As a copy editor/photographer for The Daily Utah Chronicle, I spend a lot of afternoon time in the newsroom, either copyediting or uploading photos from recent shoots. There are a lot of interesting/hilarious/hectic/crazy/unexpected things going on in that office every day. Here is a recent observation from one of the days.
As a copy editor, I read through all the stories that would run the next day, or the day after, and make sure everything is correct: spelling, grammar, style, punctuation, facts are checked, story makes sense, etc. There are three copy editors working every day, and we all read the same articles/columns.
One day, a copy editor reads a column that's supposed to run the following day. The opinion writer talks about the '70s in her column, how great of an era it was, and how great of leaders we had during those times: Gandhi, J.F. Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev, Al Capone. One of the tree copy editors working that day fact checks all the names online and finds out that none of them were alive during the '70s! She shares her findings with two other copy editors (including me) who all sit in same area of the newsroom (on the photo, the closer set of desks on the right), and we all laugh for a bit, then try to justify the writer by saying she probably used the wrong transition, which is why it makes no sense to any of us. The copy editor then calls the writer and asks her what she meant by listing all those figures as great leaders from the '70s. The writer says, "What? They were all dead by then?" They talk for a little bit and decide to reword the beginning of the column so that it's not confusing to a reader. When the phone conversation between the copy editor and the writer ends, we all crack up, and the mistake gets spead all over the newsroom. Everyone laughs. Needless to say, the column doesn't run.
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