I've worked with newspaper copy editors who had a pat way of editing a story. They'd look for a little chunk of the story, perhaps an anecdote, that they could cut out.
Editors have done that to me many times. At least once, an editor cut out the reason for me writing the story. Years later, a different editor cut out the best anecdote in my story. In both cases, the stories were watered-down, weakened because of the editing.
ONCE, an editor cut out three sentences from a quote to shorten the story. He'd have been better off just paraphrasing the quote. If I'd known he was going to do that, I'd have paraphrased the darn thing, since he cut out the best sentence in the whole story.
Other times, editors have end-cut my stories. Usually, they were leaving out the best part.
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
ONCE, an editor cut out three sentences from a quote to shorten the story. He'd have been better off just paraphrasing the quote. If I'd known he was going to do that, I'd have paraphrased the darn thing, since he cut out the best sentence in the whole story.
Other times, editors have end-cut my stories. Usually, they were leaving out the best part.
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
In every case, they would have been better served to have me edit my own story down to fit.
Me? I've always edited a story so that the best parts make it into the paper.
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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com BLUESKY: PROFILE
MORE EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES
BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE
ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE
ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
