fromtheeditr: Local Daily Needs Designers Who Can Do Everything

What copy editors used to do*

Roanoke's local daily, which recently "gutted" its graphics department, according to one of those designers who was canned, is looking for ... guess what? Designers.

Here's the announcement: "We want somebody with the design and topography skills to not only produce dynamic sports, news and features pages but also to produce informational graphics, including maps, charts, tables and simple diagrams on deadline. The ideal candidate will also feel comfortable editing copy and writing headlines."

This is one of those "new reality in journalism" jobs that means you must to be able to do everything that has ever been done in order to meet minimum qualifications. Reporters are now photographers (the photo department has also been "gutted") and videographers at our local daily. Designers are copy editors. News editors are photo department heads.

I know a couple of the designers the paper set adrift recently and they're very good at what they do (one of them, Michele Crim, worked for us at the Blue Ridge Business Journal), but I don't know them to be journalists. They're designers. If you want to see what a designer does when put in a position of editorial authority, look at Bella magazine. And cringe.

Over my long career in journalism, I've had to do just about everything (including delivering papers, stuffing them with ads, selling ads, hiring and firing people, and all the disciplines in the newsroom) and I fully understand the value of a broad base. But I don't believe it's always good.

When newspapers consolidate--as the Times and World-News did when I was there--they often make the newsrooms more efficient and help the publication cover more and serve the community better. I have watched as our daily paper has followed that thought recently by using stories from its sister papers in Virginia (Charlottesville, Richmond, Lynchburg) to great advantage. Sometimes it works.

I will also venture that over all those years in journalism, I won more awards as a designer than anything else, which does not mean I was a good designer. Actually, I never liked it, but that's what I was asked to do. Ultimately, the awards meant I was a good newspaper designer, which is different from being a good designer. A professional designer is better at that craft than a news writer/editor pushed into it. Always. And a designer will not be as good a copy editor as a wordsmith.

So you're making sacrifices in quality for quantity. That's what we're seeing in the product that newspapers give us these days: compromise and hyper-efficiency geared toward profit.

(*This photo, from allposters.com, is Alfred Eisenstaedt's shot of Lynchburg native Douglas Southall Freeman in his Richmond News Leader office. Freeman won two Pulitzers and is in the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, which also inducted moi three years ago.)

We want someone with the design and typography skills to not only produce dynamic sports, news and features pages but to also create basic informational graphics, including maps, charts, tables and simple diagrams on deadline. The ideal candidate will also feel comfortable editing copy and writing headlines. - See more at: http://blogs.roanoke.com/timessquare/2013/10/have-an-eye-for-design-were-hiring-a-graphic-artistdesigner/#sthash.utefJeGs.dpuf

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Have an eye for design? We’re hiring a graphic artist/designer!

The Roanoke Times | roanoke.com is looking for a versatile graphic artist/designer to join its newsroom.
We want someone with the design and typography skills to not only produce dynamic sports, news and features pages but to also create basic informational graphics, including maps, charts, tables and simple diagrams on deadline. The ideal candidate will also feel comfortable editing copy and writing headlines.

- See more at: http://blogs.roanoke.com/timessquare/2013/10/have-an-eye-for-design-were-hiring-a-graphic-artistdesigner/#sthash.utefJeGs.dpuf

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