The Ten Best Things about being an Editor

By Rachel Mendell

Inquirer Edi­tor

Last Sun­day, my pas­tor was preach­ing on how man can, indeed, with God’s help, change his life.

Near the begin­ning of the mes­sage he said this: “Dr. Paul S. Rees, in his writ­ings, tells of a widely read news­pa­per reporter who gave his read­ers a clear, cold, look at his own pes­simism. He wrote: ‘If a man is a phi­lan­derer, he will be a phi­lan­derer to the end. It is only in nov­els that a mir­a­cle in the last chap­ter makes the drunk­ard reform and become sober, the grouchy, sunny and sweet-tempered, the miser, gen­er­ous and open-handed. In real life, these things never hap­pen. Peo­ple con­tinue to be what usage and habit have made them.’”

I don’t know whom Rees was talk­ing about, but I can tell you that I know reporters that feel exactly that same way. And I know why.

When you have to report daily on bad things that hap­pen, bad things peo­ple do to each other, dis­as­ters, floods, wars and dis­ease, it will eat away at your soul. When your edi­tor expects you to sen­sa­tion­al­ize your lead para­graphs and write head­lines that are intended to grab read­ers and drag them into the blown-out-of-all-sensible-proportion story, it cre­ates inside a dis­torted view of the world around you.

The prob­lem is not with the job or the reporter; the prob­lem is with The Media in gen­eral. The Media lacks bal­ance. The Media thinks it has bal­ance, but it is not true bal­ance. An exam­ple of what I mean would be a story of a car fire fol­lowed by a “humor­ous” story of how some thief did some­thing really stu­pid and got caught. To The Media that is a seri­ous story bal­anced with a light story.

I respect­fully dis­agree. I know how hard reporters have to work and the crazy hours we keep, but I see that exam­ple as a neg­a­tive story fol­lowed by another neg­a­tive story. Look at the front of the Colum­bus Dis­patch and see what I mean (except pos­si­bly at Christ­mas and Easter when the MO is light, fluffy and heart-warming). Watch Chan­nel 10 News out of Colum­bus. The Media is con­stantly mak­ing fun of peo­ple and judg­ing peo­ple. They place opin­ions in the cold­est of all sto­ries, freely using a mul­ti­tude of tired adjec­tives and (gasp) adverbs to make their point “stronger.” In my hum­ble opin­ion, using what lit­tle expe­ri­ence I have gleaned in my life, that method of shar­ing a story is cheat­ing. Report­ing was never meant to be glo­ri­fied gossip.

I think work­ing in com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be a pos­i­tive, reward­ing career that lifts up the gen­eral pub­lic and encour­ages them to be bet­ter peo­ple. At the same time, we can­not shirk our respon­si­bil­ity of watch­ing the gov­ern­ment and report­ing about the bad in an effort to help the pub­lic pro­tect themselves.

This Christ­mas I am thank­ful for my new job as edi­tor. I have learned a lot and also solid­i­fied opin­ions I have had about this posi­tion for a long time.

Here are my favorite things about being edi­tor of the Galion Inquirer.

The peo­ple. I have met and been re-introduced to lots and lots of won­der­ful peo­ple. I’ve had a lot of dif­fer­ent jobs in my life, but this is the best job for meet­ing new people.

The chal­lenges. Since I stepped into this posi­tion I have been met with more chal­lenges than I can count; more than any other job I have held. I have worked through them all with the help of my staff and fel­low edi­tors and I am relieved to say, I am still here.

My cowork­ers. I could not have got­ten past all the chal­lenges placed before me with­out lots of help and encour­age­ment. I have made late-night phone calls (“help!”) and early morn­ing requests (“please retype this”) and late-afternoon-just-before-closing requests (“can you go there and take a photo?”) and have never been let down or dis­ap­pointed. We have a great team.

I get to say “no.” Two or three times a week I get ran­dom calls from far-flung con­gress­men want­ing free space in our paper to pro­mote some spe­cial idea or opin­ion they have. I get calls from Colum­bus (and Florida) busi­nesses want­ing free adver­tis­ing (in the form of a story because they are such a great com­pany). Occa­sion­ally, I get the bizarre shys­ter that tells me my read­ers need to know about him because he has such a great idea (also free adver­tis­ing since there is noth­ing phys­i­cal to back up this great idea). I get tons of get-rich-quick emails and adver­tise­ments in the guise of “free” news sto­ries. None of these peo­ple have ever read our paper. Most of them don’t even know where Galion is. I enjoy say­ing “no.”

The chance to be cre­ative. The palette and brushes of a news­pa­per are lim­ited, but I am push­ing my lim­its and the lim­its of our soft­ware, with the help of our staff and gurus of the busi­ness. I can cre­ate a new look to old pages.

The chance to express other’s cre­ativ­ity. You may have noticed new voices in our paper recently. A few new writ­ers are work­ing for us. New voices keep a pub­li­ca­tion fresh and help us see our com­mu­nity in a dif­fer­ent way.

My sched­ule. I have a flex­i­ble sched­ule; per­haps not as flex­i­ble as my sched­ule was as a reporter, but I can still get in early, or stay late, or take a break when I need one (from a 13 hour day), and plan around spe­cial days with my family.

The oppor­tu­nity to serve the com­mu­nity. There are a lot of impor­tant things going on in the com­mu­nity, things that keep res­i­dents con­nected. The news­pa­per plays a spe­cial role in keep­ing the reader informed of what is going on. Infor­ma­tion comes in, we put it in the paper, read­ers read it, and hope­fully a con­nec­tion is made.

The oppor­tu­nity to cor­rect mis­takes. I have made some mis­takes in the paper and I have had the oppor­tu­nity to cor­rect them. Some cor­rec­tions come in the form of The Cor­rec­tion Box, while oth­ers take the form of a rerun story. Still other cor­rec­tions appear as new sto­ries that prob­a­bly should have been pub­lished long ago.

The chance to learn. It has been said that a good reporter can talk about any sub­ject for 4 min­utes. I have found that to be true. I know a lot about how gov­ern­ment works (who is respon­si­ble for what) includ­ing vil­lages, cities, coun­ties and town­ships; about the ODOT test pave­ment in US 23, geo­caching, min­ing in South Dakota, zon­ing and con­di­tional use per­mits, health inspec­tion, regional plan­ning, and storm water sys­tems and I&I. I know a lit­tle about the court sys­tem and a lot about fore­clo­sure. I can talk to you about how school fund­ing works until you start to drool and fall asleep. I have been known to bore peo­ple to death about local issues and I have also argued over points of state gov­ern­ment con­trol. After my first two years of report­ing I real­ized that no one wants to lis­ten to all the stuff I know about, so now I just try to write it all down and con­cen­trate on lis­ten­ing. I learn more that way.

I want to thank all those who are send­ing me pic­tures and sto­ries. With an edi­to­r­ial staff of three, every sin­gle photo and event promo emailed in is a huge help. All our read­ers have helped to make the paper what it is today – almost COMPLETELY local. We are a unique pub­li­ca­tion. You aren’t going to find this much Galion news any­where else. Thank you for all your help.

Merry Christ­mas!

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Dec 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.