From the Editor's Desk

The many meanings  of the title ‘editor’

Dear Readers:

I picked up a book that takes place in the 1940s recently and scanned through the opening paragraphs. It was explaining how the protagonist’s father had worked in the publication industry as a headline writer for the New York Sun.

I read through it twice and turned to my husband, who also works as an editor, and said “Imagine having someone on staff whose only job is to write headlines!” We shared a good chuckle at that.

At the News-Review we mostly operate under the titles of “editor.” We have a Lifestyle Editor and a Sports Editor, and me, who has no fancy title — I’m just Editor. The catch-all leader who oversees it all.

Those titles are misleading though, and certainly are a far cry from the actual job. In the old TV shows, the editor tended to be a non-nonsense man, doling out tasks to his army of eager reporters.

These days, “editor” is a kind of all-encompassing term that actually means, “reporter,” “photographer,” “copy editor,” “proofreader,” and “layout designer” in some cases. And yes, of course we also come up with our own headlines.

Ideas of busy newsrooms filled with staff and typewriters clacking wildly and phones ringing off the hook are a thing of the past. You see it in movies or shows, but the current trend is much less hectic from the outside, but still flows with an undercurrent of low-key anxiety for those involved in the inner workings.

People stop into our new digs and comment, “Boy it sure is quiet in here.” It’s not because we aren’t doing the work, but because that old idea of the clamoring news room is still something they expect. 

Now instead of phone calls rife with enticing story leads or ad wording that require every detail to be taken down by hand, they quietly come in via email. Return questions are typed and sent off with nothing more than the quiet ‘whoosh’ of an outgoing email. We don’t have an army of production staffers typing things up; instead we have software tools that can turn those hand-written notices dropped off by the public into text documents in a few seconds. 

But the actual job of sourcing stories, talking to people for comments, attending meetings, taking pictures of the events, and assembling all this into a readable, organized publication every week still falls on us — the editors.

I remember our now-retired editor, Gary Ridderbusch, telling me once that when he started back in the 80s at the News-Review, there were days he’d go home and his head and neck would be throbbing from spending the whole day, neck crooked holding a receiver, frantically scribbling down information. 

Going back a little further, now-retired publisher, Kurt Krueger, grew up in the business. His parents owned a newspaper in central Wisconsin. He remembered how, after school and a basketball game spent utilizing his lanky, tall physique, he’d come home only to have to put that same reach to use within the nooks and crannies of the malfunctioning press in order to print the paper.

I try to imagine working like that, and I think maybe I wouldn’t have lasted so long in the biz if I had had to. I’m spoiled with digital cameras that allow you to make sure your photos are turning out in real time, not having to run back to the dark room to develop the pics and learn you had your settings wrong and no shots turned out. 

I imagine when you had to call someone in the know for every piece of information; no Googling to explain how something works if you don’t have a firm grasp on it. And I can’t forget the ability to record conversations for later review, or better yet, receiving email responses with no transcription needed! Oh, the glory of not having to sort through my illegible, nonsensical scribbles after an interview!

These strides in technology have been welcome, but they have also led to a more separate work space of remote workers and at-home staff. What used to be a face-to-face conversation is now conducted via IM chats and emails back and forth with staff across town, or across the state, trying to explain why the page layout isn’t working in short bursts of typed messages.  

There was a certain camaraderie that developed among in-office staff after a stressful day of assembling the final project — whether it was the weekly paper or one of our many special publications that are peppered into the endless to-do list of the publishing industry.

To the best of my knowledge, there weren’t flasks of whiskey tucked in office drawers like the tv would have you believe, but there was usually an afternoon set aside to celebrate putting a special publication to bed with a few frosted glasses.

Yes, we’ve made strides forward, but there have also been things we lost along the way. But we’re still here, publishing important stories for our readers, tying the community together in our small way, and putting down the facts as “the newspaper of record” as best we can for future generations to look back on. The workflow has changed, but its importance hasn’t.