Limits of toleration and a discussion of copy editors

As we say en Français: Plus ça change... 

Photos by Katy Buchanan

From page A-2 of Aug. 28, 1981 Boston Herald American, saved from my honeymoon. (Not saved for the news, but for the Red Sox score, since we went to Fenway. These photos show the reverse of the HA's front page mast with the Sox-A's score, which, to forestall any questions, I do not remember and I'm not turning over the page to find out. (So there 😀)  I just saved because I was young, in love and keeping every scrap of paper from our week in Boston and Cape Cod.

Looking at these also made me feel: a) Nostalgic for UPI (one of my former employers) and for the many U.S. daily, weekly and community newspapers that have gone to their graves since then, and 2) Grateful for the training I received from them as a young journalist.

As an aside, I believe journalism needs more well-read, intellectually adventurous copy editors. I know the trend is to centralized desks where the editors are far from the reporters and the stories they are filing, but that shouldn't preclude good editing (excepting, perhaps, in stories involving local geography). A copy editor's best friend, as far as I'm concerned, is the phone. Confused? Unsure? Call the reporter. I know reporters who have already gone a few rounds with their direct editors can get cranky when copy editors call, and I don't blame them, but the whole point is to be correct and factual. One of my worst memories from my copy editor days was the time an assistant city editor suggested I didn't have enough to do when I questioned an education writer's math in a story at the Pittsburgh Press. The reporter's math was wrong. And math is not my best subject. (And do not get me started on dangling modifiers.)

Getting back to the first sentence in the previous paragraph, please see this delightful piece from the New Yorker's 'Comma Queen.' Greek To Me