I’ve been at the AP for more than seven months now, and it is easily
the best — and the hardest — job I’ve ever had. I am humbled every
day by how much about the world I have yet to learn, and fortunately
and not so humbly, none of that includes geography.

I started training as “national editor” a few weeks after I became
official. The national editor, what we refer to as the “nat ed,” is
the person who filters the incoming and assigns stories to various
rewrites. Bureaus from around the country will send us stories they
think may be “a-wire worthy” — stories that may appeal to a national
audience — and it’s up to the nat ed to decide what to use. Often, we
will scour archives to see if we’ve covered a particular person or
event before. And just as often, we’ll have to assess the story on its
news value or interest to the public. The rewrite will read over the
story, make all appropriate edits and trims (some of which are
suggested by the nat ed) and ship it back. Then it’s the nat ed’s duty
to give it a final look before filing it to the wire and essentially
the world.

I’ve been nat ed a handful of times now, and I love it for its fast
pace and responsibility. Of course, I have made a few mistakes, ones
that could ultimately hide behind their quick corrections and die a
silent death. But one was too funny not to share. It wasn’t a mistake
I added into the copy but rather one that I let slip by me — so as
editor, it was completely my fault this got published. The
entertainment desk was unstaffed for the night, and we had just gotten
a story in on “Dancing with the Stars” with their latest celebrity
boot.

One week’s celebrity was Toni Braxton. It was an easy read and a
simple story — this is what happened, this is who got kicked off the
show and why she’s famous. I’m not a huge music person, so I wasn’t
surprised or concerned when I didn’t recognize the song that Braxton
was listed as being famous for. I shipped the story out and went on to
my next duty.

Approximately, 45 seconds later, we got a frantic instant message from
the writer, who hoped we hadn’t sent the story out yet. Because there
was an important correction to be made — Toni Braxton’s famous song
was actually “Unbreak my Heart” and not “Unbreak my Head” as written
on the wire.

I let myself giggle for a few moments before swearing to myself that I
would CATCH EVERYTHING, EVERY TIME from now on. And so far, Toni
Braxton remains the low point of my career. And it will stay that way.

Samuel Rubenfeld, DJNF/Temple 2008, interviews Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) as part of his coverage of the final 2008 presidential debate, which was held on his campus at Hofstra University, this past October.

After returning to Hofstra University (for anyone that doesn’t know where it
is, it’s in Hempstead, Long Island) for my senior year, I applied for and
received a semester-long internship in Washington, DC, through the State
University of New York Washington Semester Program. It’s a program offered
to political science students in the SUNY system; Hofstra is a partner.

The internship will hopefully be at a news organization down there, where
I’ll be working four days a week and taking class on Fridays. It begins Jan.
12 and ends April 24. (I do not know where I’ll be interning, nor do I know
where I’m living, but please add this line as a TK for when I find out.)

However, despite my impending temporary employment, things overall have not been going well.

The past year, especially the last few months, have been a terrible time for
newspapers. Ad revenue, the lifeblood of a paper’s funding, fell 18 percent
for the third quarter, compared with the third quarter of last year. Gannett
is laying off 2,000 workers. Newsday (where I interned in the summer of 2007 with Temple Residency alumni Allison Morrow and Andrew Knapp) just laid off another 100. The New York Times reported that the Miami Herald is up for sale and can’t find a buyer. Tribune retained law firm Sidley Austin to help it fight off bankruptcy.

And this torrent of news was just in the past week.

The worst off among journalists, I believe, have been copy editors: With the
rapidly accelerating move towards Web-first reporting, media companies have found the stubborn veterans with the well-worn AP Style Guide as expendable. Who needs to fact-check something when a reader can comment on the story to tell the reporter what needs to be fixed? As Sam Zell, a real estate magnate who bought Tribune last year, said in an interview with Portfolio magazine that the newspaper business model is “unequivocably…a failure.”

If a story “is going in the newspaper, then it goes to the copywriter, the
section editor, the page editor, I mean, it goes to everybody,” he said.
“And you wonder why the newspapers can’t financially compete.”

Some, like Jeff Jarvis, the former columnist who now teaches at CUNY’s
Journalism school, argues that newspapers sowed their own demise by not
taking to the Web, and that editors are no longer necessary; they should be
replaced or become “community organizers” who serve as teachers that
cultivate content to make reading the news outlet as more of a teaching
experience. Instead of gatekeepers, editors would be opening the floodgates.

Yet the demand for information is higher than ever before. Web traffic grows
by leaps and bounds every quarter, and the highly entertaining 2008 election
was a boon to startups like Politico and online-only publications like
TalkingPointsMemo and The Huffington Post; CNN and FOX set ratings records, and newsstands were sold out by 7 a.m. when Barack Obama won on Nov. 4.

But the problem is, for all of that growth, those vital ad dollars don’t
come at the same rate online as they do in print. Politico, the Web-paper
hybrid that launched in January 2007, which is fashioning itself as a wire
agency for all things Washington to local papers closing their DC bureaus,
relies on its print edition to bring in 70 percent of its revenue.

Given all the bleak news, I think it is not a good time to try and pursue a
career in journalism. I fear that while journalism is in my blood, and it runs black with printer’s ink, I may no longer have a chance to exercise my craft, the only trade I think I am any good at.

Kate Schwing was a DJNF/Temple editing intern at The New York Times News Service in 2005. She was laid off from her first job as a copy editor at The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, then rehired two months later — and asked to wear a whole bunch of new hats.

Being back in my old chair has given me a slightly new perspective and new
responsibilities. I returned just in time to help my newsroom switch from an
ancient version of Hermes to the newest version of DTI, a flashy,
Adobe-based interface. The change had some of the — how to say this
politely? — technologically less-literate on the desk quaking. Much
grumbling was done under breaths as we sat through classes for hours in
which DTI representatives taught us how to spell-check stories.

Inside page design was quickly added to our duties. I found myself needing
to understand art placement, graphics, boxes, headline weights and rules –
things I hadn’t had to think about since college. I welcomed the new
challenge, trying to help my co-workers along, happy mostly to still have a
job. I came to realize what was actually making me happy was expanding my
skills as a journalist in whatever ways I can, not just collecting a
paycheck for doing so. (The paycheck helps, don’t get me wrong.)

A 20-year-plus veteran of the desk announced her retirement in September,
leaving our main wire editor position open, a job I’d been interested to try
since I got to The Gazette. I started taking over that job on weekends,
pulling national and world stories for the A section. I’ve helped plan and
compile in-depth pages on a number of subjects, including a pre-election
digest of races to watch, swing states and more. I post stories to the Web
site.

Certainly you only get this kind of variety at a smaller paper; even more so
as the desk shrinks within. I find it interesting and exciting to engage in
journalism on so many levels. Do I feel like less of an actual copy editor?
Not really. Only when the workload reaches towering levels do I feel like
I’m shoveling, not editing critically. It happens more and more these days,
but it’s a challenge I’m interested in seeing through. The skills we gain on
the desk are useful in all kinds of new avenues.

Lew Serviss (DJNF/Temple 1976) gave up the news rooms of New York for
the classrooms and mountain peaks of Arizona. Serviss, pictured after
one of his favorite climbs — Camelback Mountain in Phoenix — is an
adjunct instructor in journalism at the University of Arizona in
Tucson. He also writes and edits when inspiration, or a good gig,
comes along.

I’d been a writer and editor for 30 years, so how hard could teaching possibly be? Ha!

I’m closing out my first semester (don’t tell my students that they’re my test rats) as an adjunct instructor teaching editing. Have I ever learned a lot.

I thought the tough part was getting the gig in the first place in this fractured economy, with seasoned journalists being pitched over the side daily as if they were the detritus scooped up in fishing nets. The first challenge came in building the dreaded syllabus. There was the 200-page university policy guide to digest first, and a dozen crucial caveats that needed to be worded just so, to ensure the students knew what to expect and what was expected of them (mainly the latter). That accomplished, the real question was: What would I do with 45 hours of class time?

Thinking back to effective teaching regimens I’ve encountered, my first thought, of course, was of the Dow Jones crash course of 1976. Dr. Ed Trayes took a group of raw recruits (well, I was raw) and turned them into ready-for-primetime editors. Lots of drills, lots of editing, lots of repetitions, not unlike a team running through the playbook over and over until muscle memory takes over.

Now it’s time to bring on the students. My course is a prerequisite for journalism majors. They are almost all juniors, but it’s not clear that they pay much attention to the news. Fundamentals of grammar and usage seem about as familiar as the major cities of Turkmenistan.

W.W.E.T.D. (What would Ed Trayes do?) I gave them maps. The empty U.S. map (fill in the states). Western Europe. South America. The Middle East. We followed the textbook: verbs, tenses, moods, punctuation. I stressed the things that I knew, from 30 years of observation, that professional writers quite often get wrong. We mined the rich veins of the AP Stylebook (abbreviations, capitalization et al).

The class took on a certain form that the students seemed to find familiar and comfortable: A quiz, a lecture, a drill. Gradually there emerged … a learning curve! They began to change “pled” to “pleaded,” to edit out “allegedly” and to change errors they weren’t sure about into different wording that eliminated the problem. They would sneer at clichés.

And then, they began to nail the news questions on the quizzes. Before class one day, I overheard two students in animated conversation. “Are they putting the automakers in the bailout?” one asked. Quiet to a fault through the early part of the semester, they began to emerge. “Can we review the quizzes in class?” a student asked. A reasonable request. We added a discussion of the way, or ways, the questions could be correctly answered. The news questions became a starting point for an examination of the big, big, big issues of the day and a realization of the momentous time we were in – a historic presidential election, a calamitous economy.

I began to see that along with transferring the nuts and bolts of taming language and sniffing out factual blunders, the class was instilling a thirst for understanding how the world fit together from day to day, year to year. Isn’t that the best lesson in journalism?

Fiona Luis, DJNF/Temple 1985, is the assistant managing editor for features at The Boston Globe, where she has worked for almost 22 years.

The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund editing program instilled in me an
important — I would argue almost crucial–work ethic.

It’s been 23-and-a-half years since I arrived in Philadelphia for the
training blitz; while my memories of that time are a little fuzzy, the
underlying message is not: respect the process. At Temple, our diverse
group — there was a pre-law student, a teacher-in-the-making, a future
broadcaster, reporters, editors — was taught everything, from the basics
of editing deadline copy to headline counts to photo sizing to comp-room
etiquette (yes, I’m truly dating myself). While some of these practices are
irrevocably extinct now, the lessons are not. When you respect the process,
you respect the people who populate it.

At the Globe, where I’ve worked for almost 22 years, I’ve done my
best to live by that rule, whether I was editing foreign-correspondents’
copy and regional breaking news on the night desk or Sunday magazine
features or Food section material or a Living series examining the impact
of the clergy sex abuse scandal on parishes and parishioners. It’s a bit
cliched, but as such adages go, true as well. We are all connected, and if
we only manage up, the foundation weakens. So, as I’ve moved from the night
desk to Assistant Managing Editor for Features during my tenure at the
paper, I’ve tried to strive for excellence in many ways: working hard,
learning from everyone around you, always aspiring to do better, being a
good colleague and a supportive boss.

I think it’s important (this is the advice portion of the program) to
steer clear of imperiousness: if you are entering journalism now, you
should make like a sponge, and absorb. The fundamentals of print. The
somewhat different rules of broadcast. The scope of the digital revolution.
The speed of change has seemed accelerated when it comes to journalism’s
evolution, and it’s more crucial than ever to be nimble these days.

At the Globe, as at so many other fine newspapers around the country,
we have had to adapt and evolve and reinvent in times of shrinking
circulation and ad revenues. Our goal is to become an integrated news
operation, one that not just survives but thrives in the new media
landscape. Even as we zip into this future, I find myself going back to the
basics: Respect the process and the people. It applies to many scenarios,
and it helps you reset your heading for 21st-century journalism. It helps
you stay relevant. And it will help you become part of the solution in this
industry that we all love.

As I was starting to become more familiar and as I met some people, my boss,
who had hired me sight unseen, quit for personal reasons. After that
departure, no one was hired, leaving the copy desk rudderless. There was no
one to take charge, defend us, keep us in check. It was miserable at work,
but by now at least I had a distraction from it because I had made a few
friends. So I just kept at it, thinking I could make it to at least the
one-year mark and then look for jobs. It’d been months since we’d had a
copy chief. Work had become infuriating — people called in sick all the
time, no one did anything they didn’t feel like, and it left some stuck
doing more than their share.

Eventually they did hire someone. I hadn’t ever thought having a boss could
be worse than not, but I was oh-so wrong. Among some minor problems, there
was the bigger issue of the new copy chief not being a leader nor a unifying
figure … after being hired, it was amazing how quickly people started
quitting. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who was there before the new hire, who
wasn’t attached to the area, left, except me. At some points, the copy desk
was so understaffed I was the entire rim for a night — A section and
local. It didn’t even feel like I was editing, just shoveling copy, making
sure it had some sort of headline and no spelling errors. I was sure I’d
leave, anyway. And I tried, I looked constantly, but I’d gone and stupidly
anchored myself here by getting involved with someone. So I’m still here,
waiting. The someone turned out being worth it, and will be finishing
school fairly soon, which is why I’ve stuck it out. After graduation, we
can move on.

So that’s what’s led me to deciding between leaving or staying in
journalism. I could wait for my significant other to get a job, and then go
there (we both very much want to leave here). Or I could get a job myself,
knowing my significant other would go where I go. But I’m just afraid to go
to another paper. I know I’m certainly not the first person to dislike a
job, a company, a boss. But I’m worried that it’s going to be like that
everywhere now — watching the slow, painful death of a once-proud product
deteriorate from the inside. But then I read parts of the blog, and I had
some hope, that maybe there were still newsrooms where people were happy,
that they still cared about improving the product every day, that it, that
they, were significant. And I’m not sure I’m ready to leave that behind.
On the other hand, I’m already tired. Tired of going where the job is,
rather than where I want to live. Tired of missing all the holidays with my
family. Tired of only seeing my significant other at weird hours. I’m just
not sure I can be happy like that for very long.

And as my newspaper has announced its first cuts in the past few weeks, that
weariness seems all the more troubling. So far one of the nice things about
this paper has been that we weren’t as in danger as others in the industry.
We hadn’t had layoffs. But that’s changing too, and scaring me away from
journalism again. This has all made me re-evaluate my future as a copy
editor. I love the work, and want to continue to do it. When I think about
people like Dr. Trayes, and my editing mentor in college, I can’t help but
be sad, and disappointed that I probably won’t be carrying on in the
capacity that they taught me. But I know that whatever type of copy editing
I do, their words (and words, and words on words) and lessons will always be
with me.

Renee Petrina, DNJF/Temple 2004, was an editing intern on the metro copy desk of The Washington Post. Today she edits at The Indianapolis Star in Indiana. She graduated from Penn State in December 2004 and started at The Florida Times-Union within a month. Her second week on the copy desk, Jacksonville hosted the Super Bowl, so it was definitely baptism by fire. Renee spent about 18 months in Jacksonville before moving to The Indianapolis Star. At the Star, Renee focuses specifically on A and metro sections as well as some business editing. In addition to time on the rim, she frequently serves as wire editor, booking the A section, attending budget meetings and coordinating with the A1 editor, who’s in charge at night. Renee is a member of the news room diversity committee, which works to help staff understand implicit biases and stay focused on inclusive coverage. She continues involvement with the Society of Professional Journalists, which she joined in college. Renee has coordinated two training sessions for SPJ’s national convention.

In the DJNF/Temple boot camp, we were in a cold room with the blinds closed, cramming our heads full of information and striving to check every last thing. During my internship on the metro copy desk of The Washington Post, it was the same focus. Just a few stories a night and practical mental exhaustion when I got home. I was being challenged, and I loved it.

Now that I’m a full-time copy desker, a few things have changed. I still work in frigid conditions (it seems wasteful to have space heaters under our desks AND the air turned on, but our pleading has not swayed the building manager) and I still can’t see out any windows. But I’m not editing nearly as intensely.

On occasion, I question the tradeoff. Could I do my job better, spending every second operating at 110%? What about making sure I’m fully relaxed every day when I walk in? It’s possible. But then I wouldn’t have a life.

At The Indianapolis Star, I’m lucky to be part of a team of talented nightside journalists who create a culture of success. Even with dwindling resources and gallows humor over pending Gannett layoffs, we continue to work for better headlines and engaging story selection in the service of readers. I’m proud of that.

But I’m proud, too, of my work outside the Star. I volunteer 200 hours a year at the world’s largest children’s museum. I learned to country line dance as a form of exercise. I have a strong group of friends from diverse backgrounds and career paths whom I can count on to sing karaoke, go out on the town or just play board games. I’m involved in my faith community, and I serve on a few boards. And I value my time at home, where I bake and hang out with my pets.

I could devote every drop of my being to copy editing, but I love the tradeoffs too much. And in a world where layoffs just keep happening, it’s better that I have those community involvements. Quite simply, it gives me something to do if I lose my job. And if I’m spared the cuts, I’ll keep volunteering and dancing and baking and generally going 100 mph, because it keeps me on the pulse of my community and makes me a better journalist.

(Obligatory what-I’ve-been-up-to-over-past-four-years graf: Trained with Trayes, moved to D.C. in house across from Bob Woodward, totaled my car on Night 2 of the internship, gained nickname “Crash” from said totaling, spent internship pay on new car, went back to college, wrote thesis, wore mortarboard to get Penn State degree and medal, moved to Jacksonville, Fla., worked copy desk during Super Bowl, did not get suntan, got really into SLR photojournalism, spent all my free time volunteering at a humane society, created outreach program from news room into schools, brought dessert to work every Saturday, learned to appreciate all the things my parents ever did for me, was recruited away to Indianapolis, drove for two days with my cat to much colder climate, started wire editing, became de facto wire editor for six months, unexpectedly met awesome friends in a honky tonk bar, got addicted to Facebook, learned a lot about dinosaurs, taught said dino knowledge to kids at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, became de facto computer expert of copy desk, adopted a second cat that showed up on doorstep, lost belongings in burglary, learned the generosity of others after said burglary, visited fellow Trayes ’04 survivor Emily Veach, sent my suitcase with her to Hong Kong, joined diversity committee at work, joined alumni board for alma mater’s student paper, avoided requests for blog entry because I didn’t have a photo, finally wrote this.)

Allison Morrow, DJNF/Temple 2007, writes about her “new” editing job at The Wall Street Journal in New York City and how much things have changed, are changing, since the global copy desk based in South Brunswick, New Jersey, was disbanded only a few months ago.

It’s been slightly more than a month since I began my “new” job at The Wall
Street Journal – those quotation marks are there to gloss over the past year
in which I was hired as a copy editor, laid off, rehired and promoted, which
I blogged about earlier. The rollercoaster ride I anticipated in that
earlier post has proved a jolty, neck-breaking, stomach-churning one – and I
can’t seem to stop smiling at every loop. The starkly new editing structure
at the Journal, phased in this past September, follows a frightening
industry trend of doing more with less.

I often joke that I am unqualified for my job, and in some ways it’s no
joke. We have fewer editors now, and each of us is carrying a hefty load. In
addition to wire editing and copy editing, I’m being asked to slot, which
means clearing stories and headlines edited by people who were my mentors
when I was hired just over a year ago. On any given shift, I have to flip
back and forth between a news editor’s concern for broader structural issues
and a copy editor’s attention to detail. Web editor will be another title
tacked on to us soon. Eventually, the goal is that we will have a team of
universal editors capable of handling copy at every level of production.

It’s a lot to ask of us, but we’re still putting out a paper every day,
and while stressful, it can also be exhilarating. As the late-night editor
for the international desk, I’m the poor soul often found scrambling to get
early Asia news into our later editions. When South Korea decides to slash
its key interest rate in the morning, it adds some chaos to my 10:45
deadline, but I know that such news is important to our readers. So I
hustle: rip up page 12, edit our reporter’s story, write the headline and
add the news to the A1 “What’s News” list, send a readback to the reporter
and make any fixes for the final edition. It’s more work than I could have
anticipated I’d be doing, and at times I’m convinced my superiors will
realize what a mistake they made in giving me so much responsibility. But
I’m learning. Every night, every deadline.

Mary Knowles Tindall, DJNF/Temple 2008, interned this past summer at The Wall Street Journal. On October 30, she began work as a copy editor at the Orlando (Florida) Sentinel.

I’ve really enjoyed reading the stories of DJNF/Temple alums on this blog,
particularly those of my classmates who went through boot camp in 2008.

Others have already talked about the job hunt and its challenges, and I have
another variation on the tale. I was hired two weeks ago as a copy editor at
the Orlando Sentinel, a daily newspaper in Orlando, Florida.

Getting here has been a roller-coaster ride. After the completion of my Wall
Street Journal internship, I applied for and was offered a copy-editing job
at Dow Jones Newswires in Jersey City, N.J. I was thrilled at the
opportunity. At 21 years old and right out of college, I had been offered a
job at one of the world’s elite news services. That elation soon turned to
serious soul-searching, though, and I ultimately decided to return to
Orlando. I got married in May, immediately before starting DJNF/Temple, and my
husband and I decided to stay in Orlando, where he has a good job and both
our families are, for at least a few more years.

That decision was an emotional one for me. I was torn between a job offer
that seemed to fulfill my long-held dreams of doing prestigious journalism
in an exciting city, and on the other hand, what seemed to be best for me in
my personal life. I kept remembering what Dr. Trayes told us about how to
make career decisions: Consider the quality of life that you’ll be taking on
in a new job. The salary and the job title are only part of the equation. I
knew that living in the Greater New York area would be fun for a while, but
at heart I am a southern girl. The climate, the crowds and the expensive
lifestyle simply weren’t for me, and I would miss my family. And there are
many cities in the U.S. that need good journalists, including Orlando.

So, with that in mind, I set out on the job hunt. I went to job fairs, sent
out my resume, and searched online databases. I was discouraged at what
seemed to be the complete dearth of jobs in journalism in my city. One thing
that kept me going was the encouragement and prayers of friends and family.
There were many days when I cried because I felt as though my degree was
worth nothing in a job market already flooded with laid-off professionals
more qualified than I was. In this dark time, I was blessed to become
acquainted with one of my new neighbors. She is a successful business owner
herself, and she consoled me, telling me my skills and experience were
valuable, and that I just needed to wait on the right timing. She said that
I should use the waiting time to improve my skills and envision how they
might be used in a variety of jobs — not just newspaper journalism. That
was some of the best advice I received in my job search. I used that time to
start freelancing for a magazine, learning how to promote myself and turn my
skills into cold hard cash. Aside from the money, I loved having something
constructive to do with my time. I also went to a career counselor at my
alma mater, the University of Central Florida, who helped me shape my resume
into something appropriate for jobs in public relations or other
communications jobs.

Finally, a door opened up. One day, I happened to browse a blog that I visit
occasionally. Its writer used to work at the Orlando Sentinel, and she
posted a job opening for a copy editor. It wasn’t posted on any of the
journalism jobs Web sites, so I e-mailed the Sentinel’s recruiter to ask
whether it was still open. The recruiter knew me from two reporting internships
I’d had at the Sentinel. He said it was an opening in Sports, and that they
wanted someone with experience editing sports copy, which I don’t have. It
seemed like another dead end … until I got an e-mail a few days later
saying that someone in News had filled the position, and now his job was
open. Within a couple of weeks, I had taken a tryout, gone through two sets
of interviews, and beaten out several dozen candidates for the copy-editing
job. I got a job offer Oct. 27 and started Oct. 30.

Since then, I’ve worked the craziness of election night, learned the basics
of my job, and marveled many times at the fact that I’m even employed. You
see, over the summer, the Sentinel laid off several dozen employees in two
rounds of job cuts. No one thought they’d be hiring any time in the
foreseeable future. Every time I’m tempted to complain about working
weekends, I thank God that I am more fortunate than millions of other
Americans. Had I not completed DJNF and rounded out my reporting skills with
editing abilities, I seriously doubt I’d be employed right now. Yet I am –
and I love it here. I can’t believe I get paid to read the news and make
stories better. I’ve received praise for my headlines and my A1 catches, and
I know I can advance my career here without sacrificing those people or
places that I love.

My advice: Take advantage of every opportunity you can, but don’t be afraid
to turn down a job that doesn’t fit your priorities in life. Learn how to
promote yourself — it’s OK to brag to a degree, as long as you realize you
don’t know everything. And no matter what everyone else says, journalism is
still an amazing profession.

P.S. — A shout-out to Claire Craft, a newly minted Roanoke Times copy
editor who’s been a big help to my friend Melissa in her job search. DJNF
connections are invaluable! Thanks, Claire!

Patrick Smith is the assistant online editor/night city editor at the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Neb. After attending the DJNF/Temple editing residency in 2004, he spent three months as an intern at The New York Times News Service. He took a job as a copy editor at the Des Moines Register after graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December 2004. In 2006 he took a copy editing job at The Stelter Co. in Urbandale, Iowa. He returned to Nebraska in January 2008.

When I was in school, my professors were always harping on students to get as wide a base of experience as possible. We’d need it, and it’d make us more valuable as we hunted for jobs, they reasoned. Shooting and editing video and photos, copy editing, designing, reporting — it was all important.

How right they were.

As the assistant online editor/night city editor (what a mouthful) at the Lincoln Journal Star, I do a little bit of everything every day. My focus is often on the Web, but my skills and experience as a copy editor are constantly in demand. When news breaks, we don’t have time to funnel a story from the city desk to the copy desk and then to our Web site. That’s where our online team comes in, and it’s often me whipping copy into shape under the strictest of deadlines: as soon as possible. At the same time, I’m thinking of how to present materials on our site and what related stories/media would complement them.

In the course of a normal day I’m dealing with reporters, editing copy (news, sports, features — it’s all fair game), communicating with the copy desk, preparing in-paper refers to Web content and even answering phones. I also edit podcasts and am trained (as a last line of defense) to shoot and edit video. But in nearly everything I do, I find myself falling back on my valuable copy editing experience. While a story in the newspaper goes through many levels of editing, a late-night update on a fire often gets two sets of eyes — the reporter’s and mine. There is no margin for error.

I’ve had three jobs in the four years since graduation, and some people might assume I become restless easily. I prefer to think that each job was a stepping stone to where I am now, and I know I gained something valuable at each stop. It was at Temple with Dr. Trayes and top-notch boot camp mates that I was pushed to raise my game (and sleep with an AP Stylebook), and I bought in to the idea that every detail, no matter how small, matters. Temple prepared me for my internship in New York, and the snowball kept rolling and growing. Working with immensely talented, like-minded journalists pushed me to be better, prepared me for the real world and opened my eyes to what’s out there for someone who’s willing to work hard enough.

Having the Dow Jones internship on my resume opened doors, but the experience I gained from it helped me excel at the Des Moines Register, then at the Stelter Co. Now, working on so many different assignments every day for Web and print is the most fun I’ve ever had in a news room. One minute I might be posting a news item to our site, or moderating comments, or creating a photo gallery. The next I could be sending a text message about how Nebraska beat Kansas in Lincoln yet again, a streak now 40 years old (Sorry, KU grads. Couldn’t resist). It can be hectic, but the variety is what I love about my job. With fewer rigid rules for our Web product, there’s also plenty of room for creativity in problem solving. The dull moments are few and far between, the time flies and barely four years out of school I feel like a respected, valuable cog in our newsroom operation.

Even though I’m no longer a copy editor in title, I know the value of those skills. I use them every day, and I see the need for people with them as news rooms and the industry evolve.