Diego Sorbara was a DJNF/Temple editing intern at The Hartford Courant in 2005. After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2006, he went on to intern on the copy desk at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For one-and-a-half years, he worked as a page designer/copy editor in just about every section of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. In April
2008, he joined the foreign copy desk at The New York Times.

I’ve really only had one firm career goal: to work in journalism.
It wouldn’t matter much to me if I worked at a small weekly in
middle-of-nowhere, Illinois, or a massive national paper in a rather large
city. But truth be told, when I started college I had no clue how a real
newspaper worked. College papers can give you a pretty good approximation,
sure, but how do you simulate a turbulent industry?

When I arrived at The Hartford Courant, I was introduced to the world of
Tribune Company cost-cutting measures. Already, the range of coverage had
been greatly reduced. They were no longer shipping the paper up to Maine and
down to Martha’s Vineyard during the vacation season. There was more and
more wire copy where there should have been staff-written articles. But to
counteract all of that, there was undying optimism. In light of all the cuts
that would come down the road, people there still believed in the value of
their work.

Last month in the latest round of layoffs, my copy desk mentor (one of the
assistant slots) and several other copy editors were let go.

Dozens of people left the Rocky Mountain News through buyouts or just of
their own volition during the one-and-a-half years I worked there. The paper
shrank in physical size. Rumors always seemed to be flying around that
something awful was coming down the pike. And then there came the concept of
doing more with less.

This lengthy exposition brings me to the only two career
observations/suggestions I can make. One: hold tight to optimism at all
costs. Two: defy the catchphrases.

People who know me well would probably laugh at me being a proponent of
optimism. But during tough times, what else do you have? Should you despair
when people you really care about are being laid off left and right? It’s
far too easy to get trapped in the woe cycle journalists themselves seem to
spin. If you still have your job, be thankful for that and do the best job
you can. It is beneath our dignity to do anything but the best.

Don’t let yourself be poisoned with negativity. There is nothing wrong with
venting, but don’t let that ire take over.

The second observation/suggestion I can throw out into the online ether is
to not buy into catchphrases, specifically the notion of “doing more with
less.” Any person with a firm grasp of logic will realize that you can only
do less with less, unless you can accept doing more work at lower quality.

We have to guard against becoming jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none.
It’s not as if editing is a simple endeavor that leaves plenty of spare time
to write up a few short stories for the paper’s Web site, edit some video,
post Web updates, assist reporters by conducting a few phone interviews,
etc. There’s something else that might allow time for all of that, and it’s
called proofreading. But I doubt most of us went to college and fought for
internships (and spent two weeks in Philadelphia memorizing every river in
Africa and half of the Visual Dictionary) just to become glorified
proofreaders.

As part of a younger generation of journalists, we were hired not only for
our abilities but for our perspective. Maybe I’m falling into the camp of
the more curmudgeonly, but I think we shouldn’t be afraid to voice our
opinions. This is, of course, easy to say and extremely difficult to do. If
you see something that can be done better, say so. If you have an idea, say
so. If you see something that’s wrong, say so. (Let me insert here, though,
the importance of being politic.) The worst that can happen is that you’ll
be ignored.

Remember that in the end there’s a chance to do good journalism everywhere.
I feel extremely privileged to work at The New York Times, where we still
have the luxury of giving most stories a very intense and thorough edit. But
you don’t need to work at the Times to feel the same way. With every story
that we fix, we as copy editors play a crucial role in the fourth estate. We
ensure fairness and balance. We clean up grammatical nightmares to save the
reader a nasty headache in the morning. And the next day there’s no pause
for praise or self-congratulation, we just go back to it again with a clean
slate—and plenty of coffee.

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