Think Like an
Editor has brought me to the startling realization that despite having previous experience as an editor, I don't actually know
what editors do. There are so many different kinds of editors and each one has a different job and different responsibilities. I had no idea there were that many people in charge of that many types of editing. It's all a little overwhelming, to be perfectly honest.
I was a big fish in a small pond at my high school of 100 students, School One. Our paper, News One, was rapidly approaching death when I joined the class. (At my school the newspaper wasn't a club; it was a class.) Our teacher, Lucy, made a point of letting the content editor and layout editor (who also wrote articles) take charge of the class. Even though our teacher had plenty of experience as a reporter and was more than qualified to be teaching that class, most student took it in hopes of an easy A. Both editors didn't enjoy being part of News One and subsequently didn't put any effort into the paper.
I was a big fish in a small pond at my high school of 100 students, School One. Our paper, News One, was rapidly approaching death when I joined the class. (At my school the newspaper wasn't a club; it was a class.) Our teacher, Lucy, made a point of letting the content editor and layout editor (who also wrote articles) take charge of the class. Even though our teacher had plenty of experience as a reporter and was more than qualified to be teaching that class, most student took it in hopes of an easy A. Both editors didn't enjoy being part of News One and subsequently didn't put any effort into the paper.
One day the
content editor failed to do his job and I ended up staying after school to help
Lucy clean up the mess. It took us hours, but we ended up publishing a paper we
were proud of the next day. I was elected News One's content editor in our next
class, and I also ended up becoming the layout editor before much longer.
Newspaper class was always the highlight of my day. Once the class wasn't
drowning in negative energy and hostility we were able to work as a team and
make News One a respectable school paper again. Once I graduated from School
One I did some writing for The Anchor and Johnston Patch, but the only time I
got to flex my editing muscles was when my friends asked me to edit their
papers.
Now that I'm
finally learning the proper way to edit in a legitimate editing class, I've
come to realize that editors do much more than I thought they did. I
still want to be a reporter, but as the semester progresses my interest in
editing is growing. I’m starting to think that I might want to be an editor
some day.
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