Holy Moly! My last post was about the potentially impending demise of the Philly Inquirer. Today's post is about the Philly Daily News, which has lost its sense of propriety, if it ever had one. That I can't say because I don't read it regularly. But I noticed a blog post critical of its headline regarding Michael Vick's elevation to a starting role on the Eagles: Top Dog.
That headline is sick. No embellishing or analyzing necessary. The sad thing is, I'll bet some editor at the Philly Daily News thought that was clever.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Mandatory retirement and me
As I await the arrival of my first piddling pension check, with my checking account overdrawn and my credit cards maxed out thanks to two years and three months without a job in the newspaper industry, a couple of items, one from the Paleozoic Era of Journalism, the other a Facebook post, come to mind.
This will be a lengthy post, so if you're on deadline, Hasta la vista Mista, or Ms (you were expecting maybe Miss from a dinosaur like moi? Why, I'm so up to date I was going to tweet this blog post only it's about 276,000 characters too long. Of course, I could tweet it in installments, a la the New Yorker's long-ago capsule review of "The Fantasticks," which was in the form of another sentence, or part of a sentence, or part of a participle, from "Finnegan's Wake" each week until either the Fantasticks finally closed or James Joyce's estate ordered it to cease and desist.) But I desist, I mean digress.
Ironically, the two incidents are related. So called ink stained wretches the nation over are boo-hooing the demise of the newspaper industry but the newspapers I worked for were demising as far back as I can remember, which is roughly 42 years. New York City once had an astounding number of competing newspapers, morning newspapers, afternoon newspapers, evening newspapers, and all of those newspapers had several editions, bulldog editions, late sports editions, early sports editions, 2 o'clock cup of coffee editions. There was a World and a Tribune and a Sun and a Journal and a Herald and a Telegram and the Post and the Daily News and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting (like the New York Times!), and none of them were owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
The first night I went to work at the old Journal-American building which the New York Post had bought I took a taxi from the subway. When I asked the cabbie if he knew where the Journal-American building was he said, "You mean the Journal building?" He knew it from before it merged with the American. Newspapers in New York City in the first half of the 20th century did more folding than an old lady in a Chinese laundry.
When I left the Post to work at the Daily News, my new colleagues on the copy desk were making jokes about the small size of their Christmas bonuses. I had never even heard the word "bonus" at the Post. And my new News colleagues were lamenting the days, not long past, when if a staffer even thought he or she might have to call in sick, he or she would call ahead and the paper would call in an extra "just in case."
When I left the Daily News and arrived at the Bergen Record it was only a matter of time before profit-sharing, a term I had never heard used at the Daily News or the Post, was discontinued, and there was even a round of layoffs about 15 years ago. At the time the newspaper industry was healthy by today's standards, so I thought there must be a black cloud following me around, sort of like Linus in the "Peanuts" comic strip. I'm sure some of my former supervisors at the Record would agree, as they have clutched at every straw in the book, if you'll pardon the mangled metaphor, to explain the paper's financial difficulties.
Which brings me, by way of a poor transition, to my former colleague's Facebook post of a couple of days ago. He posted a link to an article about the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he used to work. The Inquirer is in bankruptcy court, and a deal to sell it to its creditors was torpedoed because the Teamsters Union, which represents the drivers, refused to void the paper's contractual obligation to pay into a pension fund and create 401(k)s instead.
A commenter on the Facebook page wrote "We'll survive no matter what," and my former colleague wrote "You damn well better."
I applaud the Teamsters for taking a stand. The bankruptcy court will tear up the contract anyway. I didn't dare make such a comment on Facebook as I would hate for him to think I'm rooting for all those "Inky" staffers to wind up in the same boat as me, which I'm not. But the action of the Teamsters, and the pending arrival of that piddling pension check, a double dose of dreaded "R" words -- recession and retirement -- made me think of the time about forty years ago, I can't recall the precise year, when the picket lines were up outside the New York Post, owner Dorothy Schiff was threatening to close the paper if the unions struck, and only two items remained on the table: mandatory retirement and me.
First, mandatory retirement. Even then, most people couldn't afford to retire. There was one writer at the Post, Archer Winston, who was 92 if he was a day and he still wrote a skiing column. Okay, maybe he was only 78 but he sure looked 92. But there were many workers who would be out of a job, for whatever reasons they were still working, whether it was due to a lack of funds to retire or because it kept them from being henpecked 24 hours of the day, if mandatory retirement were accepted. (One of my all time favorite Daily News headlines, "YANKS WISC. MILWAUKEE," was written by a copy editor who should have retired years earlier but couldn't stand spending that much time with his wife).
I forget what the proposed mandatory retirement age was, maybe 62, maybe 65. As newspaper work is for the most part cerebral if Damon Runyon were still alive he'd probably still be writing for a newspaper. Even back then, this was a marvelous ploy to get rid of longtime workers with high salaries and lots of vacation and replace them with younger, lower-paid workers.
And now for "and me." Circa 1969 I was working as a clerk in the sports department of the Post. That department was legendary, probably the best in the nation, with writers like Jimmy Cannon and Milt Gross and Larry Merchant and Vic Ziegel, who still writes a column for the Daily News and is as sharp as ever. The writers would cover their games and file their stories with Western Union, which sent the stories over a teletype machine. But that ol' divvel economy was nipping at the heels of Western Union -- oops, another mangled metaphor, if I were paying me to write this blog I'd give me a virtual rap on the knuckles -- and it eliminated the "night press rate." Overnight the cost of filing the stories with Western Union increased sevenfold. Whether it went from $1 a page to $7 a page or 2 cents a word to 14 cents a word I couldn't tell you, all I know is "sevenfold."
Step back a little further in time with me to seventh grade at Joan of Arc Junior High School when for one period a day my class took typing. Little did I know how that would influence my life. Okay, fast forward to 1969, zzzzzzziippp. The Post bought two reel to reel tape recorders, and soon I was recording one sportswriter while transcribing another. I would arrive at 8 p.m., and it was not unusual, before the first fax machine was invented, for me to type up 21 stories in the course of a shift, which often lasted until 5 a.m. And if you thought those early fax machines were a time saver, fuhgeddabouddit, the print quality on the thermal paper was so poor that I had to strain my eyes and type them over anyway.
The Post was a union shop then, and jobs were classified as Group this and Group that. A copy person, for instance, the lowest rung on the totem pole, was Group 1. A copy editor, the highest rung on the totem pole below management, was Group 10. I was Group 4.
The record/transcribe setup, I'm sure, saved the paper a bundle of money. So much so that the news desk on occasion asked if we could handle a couple of stories for them. Not a problem, especially since it was compensated with a bit of overtime.
Soon, however, the news desk created a position similar to mine to handle the three to five stories a night that news reporters phoned in. That position, which entailed a fraction of the transcribing that I was doing, was created at Group 5. I filed a grievance with the union.
The grievance was never quite resolved, and wound up as a contract issue in a protracted round of labor negotiations. The union assured me I had an airtight case, although I was sure I would make a pretty good bargaining chip for some other hard-to-resolve issue.
I don't remember the date, but the contract went down to the wire, and talks were extended. They weren't going well, and the picket lines went up, although the workers were not yet officially on strike. At this point, two issues remained unresolved: Mandatory retirement and Aaron Elson, which is how my case was referred.
Finally, Dorothy Schiff relented on mandatory retirement, an issue worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. The union negotiators said, "How about Aaron Elson," an issue worth maybe fifty dollars a week. Dorothy refused to budge. The union, god bless 'em, budged. I don't begrudge them that.
A few weeks later I was given a tryout as a copy editor, so the issue was essentially moot.
The contract negotiations were in September, and by the holiday season I was editing copy instead of typing, Group 10, pretty good money. Dorothy Schiff, who would soon sell the Post to Rupert Murdoch, made an appearance at the Christmas party. My editor, Ike Gellis, asked if I would like to meet her.
He brought me over and introduced me. "This is Aaron Elson," he said.
Dorothy Schiff, without saying a word, promptly turned and walked away.
Without unions like the Teamsters, newspapers have long since replaced mandatory retirement with age discrimination. Do the math. Fifty-eight years old plus five weeks' vacation equals ten-four, out the door, or so it was in my case.
The Philly Inquirer is a wonderful newspaper. I hope it survives. From time to time I hear about former colleagues who are still employed by the newspaper that laid me off. Their salaries have been slashed, their workloads increased, and their morale has never been lower. They have been warned that posting on certain blogs critical of the newspaper is a fireable offense.
That's why I applaud the Teamsters. Sometimes you have to take a stand, whatever the cost.
This will be a lengthy post, so if you're on deadline, Hasta la vista Mista, or Ms (you were expecting maybe Miss from a dinosaur like moi? Why, I'm so up to date I was going to tweet this blog post only it's about 276,000 characters too long. Of course, I could tweet it in installments, a la the New Yorker's long-ago capsule review of "The Fantasticks," which was in the form of another sentence, or part of a sentence, or part of a participle, from "Finnegan's Wake" each week until either the Fantasticks finally closed or James Joyce's estate ordered it to cease and desist.) But I desist, I mean digress.
Ironically, the two incidents are related. So called ink stained wretches the nation over are boo-hooing the demise of the newspaper industry but the newspapers I worked for were demising as far back as I can remember, which is roughly 42 years. New York City once had an astounding number of competing newspapers, morning newspapers, afternoon newspapers, evening newspapers, and all of those newspapers had several editions, bulldog editions, late sports editions, early sports editions, 2 o'clock cup of coffee editions. There was a World and a Tribune and a Sun and a Journal and a Herald and a Telegram and the Post and the Daily News and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting (like the New York Times!), and none of them were owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
The first night I went to work at the old Journal-American building which the New York Post had bought I took a taxi from the subway. When I asked the cabbie if he knew where the Journal-American building was he said, "You mean the Journal building?" He knew it from before it merged with the American. Newspapers in New York City in the first half of the 20th century did more folding than an old lady in a Chinese laundry.
When I left the Post to work at the Daily News, my new colleagues on the copy desk were making jokes about the small size of their Christmas bonuses. I had never even heard the word "bonus" at the Post. And my new News colleagues were lamenting the days, not long past, when if a staffer even thought he or she might have to call in sick, he or she would call ahead and the paper would call in an extra "just in case."
When I left the Daily News and arrived at the Bergen Record it was only a matter of time before profit-sharing, a term I had never heard used at the Daily News or the Post, was discontinued, and there was even a round of layoffs about 15 years ago. At the time the newspaper industry was healthy by today's standards, so I thought there must be a black cloud following me around, sort of like Linus in the "Peanuts" comic strip. I'm sure some of my former supervisors at the Record would agree, as they have clutched at every straw in the book, if you'll pardon the mangled metaphor, to explain the paper's financial difficulties.
Which brings me, by way of a poor transition, to my former colleague's Facebook post of a couple of days ago. He posted a link to an article about the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he used to work. The Inquirer is in bankruptcy court, and a deal to sell it to its creditors was torpedoed because the Teamsters Union, which represents the drivers, refused to void the paper's contractual obligation to pay into a pension fund and create 401(k)s instead.
A commenter on the Facebook page wrote "We'll survive no matter what," and my former colleague wrote "You damn well better."
I applaud the Teamsters for taking a stand. The bankruptcy court will tear up the contract anyway. I didn't dare make such a comment on Facebook as I would hate for him to think I'm rooting for all those "Inky" staffers to wind up in the same boat as me, which I'm not. But the action of the Teamsters, and the pending arrival of that piddling pension check, a double dose of dreaded "R" words -- recession and retirement -- made me think of the time about forty years ago, I can't recall the precise year, when the picket lines were up outside the New York Post, owner Dorothy Schiff was threatening to close the paper if the unions struck, and only two items remained on the table: mandatory retirement and me.
First, mandatory retirement. Even then, most people couldn't afford to retire. There was one writer at the Post, Archer Winston, who was 92 if he was a day and he still wrote a skiing column. Okay, maybe he was only 78 but he sure looked 92. But there were many workers who would be out of a job, for whatever reasons they were still working, whether it was due to a lack of funds to retire or because it kept them from being henpecked 24 hours of the day, if mandatory retirement were accepted. (One of my all time favorite Daily News headlines, "YANKS WISC. MILWAUKEE," was written by a copy editor who should have retired years earlier but couldn't stand spending that much time with his wife).
I forget what the proposed mandatory retirement age was, maybe 62, maybe 65. As newspaper work is for the most part cerebral if Damon Runyon were still alive he'd probably still be writing for a newspaper. Even back then, this was a marvelous ploy to get rid of longtime workers with high salaries and lots of vacation and replace them with younger, lower-paid workers.
And now for "and me." Circa 1969 I was working as a clerk in the sports department of the Post. That department was legendary, probably the best in the nation, with writers like Jimmy Cannon and Milt Gross and Larry Merchant and Vic Ziegel, who still writes a column for the Daily News and is as sharp as ever. The writers would cover their games and file their stories with Western Union, which sent the stories over a teletype machine. But that ol' divvel economy was nipping at the heels of Western Union -- oops, another mangled metaphor, if I were paying me to write this blog I'd give me a virtual rap on the knuckles -- and it eliminated the "night press rate." Overnight the cost of filing the stories with Western Union increased sevenfold. Whether it went from $1 a page to $7 a page or 2 cents a word to 14 cents a word I couldn't tell you, all I know is "sevenfold."
Step back a little further in time with me to seventh grade at Joan of Arc Junior High School when for one period a day my class took typing. Little did I know how that would influence my life. Okay, fast forward to 1969, zzzzzzziippp. The Post bought two reel to reel tape recorders, and soon I was recording one sportswriter while transcribing another. I would arrive at 8 p.m., and it was not unusual, before the first fax machine was invented, for me to type up 21 stories in the course of a shift, which often lasted until 5 a.m. And if you thought those early fax machines were a time saver, fuhgeddabouddit, the print quality on the thermal paper was so poor that I had to strain my eyes and type them over anyway.
The Post was a union shop then, and jobs were classified as Group this and Group that. A copy person, for instance, the lowest rung on the totem pole, was Group 1. A copy editor, the highest rung on the totem pole below management, was Group 10. I was Group 4.
The record/transcribe setup, I'm sure, saved the paper a bundle of money. So much so that the news desk on occasion asked if we could handle a couple of stories for them. Not a problem, especially since it was compensated with a bit of overtime.
Soon, however, the news desk created a position similar to mine to handle the three to five stories a night that news reporters phoned in. That position, which entailed a fraction of the transcribing that I was doing, was created at Group 5. I filed a grievance with the union.
The grievance was never quite resolved, and wound up as a contract issue in a protracted round of labor negotiations. The union assured me I had an airtight case, although I was sure I would make a pretty good bargaining chip for some other hard-to-resolve issue.
I don't remember the date, but the contract went down to the wire, and talks were extended. They weren't going well, and the picket lines went up, although the workers were not yet officially on strike. At this point, two issues remained unresolved: Mandatory retirement and Aaron Elson, which is how my case was referred.
Finally, Dorothy Schiff relented on mandatory retirement, an issue worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. The union negotiators said, "How about Aaron Elson," an issue worth maybe fifty dollars a week. Dorothy refused to budge. The union, god bless 'em, budged. I don't begrudge them that.
A few weeks later I was given a tryout as a copy editor, so the issue was essentially moot.
The contract negotiations were in September, and by the holiday season I was editing copy instead of typing, Group 10, pretty good money. Dorothy Schiff, who would soon sell the Post to Rupert Murdoch, made an appearance at the Christmas party. My editor, Ike Gellis, asked if I would like to meet her.
He brought me over and introduced me. "This is Aaron Elson," he said.
Dorothy Schiff, without saying a word, promptly turned and walked away.
Without unions like the Teamsters, newspapers have long since replaced mandatory retirement with age discrimination. Do the math. Fifty-eight years old plus five weeks' vacation equals ten-four, out the door, or so it was in my case.
The Philly Inquirer is a wonderful newspaper. I hope it survives. From time to time I hear about former colleagues who are still employed by the newspaper that laid me off. Their salaries have been slashed, their workloads increased, and their morale has never been lower. They have been warned that posting on certain blogs critical of the newspaper is a fireable offense.
That's why I applaud the Teamsters. Sometimes you have to take a stand, whatever the cost.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A letter to the editor
Before I was laid off, I used to fill in on occasion for the person who edited the letters to the editor. In all my years as a copy editor, I had little contact with the readers, and I was amazed at how passionate people could be over seemingly little issues. The hot button issues like the Middle East or health care reform, forget about it.
As for myself, I'd never written a letter to the editor. Until last week. A column appeared in the paper that got under my skin, so I sent the columnist an e-mail about my objections, and he didn't respond.
I thought if I had been the copy editor handling that column, I would have called the columnist and suggested he double check the facts. And the headline, although it accurately reflected the lead of the column, really bothered me. So here's the poop:
The nickname of the columnist is the "road warrior," and he's supposed to write about commuting issues in New Jersey. The headline on this particular column was "A chance to improve N.J.'s Third World rest stops."
That already bothered me, because there is nothing "Third World" about the rest stops along New Jersey's "non-toll" roads, which is what the column was about. I'll chalk the headline up to the copy editor's attempt at hyperbole which in my opinion fell short, but there's nothing wrong with trying.
The headline and the lead were plural, however, and only one rest stop was referenced. And the columnist didn't bother to go and see the rest stop for himself, but rather wrote his column from his desk in the form of an answer to an e-mail, although he may have called and had a conversation with the person who sent the e-mail to verify that she existed and get a little more description.
The rest stop about which she complained is one that is dear to my heart. It's not a service plaza -- far from it. It has no facilities. And most of the time it's entrance to exit big rigs, and a regular little old car is lucky to find a nook between the 18-wheelers in which to squeeze for an hour or so. But many years ago when I was returning from an oral history interviewing trip I got caught in a terrible snowstorm, and I was able to ride it out in that very "Third World" rest stop.
So I dug a little deeper into the column. The original e-mailer noted that she was returning from her daughter's wedding in the Outer Banks of North Carolina to her home in Ringwood. The rest stop in question is on Route 78. Wait a second, thought I, if she's coming from the Outer Banks to Ringwood, N.J., she would come right up the Route 95 corridor through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and onto the New Jersey Turnpike. I'm not hurling accusations or anything, but this raised the possibility that she detoured over to Pennsylvania -- the "scenic route," so to speak -- to avoid paying the tolls.
I would at the very least have asked the columnist to check out this possibility. Nevertheless, I Mapquested the route from the Outer Banks to Ringwood and, lo and behold, there actually was a 4.3 mile stretch she would have driven on Route 78. This of course would have involved passing several excellent service plazas on the turnpike if she did indeed take that road more than halfway through New Jersey. But maybe it was a Sunday and she wanted to avoid the long gas lines and the long Starbucks line in the service plazas, or maybe she didn't feel the urge to pull into a rest stop until she was on Route 78.
I'm not even sure there is a rest stop along that stretch. Also, and I discovered this while researching the situation, while the sign indeed says "rest area," the rest stops on Route 78 -- and there are only three in New Jersey, two going west and one going east -- are not real rest stops but are "turnouts," or simply a place to park. If the truckers didn't have this option they would clog the exit ramps to get their mandated rest time. And if the turnout had restrooms, it would encourage use by more cars, which due to the small area would have to mingle with the trucks, creating a dangerous situation.
The reason the lack of facilities was mentioned in the email was because the writer witnessed a man urinating in the woods, and saw "evidence" that others had done the same on the pavement. I can't imagine what this "evidence" was, but that's neither here nor there. At least the fellow was pissing in the woods. This hardly, in my opinion, rates a "Third World" comparison. It isn't like he pissed on one of her tires. But I digress.
I was surprised at my passionate reaction to the misinformation in this column, but I attribute it to my fondness for that particular rest area, the failure of the columnist to know what the f*** he was writing about, and the failure of the copy desk to query him on what seemed to me some obvious difficulties with the column.
So I wrote a letter to the editor, and pointed out that if indeed this woman were avoiding paying tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike by detouring through Pennsylvania, she was cheating the state out of needed road funds and thus had no right to criticize the rest stops on its non-toll roads.
I pointed out to the editor of the letters page, who I used to fill in for, that if he printed my letter he might be fired, since I've been considered persona non grata by the management of this particular newspaper ever since I testified on behalf of a former colleague who was suing them for age discrimination. He still might print the letter which, if I know the paper's loyal letter to the editor writers, should stir up a wasp's nest of responses.
As for myself, I'd never written a letter to the editor. Until last week. A column appeared in the paper that got under my skin, so I sent the columnist an e-mail about my objections, and he didn't respond.
I thought if I had been the copy editor handling that column, I would have called the columnist and suggested he double check the facts. And the headline, although it accurately reflected the lead of the column, really bothered me. So here's the poop:
The nickname of the columnist is the "road warrior," and he's supposed to write about commuting issues in New Jersey. The headline on this particular column was "A chance to improve N.J.'s Third World rest stops."
That already bothered me, because there is nothing "Third World" about the rest stops along New Jersey's "non-toll" roads, which is what the column was about. I'll chalk the headline up to the copy editor's attempt at hyperbole which in my opinion fell short, but there's nothing wrong with trying.
The headline and the lead were plural, however, and only one rest stop was referenced. And the columnist didn't bother to go and see the rest stop for himself, but rather wrote his column from his desk in the form of an answer to an e-mail, although he may have called and had a conversation with the person who sent the e-mail to verify that she existed and get a little more description.
The rest stop about which she complained is one that is dear to my heart. It's not a service plaza -- far from it. It has no facilities. And most of the time it's entrance to exit big rigs, and a regular little old car is lucky to find a nook between the 18-wheelers in which to squeeze for an hour or so. But many years ago when I was returning from an oral history interviewing trip I got caught in a terrible snowstorm, and I was able to ride it out in that very "Third World" rest stop.
So I dug a little deeper into the column. The original e-mailer noted that she was returning from her daughter's wedding in the Outer Banks of North Carolina to her home in Ringwood. The rest stop in question is on Route 78. Wait a second, thought I, if she's coming from the Outer Banks to Ringwood, N.J., she would come right up the Route 95 corridor through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and onto the New Jersey Turnpike. I'm not hurling accusations or anything, but this raised the possibility that she detoured over to Pennsylvania -- the "scenic route," so to speak -- to avoid paying the tolls.
I would at the very least have asked the columnist to check out this possibility. Nevertheless, I Mapquested the route from the Outer Banks to Ringwood and, lo and behold, there actually was a 4.3 mile stretch she would have driven on Route 78. This of course would have involved passing several excellent service plazas on the turnpike if she did indeed take that road more than halfway through New Jersey. But maybe it was a Sunday and she wanted to avoid the long gas lines and the long Starbucks line in the service plazas, or maybe she didn't feel the urge to pull into a rest stop until she was on Route 78.
I'm not even sure there is a rest stop along that stretch. Also, and I discovered this while researching the situation, while the sign indeed says "rest area," the rest stops on Route 78 -- and there are only three in New Jersey, two going west and one going east -- are not real rest stops but are "turnouts," or simply a place to park. If the truckers didn't have this option they would clog the exit ramps to get their mandated rest time. And if the turnout had restrooms, it would encourage use by more cars, which due to the small area would have to mingle with the trucks, creating a dangerous situation.
The reason the lack of facilities was mentioned in the email was because the writer witnessed a man urinating in the woods, and saw "evidence" that others had done the same on the pavement. I can't imagine what this "evidence" was, but that's neither here nor there. At least the fellow was pissing in the woods. This hardly, in my opinion, rates a "Third World" comparison. It isn't like he pissed on one of her tires. But I digress.
I was surprised at my passionate reaction to the misinformation in this column, but I attribute it to my fondness for that particular rest area, the failure of the columnist to know what the f*** he was writing about, and the failure of the copy desk to query him on what seemed to me some obvious difficulties with the column.
So I wrote a letter to the editor, and pointed out that if indeed this woman were avoiding paying tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike by detouring through Pennsylvania, she was cheating the state out of needed road funds and thus had no right to criticize the rest stops on its non-toll roads.
I pointed out to the editor of the letters page, who I used to fill in for, that if he printed my letter he might be fired, since I've been considered persona non grata by the management of this particular newspaper ever since I testified on behalf of a former colleague who was suing them for age discrimination. He still might print the letter which, if I know the paper's loyal letter to the editor writers, should stir up a wasp's nest of responses.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Another nail in the coffin of my career
Two online headlines grabbed my attention this morning -- well, they didn't exactly grab it, I just threw that in as an action verb to grab your attention, they really just intrigued me. Most of the headlines I read these days are online since newspapers are too expensive for a 99er like me who doesn't know where his next month's minimum credit card payments are coming from. Ahh, those heady days when I was a card-carrying member of the middle class. But I digress.
The first was one of those heads that gave me pause ... that is, there was just something about it that didn't work, at least for me. "Chinese 'iPod' aims to skin Apple." The story was about some 22 year old whiz kid in China who designed a contraption that fits over an iPod Touch like an outer skin, and converts it into an iPhone, making for a much more cost effective iPhone than the iPhone itself. So yes, this was a skin for an iPod, but when you "skin" something, you're removing the skin, not adding it. Here we go again with the "poetic license" defense.
But that's neither here nor there. I'll give the headline writer credit for trying, for putting it out there to see if it works, whether it works or not. Sometimes you have to do that.
It was another head that troubled me, not because it was a poor headline, but because it was a good headline. A little background. The very first story I wrote as a cub reporter for The Campus, one of two school newspapers at the City College of New York, back in 1967 was about a series of old movies that were to be shown in the South Campus cafeteria. When I opened the paper and looked at the story, the headline said "Welcome now to Rick's Cafe." I was like "Huh?" Let me rephrase that. I was 17 years old and had never seen "Casablanca," a still from which accompanied the article.
The lesson I learned way back then was that a good copy editor has to keep abreast of culture. I can still remember the thrill I had at the New York Daily News the first time I was able to sneak the word "Yo!" into a headline, following the success of "Rocky." Don't ask me what the rest of the headline said, I don't remember. That was a long time ago, and that's the problem.
The headline that intrigued me today said "Police dare Switchfoot singer to move." My initial reaction was that this was some kind of "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" kind of story. It was actually about a singer for the band Switchfoot -- which I'd never heard of -- who gave an impromptu concert in Tampa after opening for the Goo Goo Dolls. At least I'd heard of them.
These days so many jobs in the media business have been merged that I'm guessing the writer wrote his own headline, just as copy editors now have to lay out the stories they edit, because it appeared that the last two paragraphs of the story were written to explain the headline.
Switchfoot, the writer noted, is a San Diego-based Christian rock group whose mainstream hit "Dare you to move" was featured on the U.K. version of the "Spiderman 2" soundtrack.
Well, I thought, so much for me keeping abreast of modern pop culture. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear the Christian rock ringtone on my iPod Touch phone.
THIS JUST IN: On the other hand, there are some advantages to being a dinosaur, in addition to being able to chow down on nerdy scientists. A teaser headline on aol.com that I saw only moments ago said "Tea Company Is Closing 25 Stores." Tea Company? Obviously, the tech-savvy youngster who wrote that could probably whistle the U.K. soundtrack for Spiderman 2 backward, but is too wet behind the ears to know that the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is commonly referred to as A&P, not Tea Company. I'm reminded of the fool who created the New Jersey Turnpike sign directing travelers to the James Cooper rest area. That person probably thought Fenimore, who needs a middle name like that, when we can save a few bucks on the signage, but at least he wasn't a copy editor.
The first was one of those heads that gave me pause ... that is, there was just something about it that didn't work, at least for me. "Chinese 'iPod' aims to skin Apple." The story was about some 22 year old whiz kid in China who designed a contraption that fits over an iPod Touch like an outer skin, and converts it into an iPhone, making for a much more cost effective iPhone than the iPhone itself. So yes, this was a skin for an iPod, but when you "skin" something, you're removing the skin, not adding it. Here we go again with the "poetic license" defense.
But that's neither here nor there. I'll give the headline writer credit for trying, for putting it out there to see if it works, whether it works or not. Sometimes you have to do that.
It was another head that troubled me, not because it was a poor headline, but because it was a good headline. A little background. The very first story I wrote as a cub reporter for The Campus, one of two school newspapers at the City College of New York, back in 1967 was about a series of old movies that were to be shown in the South Campus cafeteria. When I opened the paper and looked at the story, the headline said "Welcome now to Rick's Cafe." I was like "Huh?" Let me rephrase that. I was 17 years old and had never seen "Casablanca," a still from which accompanied the article.
The lesson I learned way back then was that a good copy editor has to keep abreast of culture. I can still remember the thrill I had at the New York Daily News the first time I was able to sneak the word "Yo!" into a headline, following the success of "Rocky." Don't ask me what the rest of the headline said, I don't remember. That was a long time ago, and that's the problem.
The headline that intrigued me today said "Police dare Switchfoot singer to move." My initial reaction was that this was some kind of "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" kind of story. It was actually about a singer for the band Switchfoot -- which I'd never heard of -- who gave an impromptu concert in Tampa after opening for the Goo Goo Dolls. At least I'd heard of them.
These days so many jobs in the media business have been merged that I'm guessing the writer wrote his own headline, just as copy editors now have to lay out the stories they edit, because it appeared that the last two paragraphs of the story were written to explain the headline.
Switchfoot, the writer noted, is a San Diego-based Christian rock group whose mainstream hit "Dare you to move" was featured on the U.K. version of the "Spiderman 2" soundtrack.
Well, I thought, so much for me keeping abreast of modern pop culture. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear the Christian rock ringtone on my iPod Touch phone.
THIS JUST IN: On the other hand, there are some advantages to being a dinosaur, in addition to being able to chow down on nerdy scientists. A teaser headline on aol.com that I saw only moments ago said "Tea Company Is Closing 25 Stores." Tea Company? Obviously, the tech-savvy youngster who wrote that could probably whistle the U.K. soundtrack for Spiderman 2 backward, but is too wet behind the ears to know that the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is commonly referred to as A&P, not Tea Company. I'm reminded of the fool who created the New Jersey Turnpike sign directing travelers to the James Cooper rest area. That person probably thought Fenimore, who needs a middle name like that, when we can save a few bucks on the signage, but at least he wasn't a copy editor.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Alliteration Shmalliteration
Today I read a headline online that said "Ships steam to safety as storm guns for Gulf" (this was later changed to "...as storm enters Gulf"). I wonder if the copy editor even gave a thought to the percentage of the thousand or so boats and various other vessels out there battling the giant oil spill that are powered by steam. No doubt zero. Which no doubt would bring the copy editor's save-get response: poetic license.
The other day I saw a job listing -- although I've been unemployed too long for even the Podunk Press to take a chance on a dinosaur such as moi, I still peruse the journalismjobs bulletin board if for no other reason than to see which papers I applied to a year ago and never heard from have relisted the copy editor/page designer job -- and was struck by a job description. The paper is looking to hire a copy editor who knows the difference between effect and affect. You'd think I'd think "Good luck!" but that's not what I thought. I thought, "You really should be looking for a copy editor who knows the difference between mull and consider. Or between assail and criticize. I used to work with a copy editor who put "assail" in every headline he could, so that he could pretend he was working for the New York Times.
I've been guilty of writing headlines that say things like "So and so mulls retirement" or "North Korea weighs dropping nuclear bomb on U.S. carrier." And I won't even blame it on the fact that copy editors, like baseball players, can get in a slump. I wrote headlines like that because that's the way you did things, and many, I dare say most, still do. But one day -- actually, the headlines in general were so bad at my former employer that they brought in a headline consultant to give a couple of seminars, and that's what opened my eyes to what I already instinctively knew -- I realized that it's more important for every word in a headline to be accurate, rather than just to be an "action verb" for the sake of having an action verb: mulls, weighs, stirs, you name it. Notice how all of those are relatively short words, that's why they're so popular. But you stir a pot, you don't stir emotions. "Oh my god, you've stirred my emotion!"
Funny thing is, I wasn't the only person who attended that seminar. A couple of other copy editors got the point, but the majority were back making the same mistakes -- well, they're not really mistakes in the sense of typographical errors, they're just dull conventions, but to me they're mistakes -- within days.
But I ramble. So I think I'll say "thanks for reading," and get in my car and steam on over to the diner and get some breakfast.
The other day I saw a job listing -- although I've been unemployed too long for even the Podunk Press to take a chance on a dinosaur such as moi, I still peruse the journalismjobs bulletin board if for no other reason than to see which papers I applied to a year ago and never heard from have relisted the copy editor/page designer job -- and was struck by a job description. The paper is looking to hire a copy editor who knows the difference between effect and affect. You'd think I'd think "Good luck!" but that's not what I thought. I thought, "You really should be looking for a copy editor who knows the difference between mull and consider. Or between assail and criticize. I used to work with a copy editor who put "assail" in every headline he could, so that he could pretend he was working for the New York Times.
I've been guilty of writing headlines that say things like "So and so mulls retirement" or "North Korea weighs dropping nuclear bomb on U.S. carrier." And I won't even blame it on the fact that copy editors, like baseball players, can get in a slump. I wrote headlines like that because that's the way you did things, and many, I dare say most, still do. But one day -- actually, the headlines in general were so bad at my former employer that they brought in a headline consultant to give a couple of seminars, and that's what opened my eyes to what I already instinctively knew -- I realized that it's more important for every word in a headline to be accurate, rather than just to be an "action verb" for the sake of having an action verb: mulls, weighs, stirs, you name it. Notice how all of those are relatively short words, that's why they're so popular. But you stir a pot, you don't stir emotions. "Oh my god, you've stirred my emotion!"
Funny thing is, I wasn't the only person who attended that seminar. A couple of other copy editors got the point, but the majority were back making the same mistakes -- well, they're not really mistakes in the sense of typographical errors, they're just dull conventions, but to me they're mistakes -- within days.
But I ramble. So I think I'll say "thanks for reading," and get in my car and steam on over to the diner and get some breakfast.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Toity
My entry into the newspaper business came with a question on a copy editing test at my college paper, The Campus, some 43 years ago.
The question: What is bfulc?
My answer: Those were the glasses Ben Franklin invented.
My exit from the newspaper business came with an email from the editor of a midsize newspaper: "Thank you very much for your interest in our page design/copy editing position. We had a flood of 80 applicants including many who were highly qualified and it was a very difficult choice, but we have filled the position."
That's it for me. Ten four, out the door. I used to tell kids if they could write a good headline, they could always get a job in this business. That advice is now as useless as this blog, although some copy editors might still learn something from my occasional entries.
My former newspaper, the Bergen Record, would like to consider me retired, but I'm not. I'm just beginning my second career, reinventing myself as it were, as an oral historian. It's an uphill climb, but I need the exercise.
When I started in the newspaper business, as a cub reporter at my college paper, there was a tradition when seniors graduated, or even if they didn't graduate but finally moved on to a real newspaper after six or seven years dodging classes in the school paper office, a little hole in the wall, capacity about eight with a couple of desks and a few typewriters and paper all over the place, look at this, a run-on sentence, tsk, tsk, I must be getting copyheimer's disease, but anyway, they got to write what was known as a "Thirty" column. I wrote one in my fifth year when I finally negotiated my way into a degree, trading all my "incompletes" for F's and emerging with a 2.1 grade point average, a smidgin above the requirement to graduate. I forget what I said in my Thirty column.
By the time I graduated I was already working full-time, at the New York Post, where I started as a copyboy in the summer of my freshman year.
In real businesses -- newspapers, after all, were never real businesses, still aren't, although they've come to think they are -- people get a gold watch after 25 years. In newspapers, whatever the number of years, they got something much more personal. The cartoonist would do a big drawing and everybody would sign it. When I was at the Daily News there was one fellow who up and went to Hollywood because an old friend of his was now a famous screenwriter and was going to help him get started. The staff held a party for him and the artist, I think it was my alltime favorite newspaper artist, Jerry Schlamp, did a big caricature of him lying in a king-size bed with a horse's head sticking out from under the sheets, two empty bottles of booze with three x's rising from the top of each, and a nurse wearing nothing but panties with a red cross on them and a bra and saying "Now about that screen test ..." I got to sign that along with everybody else, although I suppose if he were to look at that today, he wouldn't know who the heck I was.
That's what I aspired to in the newspaper business, but it never came to pass. I left the Post in the exodus that followed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the paper, and went to the New York Daily News. Ten years later I left the Daily News in a mass downsizing and wound up at the Bergen Record. I left the Record twenty years later in a "restructuring," please step into my office, you're not being offered a job, goodbye, a few days later some of my copy desk colleagues took me and another laid off copy editor to a diner and that was it, no cartoon. They did get me some kind of Hallmark card and signed it, but that's not the same.
"Thirty," in the Pleistocene Era of Journalism, is what reporters would put at the end of their story so that the people working the linotype machines would know that it was finished.
Oh, and bfulc stood for bold face, upper lower case.
The question: What is bfulc?
My answer: Those were the glasses Ben Franklin invented.
My exit from the newspaper business came with an email from the editor of a midsize newspaper: "Thank you very much for your interest in our page design/copy editing position. We had a flood of 80 applicants including many who were highly qualified and it was a very difficult choice, but we have filled the position."
That's it for me. Ten four, out the door. I used to tell kids if they could write a good headline, they could always get a job in this business. That advice is now as useless as this blog, although some copy editors might still learn something from my occasional entries.
My former newspaper, the Bergen Record, would like to consider me retired, but I'm not. I'm just beginning my second career, reinventing myself as it were, as an oral historian. It's an uphill climb, but I need the exercise.
When I started in the newspaper business, as a cub reporter at my college paper, there was a tradition when seniors graduated, or even if they didn't graduate but finally moved on to a real newspaper after six or seven years dodging classes in the school paper office, a little hole in the wall, capacity about eight with a couple of desks and a few typewriters and paper all over the place, look at this, a run-on sentence, tsk, tsk, I must be getting copyheimer's disease, but anyway, they got to write what was known as a "Thirty" column. I wrote one in my fifth year when I finally negotiated my way into a degree, trading all my "incompletes" for F's and emerging with a 2.1 grade point average, a smidgin above the requirement to graduate. I forget what I said in my Thirty column.
By the time I graduated I was already working full-time, at the New York Post, where I started as a copyboy in the summer of my freshman year.
In real businesses -- newspapers, after all, were never real businesses, still aren't, although they've come to think they are -- people get a gold watch after 25 years. In newspapers, whatever the number of years, they got something much more personal. The cartoonist would do a big drawing and everybody would sign it. When I was at the Daily News there was one fellow who up and went to Hollywood because an old friend of his was now a famous screenwriter and was going to help him get started. The staff held a party for him and the artist, I think it was my alltime favorite newspaper artist, Jerry Schlamp, did a big caricature of him lying in a king-size bed with a horse's head sticking out from under the sheets, two empty bottles of booze with three x's rising from the top of each, and a nurse wearing nothing but panties with a red cross on them and a bra and saying "Now about that screen test ..." I got to sign that along with everybody else, although I suppose if he were to look at that today, he wouldn't know who the heck I was.
That's what I aspired to in the newspaper business, but it never came to pass. I left the Post in the exodus that followed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the paper, and went to the New York Daily News. Ten years later I left the Daily News in a mass downsizing and wound up at the Bergen Record. I left the Record twenty years later in a "restructuring," please step into my office, you're not being offered a job, goodbye, a few days later some of my copy desk colleagues took me and another laid off copy editor to a diner and that was it, no cartoon. They did get me some kind of Hallmark card and signed it, but that's not the same.
"Thirty," in the Pleistocene Era of Journalism, is what reporters would put at the end of their story so that the people working the linotype machines would know that it was finished.
Oh, and bfulc stood for bold face, upper lower case.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Go Read Something Else (Wait! I don't Mean That)
A headline is supposed to entice a reader to delve into a story, ideally to capture the essence of that story in a few words. A caption is supposed to supplement a story; combined with a picture it offers, in new media lingo, a supplementary entry point into the story. A caption also is supposed to avoid stating the obvious. If the photo shows a man drinking a glass of water, for instance, the copy editor would not write "Man drinks glass of water," but rather something informative like "Unaware that New Jersey's drinking water contains particulates of thousands of antibiotics and prescription drugs that have been flushed down the toilet, man tempts fate with glass of water." I'm kidding, sort of. But I would need several hands and a couple of extra feet to count on my fingers and toes the number of memos I've seen sent to the copy desk reminding editors not to state the obvious in captions.
So imagine when a headline states the obvious. I passed one of those honor boxes with a stack of Bergen Records in it today and the headline marching across the front page read: "Anger at Fare Hikes." Hel-lo. The story could have been thirty column inches, forty column inches, sixty column inches with a fancy graphic, how many ways can you say commuters who ride NJ Transit trains and buses -- the likely fare increases of 30 percent led the paper and was all over the radio the day before -- don't want to see their fares go up. Of course they're angry.
Personally, I'd have fired not the schmo who wrote the headline but the slot person who pushed the typeset button who should know better. Unless, of course, the headline was dictated by the managing editor or editor, both of whom a former colleague likes to refer to as dysfunctional. It's one thing for morale to be so low, as the rumor mill has it to be at the Record, that copy editors don't give a s--t what they write and slot people don't give a damn what they typeset, but it's another thing to not take the least bit of pride in your work.
Any of a dozen heads would at least have given a reader cause to glance at the first paragraph, or to consider plunking 50 cents (or is it more now?) into the vending machine: "Commuters up in arms," "Riders blast NJ Transit." As Warner Wolf would say, "Come onnn!"
So imagine when a headline states the obvious. I passed one of those honor boxes with a stack of Bergen Records in it today and the headline marching across the front page read: "Anger at Fare Hikes." Hel-lo. The story could have been thirty column inches, forty column inches, sixty column inches with a fancy graphic, how many ways can you say commuters who ride NJ Transit trains and buses -- the likely fare increases of 30 percent led the paper and was all over the radio the day before -- don't want to see their fares go up. Of course they're angry.
Personally, I'd have fired not the schmo who wrote the headline but the slot person who pushed the typeset button who should know better. Unless, of course, the headline was dictated by the managing editor or editor, both of whom a former colleague likes to refer to as dysfunctional. It's one thing for morale to be so low, as the rumor mill has it to be at the Record, that copy editors don't give a s--t what they write and slot people don't give a damn what they typeset, but it's another thing to not take the least bit of pride in your work.
Any of a dozen heads would at least have given a reader cause to glance at the first paragraph, or to consider plunking 50 cents (or is it more now?) into the vending machine: "Commuters up in arms," "Riders blast NJ Transit." As Warner Wolf would say, "Come onnn!"
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