One of the most intriguing things that has struck me while interviewing for some new jobs at the Telegraph is how different disciplines within the journalistic family view something called “the work/life balance”.
During about 50 interviews, I must have been asked at least a dozen times what the shift will be for that particular job. Each time that question has been asked by somebody from a traditional sub or copy editing background - not by a reporter, a desk editor or one of the many “new” journalists with a primarily online background.
Having spent more than half of my career on a subs’ desk, I can see why the question is asked - subs are, generally speaking, the only people in the newsroom who, upon starting their working day at, say, 3.30pm, can confidently phone their partner and accurately tell him or her what time they’ll be home. That’s what they’ve grown used to and that’s what they’ve come to expect. It is, in short, a production line where you clock in and clock out.
This has never been the case for reporters who - particularly in the national press and agencies - have always been on call 24 hours a day. It ceased to be the case for news editors some years ago - many of them now work very long days indeed. In the integrated newsroom, there are reporters and desk editors now starting at 6am who should, if they took their “shift” literally, would leave the building at 2pm. But a lot of them are still there at 5pm with one or two masochistic souls choosing to see it out to early evening.
I’m not advocating the sudden adoption of 14-hour days but it is telling that the subs continue to work their shifted eight-hour days come hell or high water when the world around them operates on a completely different pattern.
This is not a pejorative post but it’s pretty obvious why this is - the job of the sub editor remains tied to the newspaper production cycle. A lot of a sub’s day is spent waiting for copy with the remaining portion spent editing it under ridiculous pressure before the first edition deadline. And, despite the extraordinary strides we’ve made on the web in the last couple of years, we still insist on putting papers together in the shortest and most pressured way possible.
The media organisations have, on the whole, chosen to exclude a large group of talented people from the online revolution for, in most cases, reasons of speed rather than ideology. It really is time to correct this by using our subs’ skills to post moderate a lot of what is, frankly, poor web copy and to get them involved in building front pages and driving traffic using social and viral networks.
But to do this, the idea of a shift which starts and finishes within seconds of a certain time has to end. That means we’ve got to stop treating them like drones at the end of the day and get them much more involved in some serious editorial judgement calls and decision making. We’ve got to find a more mature way of building newspapers which does not involve doing 90 per cent of the day’s work in the last hour and a half before deadline.
In short, we’ve got to reengage our brightest sub editors and offer them a new start.
yaawwwnnnn
You can keep your 14 hour days pal ….. it’s not a bright new dawn on newspapers and online, it’s a new form of slavery…. and you have fallen for it hook line and sinker. More fool you.
As a designer/sub editor who has also been a reporter, news editor, deputy editor and PR staffer, I don’t subscribe to the moronically generalised ‘my shift’s over’ attitude you describe above. In fact I find it highly insulting.
Have you ever worked a production shift? I doubt it, because everyone in my department regularly works over their hours and through their lunch break, as do I, and I have always been happy to put that effort in, when necessary.
To a man and woman,we are also constantly requesting training and career development - such as web design and moderation. Rather than being a close minded dolt as you describe above, I am fascinated by the development of the web and social media and would be eager to involve it in my role and responsibilities.
However, I am not interested in staying over the time I am paid for just to be seen doing so, or just because other people are. I’d rather see my wife and children, and have a life away from the newsroom.
To use a generalisation,which you seem so fond of, most of the reporters and news editors are younger than the majority of subs and designers, who tend to be older and more experienced. As such, they are still striving to impress and don’t have families waiting for them at home.
Perhaps that makes it easier to work 11-12hr days regularly? But if they are staying for that long, perhaps they need to look at their working patterns and manage their time properly?
But come hell or high water, I will continue to put my full attention and effort into doing my job to the best of my ability. If that requires me to stay late, fine. If it does not, then I will go home without a backward glance.
Justin, I can’t work out from your posts if you’re a Greenslade who thinks there’s no need for subs online or whether you think there is a future for those of us who want to grasp it…
I agree there are many old-school clock-watching subs who’ll grab redundancy because they don’t want to do things the new way.
I also agree that new skills are required if you want to survive.
But I firmly believe that the less-talked about skill of a sub (related to but not synonymous with cutting-to-fit) - turning flabby, boring, overwritten copy into something a reader can be bothered with - is just as relevant online as it is off.
Maybe it’s because I started to sub when regional deadlines were disappearing, so my job has always been more about making a story the best it can be, not cutting it as quickly as possible. Maybe it’s because I’m still a news editor at heart.
But there are some of us out here who are enthused by the change and don’t think we can - or should - stop it.
Sam,
A mistake in a newspaper cannot be changed, a mistake online can.
That said, there’s a bright future for subs who want to move into online publishing. But to do it, you’ve got to stop thinking that you’re indispensible because you’re the only guy who can rewrite flabby copy and start thinking about doing all the things that reporters won’t or can’t do - making stories interactive, thinking about their dissemination and building networks through which you can - with the right touch - deliver large traffic numbers.
This is not about copy and headlines any more.
xxnapoleonsolo
If you’d actually bothered to read my post instead of choking on your indignation, you’d have seen that I have spent most of my career in production. I’ve done more production shifts than I’m prepared to admit to.
Justin - I agree! All those things I already do and expect to be a major part of where my job takes me. I do, however, think there will still be a need for traditional copy subbing - even if the ’sub-editor’ has a new title and an entirely new bag of tricks to go with it.