in its Web readership. If readers are rejecting a newspaper on ideological grounds, wouldn’t readership for the newspaper’s Web site see the same decline as the print edition?

These “bias” accusations miss the point of what’s really going on. The utility of the print newspaper has changed, and not for the better, and it has little or nothing to do with issues of news coverage.

For decades, a daily newspaper was an effective way to deliver advertising of all sorts to readers. This was where the big money was, not in circulation. Display and classified ads were reliable sources of income for print media. It’s where Realtors and car dealers advertised, and where readers went to find an apartment, a used car or even a mate. Revenue from that advertising allowed reporters, copy editors and others in the newsroom to make a living.

Now, display advertising is suffering because of the sad state of the economy; it could come back somewhat when the economy gets better. Some businesses, however, can skip such advertising and push their products through their own Web sites. Even more worrisome is the collapse of classified advertising, again tied to the troubled economy but other forces as well. Indeed, in the era of Craigslist, it’s difficult to imagine that newspapers will ever see classified ads return as a significant source of income, though some hold out hope.

So the failure of print media is a failure of advertising, not a failure of news. That, coupled with the fact that many newspaper companies (such as McClatchy) took on too much debt, is the reason that print media are fighting for their lives. Advertising is weak; online ads aren’t bringing in money the way print ads did in their heyday. Yet readership is strong, online if not in print.

The problem before us is how to sustain and expand professionally produced journalism in an online world. (And yes, that includes editing.) How will news, readership and advertising work to support quality journalism the way they did for print for so long?

At least one forecast is pretty gloomy, but perhaps news sites such as the P-I, MinnPost, the St. Louis Beacon and the Denver project will find a way.

UPDATE: Here is what the job ad of the future present looks like for journalism. It includes writing, editing and exercising news judgment.

The “Watchmen” movie, which has divided critics, is noteworthy for its gloomy worldview and brutal violence. It’s also noteworthy for its prominent use of print media.

Not only are plot points revealed through headlines (a common technique in the movies), but characters are seen clutching newspapers. Front pages are framed and hung as art. “Watchmen” even has a newsroom scene involving an ornery newspaper editor.

The print-heavy focus is appropriate to the movie’s setting, a twisted vision of 1985 America. In this reality, the United States won the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon is still president.

In “Watchmen,” the newspaper (and to a lesser extent, television) is a signficant conduit of information. (Perhaps that was reality in 1985.) That emphasis is not surprising, considering that the book that the movie is based on included a mockup of a newspaper page similar to what may have been seen in a composing room at the time.

It all makes the movie a little more interesting for anyone who’s ever written a headline or laid out a newspaper page. If “Watchmen” isn’t for you, try these movies that portray newspapers of the future.

The New York Times made news this week with the launch of The Local, offering close-up coverage of communities in New Jersey and New York. Stories include news about deer hunting and delays on transit trains.

Scrolling through the blog-like items about places like Maplewood and Clinton Hill, I was reminded of The Carrboro Commons, a project started in 2007 at the journalism school at UNC-Chapel Hill. Students in my Advanced Editing course serve as the copy editors, and students in Community Journalism write the stories and shoot photos and video. Together, they put together a news site (including a .pdf “print” edition) focused on the town of Carrboro, N.C.

The latest issue of the Commons went up this week. Take a look at it and The Local. They don’t take identical paths, but they both lead to the same question: Is this the future of local news?

Chris Hoerter is a copy editor at SAS, a software company based in Cary, N.C. In this Q&A, conducted by e-mail, Hoerter discusses what editing is like in the corporate world.

Q. Describe your job. What it is it like to edit at a software company?

A. Like newspaper editing, the turnaround time is fast — less than a day for most jobs. Most days we also get a few rush jobs that require immediate action.

The documents we’re looking at are relatively short — 75 percent of what we get consists of marketing e-mails, Web pages, signs and short mailers. Medium-length pieces make up most of the rest, things like press releases, success stories and magazine articles. And then every few days we’ll get something massive, like a 4,000-word white paper.

Paradoxically, we have to really take our time with short, prominent jobs, such as large trade show signs. A mistake on one of these is easy to see and makes us look especially unprofessional.

We’re also the front line for trademark enforcement, and make sure that dozens of trademarks and product names are used correctly.

Q. The business world has lots of jargon. How do you balance the urge of writers to use jargon with an editor’s urge to translate that into everday English?

A. It depends a great deal on the audience. Because SAS markets software to many different industries, writers and editors have to put themselves in a lot of different shoes. In general, we encourage plain English by working with our writers to identify unnecessary jargon, much of which we capture in an online style guide.

Other times we work with the writer to identify possible jargon and come up with alternatives. This often requires some research.

Q. You come from a background in creative writing. How has that influenced your editing?

A. It’s been challenging in some ways and helpful in others. I don’t think of myself as a naturally detail-oriented person, so I’ve had to approach copy editing in a very mindful way.

For example, I look at most pieces three times. First, I read from beginning to end. Next, I bump up the text size to 150 percent and read backwards, paragraph by paragraph. Last, I review all my edits, making sure that there’s a good reason for each one.

I feel my creative writing background pays off most when I’m working with our copy writers and graphic designers, who are wonderfully creative people. I feel like I can identify with what they’re trying to achieve, and I get a lot of satisfaction from suggesting a different way to write something that improves the delivery.

Q. Some copy editors for newspapers and magazines may look into getting a job like yours. What advice would you have for them?

A. The next best thing to knowing the person who is making the hiring decision is knowing the company. Do your homework. Read the collateral, check out the Web site, and think about it from an editing perspective. What is the company doing well? What kinds of mistakes is it making? How could you help?

And I wouldn’t be scared off if you’re not seeing official corporate editing positions. I’m lucky to work at a company that values consistent, professional business communications. But judging from what I see elsewhere, many companies don’t choose to make that effort — or they make it inconsistently.

If you think there’s a need and you’ve got something to offer, you may have a strong case for a creating a new position or at least getting some freelance work. And that’s a situation that’s good for everybody.

The Carrboro Citizen, a weekly newspaper in North Carolina, debuted in early 2007 as a relentlessly local publication. The paper recently announced its intentions to widen its coverage into adjacent Chapel Hill and beyond. In this interview, conducted by e-mail, editor Kirk Ross discusses the paper’s plans.

Q. Why is the Citizen expanding its coverage of Chapel Hill and elsewhere outside of Carrboro?

A. Actually, we’ve been doing it for a long time. Early on, we found shared interests among readers from all over Orange and Chatham counties. A lot of people from elsewhere were picking up the paper when they were in Carrboro. Then we opened up several distribution locations in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill and papers really stared moving. So reader interest — that’s a big part of the reason.

The other is that most of the other papers — the Daily Tar Heel being the exception — are getting smaller and cutting staff. We think there is a need for more local coverage and that the community wants and deserves a full airing of ideas and issues.

The big leap was deciding to cover Chapel Hill government, the university and more of the doings of Chapel Hill. It was a natural move, but it happened a little faster than we thought it would.

Q. How will the paper balance its growth with its original mission of being a paper focused on Carrboro?

A. The idea of having a paper focused on Carrboro (we were very religious about that in the beginning), was driven by the feeling that Carrboro has a lot going on, many serious issues to deal with and those need to be more fully reported.

I’d say the same goes for Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Pittsboro and so on. The boundary lines between the towns and even Orange and Chatham are blurred in so many areas — arts, music, literature — and there are a lot of shared philosophies and world views. Weaving that together and balancing constituencies is our weekly task. That said, we’ll never skip an aldermen meeting because it’s not sexy enough.

Q. You have a small staff where everyone does everything. How does editing and headline writing work at the Citizen?

Yep, we have a small shop and share a lot of responsibilities. Everybody proofs a bit. We try to use everyone’s strengths.

I’m a much better assignment editor and spirit guide than copy editor. So I do that, and Taylor Sisk does a lot of the nuts and bolts work on the copy. I do the majority of the headline writing, which I’ve always enjoyed. One of my goals for this year is to get more ahead of the process and slow the pace. That should allow for more of those flourishes that give a paper personality.

Q. The Citizen keeps growing even as many newspapers are struggling. What can a newspaper do to not just survive, but thrive?

A. You have to get back to the land. Many newspapers are too large, too layered and too distant from readers. More has to happen at ground level. We’re all going to have to get out more, work a lot harder, connect with more people and build trust.

To thrive, newspapers must be more collaborative with the communities they serve, more inclusive and open to new sources of content, and they have to absolutely own local government coverage.

My interview with Dan Barkin, conducted by e-mail, offers a look at The News & Observer’s decision to publish a special afternoon edition after Barack Obama is sworn in as president. Barkin is a senior editor at the Raleigh paper who also writes columns on occasion.

Q. Why is the N&O publishing an afternoon edition on Inauguration Day?

A. We’re publishing an afternoon edition because we think that there will be demand for it as a keepsake. There will be lots of gatherings around the Triangle where people will be watching the inaugural activities, and we will be distributing to these sites. We will also be distributing at selected single-copy locations.

Q. What can readers expect to see in this edition?

A. We hope they will see the first images coming out of the inaugural, plus a story and highlights of Obama’s speech. If AP moves the speech in advance, we may be able to get the whole speech.

Q. How will the afternoon edition be coordinated with coverage on the N&O Web site?

A. The coverage on the Web site will be substantially more than we can get in the extra. We will be doing a live video feed of the speech, live blogging from the inaugural and continuously updating photo galleries throughout the afternoon and evening, as well as updating stories and reporting on any actions that Obama takes on his first day, such as executive orders.

Q. Can readers expect to see more afternoon editions on special occasions?

A. The last afternoon edition that we published was on 9/11. Typically, it has to be that level of event or an event that would produce an edition people would want to save. So I think this will be rare.

UPDATE: See some of the afternoon editions from several newpapers, including the N&O, at Visual Editors.

A Facebook friend recently invited me to join a cause called National Buy A Newspaper Day. It’s set for Monday, Feb. 2.

The effort’s bare-bones site says this is necessary to show support for local coverage:

Unlike radio which has become dominated by opinion or TV news which only looks for the 30 second soundbite, the local newspaper digs deep every day to get you, the reader, the full story on what’s happening in your town. The newspaper is heavily focused on local news. It keeps you informed about events in your town and keeps local government in line.

It was easy for me to accept this request, because I get a newspaper delivered to my home seven days a week. Perhaps I will buy a copy of another newspaper on this day. I’m sure I will read a few online too, but that doesn’t count.

I have a couple of concerns, however:

• First, what about international news? Washington? Sports? Opinion and analysis? These are also part of the reason I buy a newspaper, not just for local coverage. (I also like the comics.)

• Second, Monday is not a good day to pick for this event. The Monday paper tends to be the thinnest edition of the week — not a great way to showcase what a newspaper has to offer.

Despite these quibbles, I will support National Buy A Newspaper Day, and I encourage you to do the same.

Ben Terrett, a British graphic designer, recently teamed up with a friend for an interesting project in that blends print and online media. They assembled blog posts, Twitter messages and other content that their friends had put online, and they made it into a newspaper. Yes, on paper.

The result is Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. This unusual newspaper contains no advertising and has a “circulation” of 1,000.

Terrett’s detailed account of how the publication came together is heavy on the design angle, and he discloses that none of the content was edited. It’s still an interesting experiment in reverse publishing. Perhaps the project is also another testament to the keepsake value of print — Terrett even includes celebratory video of his newspaper rolling off the presses.