ACES Philadelphia

Handouts from selected sessions are now available at http://www.aces2010.org/blog/?page_id=29. We will be uploading more as we get them, but some presenters have chosen not to share handouts. Presenters: If you have a handout, please e-mail it to dan@copydesk.org.

Now that you’ve had a little time to relax after this year’s conference, please take a moment to fill out our conference survey. You can find a link in the program that was provided (see Page 9) or you may receive an e-mail.

This survey is vital to improving our conference programming. The answers are anonymous.

–Daniel Hunt, The Orange County Register

I’m always impressed with the participation level we get at ACES conferences. This year I’ve met more people in all types of copy editing jobs who want to get involved in what ACES does than ever before.

Also, there was definitely more tweeting at this conference than ever before. Tweeting AP Stylebook decisions as they were being announced was a social media highlight.

And while I have the chance, thanks to Chris Wienandt and Deirdre Edgar for their many, many efforts on behalf of ACES as outgoing president and vice president/conferences. Also, thanks and good luck to incoming president Teresa Schmedding and incoming vice president/conferences Lisa McLendon for all the work they’ve done so far and all they’ll do in the future.

The conference may be over for this year (except for the karaoke), but the efforts on behalf of the copy editing profession continue daily. Look for much more coverage of the 2010  conference in the May-June ACES newsletter (plug, plug).

Can’t wait until 2011 in Phoenix!

— Gerri Berendzen

Paula Devlin says she’s learned to stop worrying about the Web and embrace it instead.

After more than 25 years in a variety of roles on the copy desk, Devlin was named an online news editor at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

Here’s what it has taught her:

• It’s fun to be back in the breaking news business, competing with radio and television.
• Journalists need to learn to love their readers wherever they are. Even though print readership is dropping, online readership is increasing. And readers look to newsrooms to stay informed.
• Reporters and editors get constant feedback from readers in real time on the Web.
• The news cycle has been extended dramatically because the Web never sleeps.
• Print journalists need and can learn new skills.
• Journalists are finding online jobs.

The good news, Devlin said: “More people today read content produced by American newsrooms than ever before.”

She said she’s learned that “the delivery device doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the journalism is being read.”

_ Sue Burzynski Bullard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Reading on the Web is different than print so writing needs to be different too.

Studies have shown 79 percent of Web readers scan pages instead of reading them, Yahoo’s Trystan Bass told editors.

She offered five tips for writing or editing on the Web.

• Frontload information. Put keywords at the beginning of sentences.
• Use brief keyword-loaded headings throughout an article.
• Break long paragraphs up into shorter ones.
• Use lists wherever they are relevant.
• Use active voice and active verbs.

Bass, a senior editor at Yahoo, also said print headlines don’t always work online.  “Choose clarity over clever,” she said. “Create the right expectations for the story with the headline.”

_ Sue Burzynski Bullard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

It was great to be in a room this morning with three language greats —  Merrill Perlman, Bill Walsh and Ben Zimmer.

You can follow all three on Twitter to see what they’re saying about language issues:  just search for @meperl, Bill’s @TheSlot and @bgzimmer.

And it’s good to know that the experts on language and grammar can seriously discuss all issues from — warning, false range coming — nouns becoming verbs to the proper plural form of the bar drink “Captain on the Porch.”

In fact, they can do it with both a smile and a laugh and a practical answer. (They agreed on Captain on the Porches.)

Ah, the weighty issues we ponder every day!

— Gerri Berendzen

Memoirs aren’t always “truthy” stories.

Using Stephen Colbert’s concept of “truthiness,” keynote speaker Ben Yagoda analyzed the accuracy of autobiographies at the ACES banquet Saturday night.

“How ‘truthy’ does a memoir have to be?” said Yagoda, a professor of English and journalism at the University of Delaware and author of “Memoir: A History” and “When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse.”

“To some extent it’s a facetious question, and to some extent it’s serious,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

Beth Blair daily upholds the power of copy editing in an arena where copy editing is not so well understood or valued.

Blair, editorial team leader for the national office of the Boy Scouts of America, is the winner of  the 2009 American Copy Editors Society’s Robinson Prize.  The award was announced Friday night at the banquet of ACES 14^th national conference in Philadelphia.

Her work includes running the Scouts’ Media Studio, copy-editing the Eagletter magazine, which has a circulation of 120,000, copy editing in multimedia formats on deadline and working with a large range of people who are not trained journalists.

Robinson Prize committee chairman Alex Cruden said Blair is someone who was named to lead an editing staff at the same time that the staff was cut, and who was asked to train that staff as well as non-copy-editors to handle new roles under a major reorganization.  And meanwhile: Don’t miss any deadlines.

“Colleagues say our winner routinely puts in 12-hour days and is ‘always willing to talk about different ways to do something or better ways to do it,’“ Cruden said. “(Blair) sees beyond the immediate paragraph or page or project to the finished product, and how it should fit into the mission of the entire organization.”

In the words of one colleague, Blair is “the driving force behind the standards that are applied throughout our building.”

“Beth McPherson Blair fully understands that the news for these young readers must be completely trustworthy,” Cruden said.

Blair’s work includes hands-on editing as well as leadership and coordination for publications and documents that affect every level of the organization, from 7-year-old Cub Scouts to the Venturing Scouts to the professional staff and adult volunteers of the Boy Scouts, an organization that plays a major role in educating and training young men in America.

She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

The University of Missouri School of Journalism is the recipient of the 2010 ACES Glamann Award for contributions to editing.

The third annual Glamann Award, which recognizes a person or group that has helped raise copy editing’s profile, was presented Friday night during the banquet at the 14^th annual American Copy Editors Society conference in Philadelphia.

The first journalism school in the United States was founded at the University of Missouri on Sept. 14, 1908. Even 100 years ago, Missouri was dedicated to the craft of copy editing.

Its course book for 1908-1912 lists a course called “copy reading” taught by Charles G. Ross. (Ross taught at Mizzou and then went on to work at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he won a Pulitzer for newspaper correspondence in 1934. Ross later served as the press secretary to President Harry S. Truman before dying of a heart attack at his desk in the White House.)

That early course description in the academic catalogue said: “Copy-reading and correspondence: This is a study of special feature and special correspondence in newspaper work, the handling of the telegraph, copy-reading, and headlining. It includes laboratory practice in all these lines. Five times a week.”

Since then, Missouri has made the teaching of copy editing an essential part of its journalism curriculum. The University of Missouri’s Journalism School has taught several of our industry leaders with its famous hands-on Missouri method.

Mizzou also has supported copy editing by sending students and faculty members to ACES national and regional conferences, hosting an active student chapter and providing academic support for the ACES 2009 national survey of copy editors.

The University of Missouri, home of the Reynolds Journalism Institute, is constantly evolving along with our industry, yet still maintains high standards for excellence.

— Teresa Schmedding,  ACES executive committee,  BJ ‘89 MA ‘09

Glamann Prize slideshow

Merrill Perlman offered editors tips on usage and language at her popular “Only if only I knew only” session.

Only may be a little word, but where you put it means a lot, Perlman said.

Put only closest to the word or phrase it’s modifying.

As Perlman pointed out, “Only I hit him in the eye” has an entirely different meaning than “I hit him only in the eye” or “I hit only him in the eye.”

When only moves around, it can change the meaning of the sentence by modifying other parts of the sentence.

Editors should always ask, “What is only modifying?”

_ Sue Burzynski Bullard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln