Archive for May, 2009

American

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

If you think your local paper is a bit rough, you should see what American newspapers get away with. All the journos write as if they are aiming to win a Pulitzer Prize – and sod the readers.
It drives you crazy, reading a simple story about a car crash or someone rescuing a cat from drowning. Everything has a delayed-drop intro. It makes you scream: “But what’s the bloody story?”
I’ve done a fair bit of training there. When you talk to them about putting the main point of the story in the first sentence, you feel a bit like Moses coming down from the mountain. “Keith, that is a great idea!”
I think the problem is probably because most of their teaching comes from universities. So why should that be a problem?
Last year, I was at a conference and met someone from a US university that had better remain unnamed. He boasted that they had more than 100 people in their journalism faculty. “How many have been journalists?” I asked casually.
He thought, and answered: “Two.”
I was in New Jersey to attend a Dion concert. (DiMucci, not Celine. Come on!) He’s getting on, and seems unlikely to come to the UK again, so I headed for the Count Basie Theatre on Red Bank.
It wasn’t all perfect: the lights looked they were done by the usherette with a torch; the sax player looked like Zoot from The Muppet Show and Dion only played for 90 minutes. But I guess 90 minutes of rock n’ roll takes it out of you when you’re nearly 70. His voice is still amazing, however, considering that he was touring as a teenager with Buddy Holly.
I thought the theatre press office could get some mileage out of it (Man travels 3500 miles for Dion gig) and emailed the local paper too. I’d rather hoped to voice my trenchant views on the state of US journalism as well – but neither bothered to get in touch.
The paper’s front-page was about the problems of graduates getting jobs and some junior baseball team getting knocked out of a cup competition in the quarter-finals. Nice to see such a sharp news sense at work. God bless America.

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Proof-reading

Friday, May 8th, 2009

It was an editor’s worst nightmare. You put the magazine to bed, send it off to the printer and feel pretty good about yourself. Another deadline hit, another decent issue. Time for a tincture.
Then you casually glance at one of the pages – and notice a typo on the front page.
Fortunately, pre-press had only just started on it, so I could Fetch through a new page.
But it’s one of those constant worries when you proof-read something you’ve written.
People always ask on training courses: “How do I pick up all the mistakes when I’m subbing or proofing my own work?”
The simple answer is: “You don’t.”
No matter how careful you are, something will slip under the radar. Homonyms, missed words, punctuation errors or typos: one of them will find a way round your defences.
The answer, of course, is to get someone else to proof your work. Easier said than done when you’re a one-man band. Even my wife, who is wonderfully loyal, suddenly finds she has an urgent need to wash her hair when it’s Classic Angling proof-reading time.
Can’t really blame her. Reading articles about the different engravings on 1920s Allcock Aerials or the minute changes in National Federation of Anglers’ badges requires a knowledge and devotion to accuracy and checking that few have (or want).
So spare a thought for those like me who beaver away writing, subbing, designing and proof-reading every word, every page. We’re gonna make mistakes. We just hope that we catch them before the presses start rolling.
I remember, some years ago, the phone ringing at 2am. The temptation was to ignore it. Drunk friend wanting a lift home? A pal arrested and hoping you can help?
When your magazine is due to print that night, it can only be one thing.
It was the printers, who in those days stripped in the ads. “Er, Keith, we’ve got a problem. On page 15, you’ve got a 25 x 4 ad. Only it’s not. The ad is 25 by FIVE columns.”
As I said, find someone else apart from yourself to do the proof-reading.

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