When I was a young journalism student, my copy-editing
instructor exhorted us to restrain our urges and not change copy just because
it was not the way we would have written it.
“Your job is to correct minor grammar,
spelling and style errors. If you find
yourself doing wholesale re-writes or if you detect major factual errors, kick
it back to the writer. As the copy
editor, it is not your job to write or re-write articles.”
He repeated this mantra several times
during the ten-week editing class.
I
have always been a very detail-oriented, obsessive person. I was quite skilled in detecting spelling,
grammar and style errors. Unfortunately,
I was also judgmental, controlling and narrow-minded. I could not resist
re-writing prose that didn’t meet my standards for the way things ought to be,
which is probably why I only achieved a “C” for the class.
After college and upon completing the
military’s ten-week public affairs course, the Army Reserve promoted me to
staff sergeant and I became editor of an Army Reserve division’s quarterly
magazine. Our coverage area included about
one hundred military units scattered across Ohio and Kentucky. I worked from the headquarters in Columbus. We had stringers in various units who wrote and
took photos for us.
“Why did you change what I wrote,” one of
my young stringers demanded when he discovered I had re-written his article.
“Because it seemed disrespectful.”
“In what way?”
“There is a certain cynicism about it.”
“This is a story about guys like me who
joined the Reserve to avoid the draft.
We make up over two-thirds of the Army Reserve which is most of the
readership for this crummy magazine. We are tired of reading the commanding
general’s latest phony philosophy about the importance of our mission.”
I out-ranked him, so my re-write to tone
down the cynicism prevailed. A month
later that young stringer transferred to a supply unit where he could be among
peers who would not question his attitude.
I felt sad because the kid really was a pretty good writer.
Within
two years we lost three other stringers, and Terri who had dropped out of
college after two years and worked as receptionist, replaced me as the
editor. Terri had difficulty with complex
sentences. In other words, she wrote like a sixth grader. She had gotten a promotion and a job in our
unit because she was sleeping with the commander.
Terri’s editorial judgments of my writing
reflected her simplistic literary skills.
A year later loudmouth Bill replaced her.
He got the job because of his National Guard acquaintanceship with our new
commander and because he took good pictures.
At the time our little magazine suffered from a dearth of photos. Though he was good with a camera, Bill had
difficulty with the English language – speaking and writing it. Fortunately he left the writing to Terri and
me while he busied himself taking pictures, working in the dark room and telling
the commander and the division public affairs officer what they wanted to hear. Bill hardly ever delivered anything that he
promised. He lasted about six months as
the editor before they put Terri back in charge and left me as her assistant.
I
transferred to become an administrative assistant in the Inspector General’s
office. The job came with a promotion to
sergeant first class. At about the same
time I took a full-time civilian public affairs position for Army Recruiting
and ended up editing another military magazine while working for an emotionally
troubled supervisor who hated the Army and only pretended to have a bachelor’s
degree in journalism. Harry took an
immediate dislike to me, because I used my superior understanding of journalism
and respect for Army protocols to point out his many errors.
“That headline won’t fit”, I told him.
“It will fit.”
“How do you know? Did you count it?”
“It’ll fit because I say so. Leave it.”
Of course I had to change it when the blue
line came back from the printer with half the headline cut off. (This was in
1989 before computers and desk-top publishing had come of age.)
Harry changed my stories to embellish the
truth while adding a couple sensational headlines intended to embarrass the
chain-of-command. He made several
attempts to destroy me, resulting in my having to hire a lawyer to preserve my
job and my career. I got transferred to another position, and Harry got fired. I managed to avoid writing and editing
positions for the rest of my military and Federal Civil Service career.
Upon
retirement, I took an interest doing simple newsletters for a couple volunteer
groups. My efforts won high praise
because these people were not used to having current, relevant information
cobbled together and presented in an interesting way.
The first position lasted for four months. One day the president of the organization
wrote her own newsletter and insisted that I send it out to the membership exactly
as she had prepared it. I replied with a
thoughtful, carefully written email tendering my resignation, effective
immediately. I have retained my
membership with this group, but they have not had a regular newsletter since I
stopped doing it.
I stuck with the second group as newsletter
editor for about four years. Most of the
members elected to receive the newsletter as an email attachment. The person who transmitted it wrote her own
folksy introductions. Her narratives
were long, rambling run-on sentences filled with bad grammar, little
punctuation and poor spelling, including the misspelling of people’s
names.
It felt as though she was undermining my
efforts to publish a professional newsletter.
What was the point of investing my time and energy to check facts,
verify dates, look up correct spellings, write and re-write, proof-read and
re-edit to insure proper grammar and punctuation, if she was going to do this
simplistic, poorly written paraphrasing of my copy.
When I questioned this practice, this nice
woman pouted.
“I was just trying to be helpful and
supportive,” she whined. “Several people have told me they like what I
write. You are the only one who has ever
complained.”
“Well then why don’t you just take over the
newsletter?” I snarled.
I
ceased editing that newsletter last year and will probably terminate my
affiliation with the group.
As I reflect on these episodes from my life,
I wonder if all these frustrations and bad experiences were a result of karma
and life’s attempts to teach me a lesson about respecting other people’s writing.
I keep remembering my journalism
professor’s admonition, “Don’t change something just because it isn’t the way
you would have written it.”
