Editor Meltdown
By
Carl Sessions Stepp
Carl Sessions Stepp (cstepp@umd.edu) began writing for his hometown paper, the Marlboro Herald-Advocate in Bennettsville, South Carolina, in 1963, after his freshman year in high school. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina, where he edited The Gamecock. After college, he worked for the St. Petersburg Times and the Charlotte Observer before becoming the first national editor at USA Today in 1982. In 1983, he joined the University of Maryland journalism faculty full time. In the ensuing 30 years, he also has served as senior editor and book reviewer for AJR, writing dozens of pieces. He has been a visiting writing and editing coach for news organizations in more than 30 states.
To Charles Adair, editing was more stressful than war. Adair spent a year as an Army Signal Corps officer in Vietnam. Later, he edited at the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, and the Niagara Gazette in New York, and spent 10 years as night city editor of the Buffalo News. "I think the stress of being an editor was worse for me than going through Vietnam," he says. "In the Army, if a condition existed or if something had to be done, I could change the condition or I could take action. All too often, I found as an editor that I would be presented with a set of conditions I could not change, but I would still be expected to perform." Adair, 51, is now associate professor of journalism at Buffalo State College. He still carries scars from his experiences on the desk.
Among his most serious complaints: • Catching blame for foul-ups he couldn't prevent. For example, he recalls being criticized for missing page deadlines even though other editors, over whom he had no control, were chronically late in shipping copy to him. • Feeling besieged by conflicting demands. He still has memos criticizing him for not moving copy fast enough; when he edited faster, he then received memos complaining that he was working too hastily and overlooking errors. • Watching what he considered "brutalization" of colleagues. He recalls one editor who delivered blistering critiques that left subordinates "ashen and grim and battered." Adair acknowledges that he wasn't perfect and that he made his share of mistakes. But he thinks newspaper managers should better recognize the frustrations of working under relentless conditions with inadequate control and respect. "Most newspaper people will crawl on their hands and knees to do a good job," he says. "You need to have some appreciation of that, and to help them in ways that work." Would he go back? Adair pauses for half a beat: "To a full time newspaper editing job? Not a prayer." – C.S.S. ###
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