Summer From Hell pays off

I've spoken of the Summer From Hell, so I'll skip the details and get to the meaty innards ...

When I emerged from the SFH, my life was upside down. I'd hit the crisis point. Too much work and too few hours together was driving a stake between me and Paul. I was playing long-distance caretaker to Romp -- now long gone. I was heavily drugged and sick from the meds. ... And I was interning on the copy desk at the metro broadsheet, which was the only stable thing in my life.

Here I was, doing the one damn thing I did well: editing. I was complimented often and treated well. So why wasn't I happy? Oh yeah ... I remember. Because I felt crushed under the weight of near-constant gloom. If you're a journalist, you know the saying: "If it bleeds, it leads." The problem was that it was bleeding through the pages, from section to section, dripping from National onto Metro onto the classifieds (which piled on the floor, because really, who reads the classifieds?).

Reporters see one story a day: their own. Editors see dozens, and most of them aren't feel-good stories about kittens being saved from trees. When I left the CA, I was fairly certain I still wanted to be an editor -- just not there. And I stayed true to my word. I explored feature writing, manuscript editing, even Internet journalism (and came close -- I was only a couple of classes away from an IJ major). I didn't know it at the time, but providence was putting wheels in motion that would place me in the crosshairs of a great book publisher, a great magazine editor and a great newspaper. Now I work for all three, and I couldn't be happier.

And it looks like I lucked out, as TMF is reporting a round of union-related layoffs at the CA, mostly from the copy desk. A damn shame really, because I know there's a lot of talent on the rim and the slot. The CA is a nice paper -- not blameless by a long shot, but a good product overall. Had I not flipped my lid a few years ago, I'd probably be there now, red pen tucked behind my ear.

So I hate to see the copy desk used as "progressive discipline" as mentioned in the story. It's a department that should never be taken lightly, because it's the last electric fence that separates the apes from the humans. It's the spike strip that keeps the public from peering too deeply into the raw information. And when you start hacking editors during layoffs, you're removing the buffer that keeps the reporters from looking like idiots. Not a good move.

Anyway, send good thoughts to the copy desk. I'm sure it's a little tense up there with all the changes. Peace and love, kids.