Editor: David Sullivan Company: The Philadelphia Inquirer LLC # of years in editing: 45 years My first night as wire editor was the night Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, so that was mid-April 1975. That was quite a baptism by fire.
Tell us a little about yourself, including how you got started as an editor?
I grew up in Indianapolis, where my family took the three dailies (until one of them folded) as well as the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday New York Times, and, yes, the Honolulu Advertiser (my mother dreamed of living in Hawaii. I graduated from college in 1975 with a double major of urban studies and journalism, had not gone to college to become a journalist, but had worked some for the Ball State Daily News. I knew wasn't a great reporter but really liked editing. At my first paper, the Richmond Palladium-Item, I was hired as a reporter, but they noticed I could work very quickly. When the wire editor unexpectedly quit, they gave me the job, and I've mostly been an editor since then, in one form or another -- assistant city editor, city editor, entertainment editor, assistant features editor -- but it came down to what I was really best at was copy editing.
What is your area of focus and why did you select this niche?
Well, back then the world was full of newspaper copy editors. You didn't think of it as a niche so much as that it was the whole thing and there were niches within it -- sports, features, news, page design -- what I liked editing best was very local news, town boards and the like. In part this is because I'm very geography-oriented, so I knew where East Fallowfield, Chester County, was, which sometimes even the reporter covering it had only a vague idea. I don't follow sports (other than Indy car), so that was out.
Walk us through a typical workday. How do you manage your time?
Life at The Inquirer has changed so much in the last decade with the collapse of the old economic model. As it is now, I come in at 2 pm and first edit the Letters to the Editor, which is a pretty heavy lift. They appear in print only. Then I will start editing locally produced news stories, some of which have already been posted on Inquirer.com and some of which will go live the next morning or later, but all of them have been pitched for print the next day, since I am part of the Print Production desk. In the evening the A and B section pages are designed, and then I will write headlines and captions for the stories I have edited. If I'm lucky, we'll have someone available for part of the time to copy edit and write display type, and I'll then read back on that. Someone else does nat-forn, someone else does features and business, and then there's sports, but I only get involved in business if the business editor is unavailable that day. Then we'll look at a proof of A1 and that's it.
What is your favorite thing about being an editor?
Well, my favorite thing about working as an editor in a newsroom is working with newsroom people. There's a hopeful sardonicness to newsroom conversations and jokes, and so much knowledge of the world and culture. In terms of actual editing, I like chopping out extra verbiage -- the "in order to accomplish the goals it had set before itself, the board in a vote decided to" becomes "to meet its goals, the board voted to" sort of thing. I am pretty bad at captions.
What is your biggest challenge and how do you work through this?
At one time I was the head of a 60-person copy desk. We had seven zone editions and 96-page daily papers. The hardest thing is keeping positive about what's happened to newspapers. It's not just the decline of print -- it's that no one has ever found an alternative business model that at least would provide a floor below which we could not fall. I suppose in the end like the people who miss the era when everyone watched or was aware of "Bonanza" or "M*A*S*H," what is most depressing is the loss of a common agenda for the community that newspapers represented. All one can do is do one's job, put your head down, and hope that a subscription model will in the end work. (But except for national organizations, of course, it hasn't yet.)
What are you currently working on?
Other than the above? I also am internship director and this year am in charge of contest entries. Plus, I oversee corrections and clarifications. So I have a full day.
What advice do you have for someone who is just starting their career as an editor?
Learn to code. The big growth in copy editing jobs at newspapers came when they brought computers into the newsroom. I remember typing "/f/[f1149]/f" at the top of stories to get them the right measure and having reporters just sort of look at me with, "But that's not an adjective." Copy editors for whatever reason can usually understand any sort of production work. A large number of writers and assigning editors are either completely uninterested in it or simply flummoxed. Always look to do things that other people don't want to do in addition to what you do want to do. You will be more valuable to your employer then.
