Susan Keith, a former newspaper copy editor who now teaches journalism at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is conducting a research project into "the ongoing evolution of newspaper sub editing/copy editing jobs in the English-speaking world".
However Keith appears to be having some difficulty finding subs in the UK, Ireland and South Africa to interview. If you're a current or former newspaper sub in one of these countries, please consider helping her.
Here's a description of the research project, and Susan Keith's contact details.
Keith's search for subs has already been mentioned on John McIntyre's blog You Don't Say, but I thought it bore repeating. And thanks to R Mason for bringing it to my attention.
Showing posts with label newspaper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspaper. Show all posts
Whites searched 'for race balance'. Did they find it?
My first thought on seeing Metro's main front page headline today was: 'So did they find it?'
As it turns out, 'whites' is the object, not the subject, of the headline (which is written in the passive voice).
(UPDATE 19/07/09: As Garik points out in the comments following this post, 'whites' is actually the subject of this passive sentence.)
The first paragraph of the story clarifies the matter:
Last year I blogged about police stopping and searching commuters and schoolgirls at my local station...
(UPDATE 19/07/09: As Garik points out in the comments following this post, 'whites' is actually the subject of this passive sentence.)
The first paragraph of the story clarifies the matter:
Police are searching white people under terror laws simply to provide 'racial balance' to statistics, it was revealed yesterday.
Last year I blogged about police stopping and searching commuters and schoolgirls at my local station...
Nicolae Ceausescu and the newspaper sub
Back in 1989 (when I'd already been in the engine room for a year or two) I took no more than passing note of the popular uprising that led to the overthrow and execution of Romanian Communist head of state Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena.
It's universally accepted that he wasn't what you'd call easy going in his later years. Which would be of no relevance to the Engine Room, were it not for a factoid I picked up from a wee-small-hours cable TV documentary.
A former sub on a Romanian national newspaper recounted finding herself in horribly hot water when she missed a typo in the great man's name. He took it as a personal slight and she came close to being arrested by the secret police – an experience which was often fatal.
There's nothing funny about an experience so traumatic that its memory almost reduced the sub to tears as she recounted it years later. But I couldn't help but smile at the way her treatment threw into perspective the deserved bollockings I received over the years for missing typos. Would the threat of imprisonment and torture improve proofreading standards in the world's engine rooms?
Here's a challenge for you: without looking at this blog, write down the name of the short-fused Romanian leader. Did you get it right first time? I just googled the image you see here and got the Ceausescu right, but I put an h in the middle of Nicolae. Whoops.
Kate Winslet has a lovely pair of Golden Globes
All of the papers here in the UK seem to have covered Kate Winslet's recent awards wins, and I can only assume that they were dissuaded by the tearfulness of her acceptance speeches and the relative modesty of her attire from making crude references to her 'lovely pair of Golden Globes'.
I'm only saying because it's not like the tabloids to miss an innuendo.
However the internet never lets me down:
And so on...
I'm only saying because it's not like the tabloids to miss an innuendo.
However the internet never lets me down:
And so on...
Friday roundup: watching me watching you
The Engine Room may only be the 118th best language blog out there, but it's the 53rd most clipped Blogspot blog - at least according to UKNetMonitor.
Who is it that has such an interest in what I write? Perhaps the London Lite, thelondonpaper and Metro are planning their revenge...
In other news, The Engine Room has been chosen as one of blogs.com's '10 Great Blogs about Grammar, Writing & Language'.
Most of the others blogs in this list are already in my blogroll but two new ones on me are Talk Wordy to Me, by a young* copy editor on a US paper, and Regret the Error, which "reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press".
Actually, I'm going to add both of these to the blogroll.
*By which I mean younger than me, of course.
Who is it that has such an interest in what I write? Perhaps the London Lite, thelondonpaper and Metro are planning their revenge...
In other news, The Engine Room has been chosen as one of blogs.com's '10 Great Blogs about Grammar, Writing & Language'.
Most of the others blogs in this list are already in my blogroll but two new ones on me are Talk Wordy to Me, by a young* copy editor on a US paper, and Regret the Error, which "reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press".
Actually, I'm going to add both of these to the blogroll.
*By which I mean younger than me, of course.
'Objective' opinion on Strictly Come Dancing
There was a brilliant letter in yesterday's Metro newspaper regarding the recent John Sergeant / Strictly Come Dancing fiasco. I say brilliant, because it ended:
Objective? That's like saying your opinion on a novel is objective because you've never read it, or your opinion on a political party is objective because you don't know what its policies are.
And before anyone comments, I don't watch the show so my opinion is objective – neither am I a dance purist.
Objective? That's like saying your opinion on a novel is objective because you've never read it, or your opinion on a political party is objective because you don't know what its policies are.
I'm half a headline, get me out of here...
Right. After today I'm going to stop picking on the freesheets for a while.
Spotted this on page three of yesterday's London Lite (and sorry about my wonky cutting and scanning):
Yes, there's part of the headline missing. Is this an honest mistake (and we've all made them) or the result of a sub trying to suggest that the celebrities in reality show I'm a Celebrity... are actually nonentities?
(For those who can't see the scan, the headline reads: "Deadly storms threat to the I'm A ".)
Spotted this on page three of yesterday's London Lite (and sorry about my wonky cutting and scanning):
Yes, there's part of the headline missing. Is this an honest mistake (and we've all made them) or the result of a sub trying to suggest that the celebrities in reality show I'm a Celebrity... are actually nonentities?
(For those who can't see the scan, the headline reads: "Deadly storms threat to the I'm A ".)
McCain makes high-profile apostrophe error
I don't want The Engine Room to become one of those blogs that is fixated on misplaced, missing or inappropriate apostrophes (not that there is anything wrong with that in itself, of course; it's just that other blogs do it so much better).
However, this one is a real cracker (click for a larger image):
So this is an ad by multi-billion-dollar food company McCain. A full-page ad, on the outside back cover of the London Lite newspaper – which has a readership of 1.1 million. And look at that apostrophe.
I suddenly feel much better about my own mistakes. And can anyone come up with a higher-profile apostrophe error?
I do quite like 'caressive', though.
(For those who can't see the image, the copy in the advert reads: "Stop! Stop! I lied, as I bit into the pert roundness of the goose fat smothered potato, instantly sending caressive plumes of steam gushing from it's soft, fluffy centre like a hot breath on my lips.")
However, this one is a real cracker (click for a larger image):
So this is an ad by multi-billion-dollar food company McCain. A full-page ad, on the outside back cover of the London Lite newspaper – which has a readership of 1.1 million. And look at that apostrophe.
I suddenly feel much better about my own mistakes. And can anyone come up with a higher-profile apostrophe error?
I do quite like 'caressive', though.
(For those who can't see the image, the copy in the advert reads: "Stop! Stop! I lied, as I bit into the pert roundness of the goose fat smothered potato, instantly sending caressive plumes of steam gushing from it's soft, fluffy centre like a hot breath on my lips.")
'More people living in Britain'
An unintentionally ambiguous start to a story in today's Metro (under the headline 'We are, in fact, proud to be British'):
Is that 'more' as in the majority, or 'more' as in more than before?
The former, according to the rest of the story, although I would have assumed the latter.
More people living in Britain see themselves as British first and foremost - whatever their background.
Is that 'more' as in the majority, or 'more' as in more than before?
The former, according to the rest of the story, although I would have assumed the latter.
'Average credit card interest rates have surged'
Spotted on the front page of yesterday's thelondonpaper:
My Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a surge as "as a sudden powerful forward or upward movement... a sudden large temporary increase".
I'm not sure that an increase from 17.2 to 17.6% over a six-month period is either large or sudden. In short, not what I would call a surge.
Following on from that, I think 'surge' is one of those words that is massively overused by newspapers, not just in headlines (because it is shorter and sexier than 'increase') but also in body copy.
UPDATE 14/11/08: Our web editor points out that a key attribute of a surge is its temporariness. So does thelondonpaper believe that interest rates will soon decrease? I'm sure the writer didn't give it that much thought when he chose the word 'surge'.
Average credit card interest rates have surged from 17.2 to 17.6 per cent since May, according to banking research experts Defaqto.
My Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a surge as "as a sudden powerful forward or upward movement... a sudden large temporary increase".
I'm not sure that an increase from 17.2 to 17.6% over a six-month period is either large or sudden. In short, not what I would call a surge.
Following on from that, I think 'surge' is one of those words that is massively overused by newspapers, not just in headlines (because it is shorter and sexier than 'increase') but also in body copy.
UPDATE 14/11/08: Our web editor points out that a key attribute of a surge is its temporariness. So does thelondonpaper believe that interest rates will soon decrease? I'm sure the writer didn't give it that much thought when he chose the word 'surge'.
