[[November 2013: I am hired by the press of atlantic city as a copy editor and told by the copy desk chief that the desk has a “hands-off” culture. “we pretty much just fix spelling and grammar errors and design the pages.” I don’t want to totake the job but I want to move away and to do that I need money.
December 2013: I change the label over a photo of people placing poinsettias onto church pews from ‘preparing for the coming of the lord’ to ‘preparing for Christmas services’ and my coworker ignores my edit and says she doesn’t see the difference.
Spring 2014: disciplined for changing a headline about kara walker’s sphinx from ‘purely sweet homage to black labor.’ Disciplined for calling out the fact the press ran ‘real mother’ in a headline about adoptive kids meeting up with their birth mothers.
August 2014: lay out a nation and world page day after ferguson protests; take a lot of time making sure the page includes historical and social context; (middle-class, white, suburban) copy desk chief pulls article on police militarization and writes on the proof “that dead horse has already been beaten,” then goes on to redo the entire page. Throughout that month I continually reword “riot” as “protest” or “demonstration” and change “was shot by police” to “police officers shot x” substituting the name of the officer whenever I had it.
Spring 2015: An article comes to the copy desk about a man named Philip White who died in police custody in vineland. The story is vague, its only source is the police department’s press release (white, ~30, died in police custody after being arrested for disorderly conduct. No further information is available.) The next few paragraphs were Philip White’s arrest record (he was arrested last year for stealing baby formula from walmart) that was the entire thing. Outraged, I google him to at least get a quote from his friends or family or more information about him for the photo caption. The google search for his name are 12 pages long. It turns out the vineland cops set their dogs on Philip White and they ripped out his throat in front of witnesses, and there’s cell phone footage. He was unarmed, in his early 30s, a dad. Hot fury engulfs me. I call every editor I need to and tell them
we’re changing this story. I’m rewriting the headline and the lede and the first five paragraphs and I’m taking his arrest record out and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’m sorry, I will actually walk out right now over this if I have to. All the editors say ok, yes, and the next day I hear that the reported complained I shouldn’t have messed with his story, that he had reasons for not talking to witnesses. Yeah?
Have you ever read an article on an arrest and thought, this is actually just a rewritten press release from a police department? How about an article on a “clash between protestors and police” (note that language) that relies only on police department sources, not acknowledging that the officers are active agents in the clash? Have you ever thought, the only reason police officers release people’s criminal records after they kill them is to try to demonize and blame the victim, to absolve themselves of responsibility, to say, he was dangerous, he had it coming? Have you thought about how disproportionate the policing of black and white communities is? How “disorderly conduct” is a charge that could mean anything (same with “resisting arrest” and a literal suitcase of other charges)? Have you ever thought about how fucked up depictions of women and minority groups in the mainstream media are, how all of this serves to uphold and maintain a toxic and destructive white supremacist heteronormative patriarchal status quo? How trauma is collectivized? How last night my boss told me to “bump up the drama” on a label over a photo of two people who were shot and killed at work yesterday? “try ‘slain on camera’ instead of ‘virginia shooting’” how, also last night, we had to get “his side of the story” after a boxer punched his child’s mother six times in the face, getting her airlifted to the hospital? And then we quoted him- saying “it’s not that serious”- before her? Oh, but we always have to “consider both sides”! Have you thought about the precedent that sets?
I’ve thought about this – all of this – every day for two years
I can’t decide if I’ll remember copy editing at a newspaper as the worst thing I’ve ever done to myself or the best. I will never stop believing that these changes need to be made. Copy editing is political. It’s the most political thing there is, as a copy editor, as a journalist, every day you make an active decision to either uphold or subvert the status quo. Don’t tell me it’s not a decision. Don’t tell me you’re being led around by the newspaper voice and your editors and you just have to quotes that press release, don’t you? The police are the official source, you have to listen to them, yeah?
You don’t. ask yourself: why? Why? Why? You aren’t a mouthpiece for power you’re a fucking human animal and you need to care about what other people are going through. Broad brush depictions of groups of people as they come through the newspaper affect people’s perceptions and as a result they fuck with people’s daily lives and well-being. Even if it is in the most miniscule way, as a copy editor you have the power to change this. Don’t act like it’s just spelling and grammar.
Becky and I got into an argument once about I don’t even remember what but in it she said, “it’s not the words that matter, it’s the attitude behind the words. Changing that word doesn’t matter.” She’s right and wrong. It is the attitude behind words that matters – that is exactly why we change the words.
I’m leaving my job September 4 to move to los angeles. I don’t know if I’ll ever work at a newspaper again but I am proud of myself for showing up every day. I’m proud of myself for the changes I ws able to make. I will never stop believing this is important.
At the journalism program at my college we were taught ‘objective’ we were taught ‘stay out of it.’ If you are reading this and you haven’t figure it out, I want you to know: there is no ‘objective’. There’s only the shit history has given you. You’re either upholding the status quo or disrupting it, but the status quo is not and has never been neutral.]]
