SoCal ACES: March 4, 2000, Meeting

Copy Editors and New Media:
A Whole New World Wide Web

Southern California ACES meeting
March 4, 2000, at the Press-Telegram

The panelists (from left): Don Chareunsy, copy editor at hollywood.com; Elaine Pan Zingrabe, deputy editor of latimes.com; and Larry Pryor, director of the Annenberg Online Program at USC.

As the "dot-com" frontier expands, an increasing number of experienced print copy editors are heeding the call to cyberspace, and many students are bypassing low-paying newspaper jobs altogether to join the online gold rush.
About 40 copy and news editors heard from the experts about opportunities and blurred lines in this largely undefined industry during a panel discussion March 4 sponsored by the Southern California chapter of ACES and held at the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
The program, "Copy Editors and New Media: A Whole New World Wide Web," was moderated by Los Angeles Times copy editor and ACES executive committee member Ron Smith. After the panel session, ACES members discussed plans for the 2001 conference, which will be held in Long Beach.

Panel member Larry Pryor, director of the Annenberg Online Program at the University of Southern California, said greater demand for online news means greater demand for workers with copy editing and headline writing skills.
"You're going to have to be able to boil down information effectively," said Pryor, an assistant professor at USC and the executive editor of its Online Journalism Review. "Speed and immediacy are what this medium is all about.

Steve Devol, Kristen Walbolt, Bill Macfadyen

Listening to the panel discussion are (from left) Steve Devol and Kristen Walbolt of the Los Angeles Times,
and Bill Macfadyen of the Santa Barbara News-Press

David Heitz of the PT

David Heitz of the Press-Telegram
asks the panelists a question.

"You have to adjust the way you look at and define news," he said, adding that it doesn't have to mean compromising journalistic principles or integrity.
      Don Chareunsy, formerly a copy editor with the Orange County Register and the Press-Telegram, said his experience is serving him well in his new job at hollywood.com, an entertainment site. "There was no transition between copy editing news and copy editing for this site," Chareunsy said. "It's the same skills."
      Chareunsy said better hours and weekends off were major considerations in making the switch, and he didn't even need to understand coding to land the job. "All I knew about [computers] was e-mail and surfing the Web." He is now learning HTML, the coding language used for building Web pages.
      Pryor, a former reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times and once editor of latimes.com, said the USC program "takes students beyond" just knowing HTML, though understanding code is helpful in landing a good job right out of school--one that could pay nearly double what a regular desk job would.
      "If you add [Web design skills] to being a good copy editor ... it means that their entry-level salary ranges from $35,000 to $45,000 a year," he said.

But job security is not usually part of the formula, as some dot-coms start up quickly and lay off workers just as fast. "It's a very fluid situation out there," Pryor said. "You have to be flexible. It isn't like lifetime employment at one operation."
      Pryor said that two years out of college, online editors with the ability to design pages could expect to be making $50,000 to $55,000 a year.
      News sites such as latimes.com look for a mix of job experience and news judgment in hiring online editors, said deputy editor Elaine Pan Zinngrabe.
      The work at latimes.com is "probably more related to the news editor function than to the copy editor function," she said. Zinngrabe, like Pryor and Chareunsy, has a newspaper background. She was a copy editor at the Seattle Times and the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y.

She said that in addition to news judgment, online job candidates should know HTML, Photoshop, Freehand or Illustrator, and the basics of design. Zinngrabe also looks for competency in multimedia programs such as Real Audio and Real Video.
Pryor suggests that would-be online editors take courses through university extension programs, Web-based self-education classes and community colleges.
He cautioned editors and aspiring journalists not to be frightened off by the technology. "This is not rocket science," Pryor said. "This is really approachable technology."

HTML links
Tutorials for building Web pages

Web Monkey HTML Basics	HTML Goodies
Web Monkey Photoshop Tutorial	HTML Primer
Web Monkey Intro to Flash 4	Web Frontier HTML Guide

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