Remember the lyric from that old Bob Seger song “Against the Wind”—“…deadlines and commitments—what to leave in, what to leave out…”? That pretty much sums up an editor’s decision-making responsibilities, which run the gamut from routine and straightforward to sensitive and nuanced, with the caveat that the more difficult calls are not made in a vacuum. Like the astute medical patient, the wise editor seeks second opinions, which my colleagues provide regularly.
Deadlines: you’d think that this would be clear-cut. I mean, a deadline is a deadline, right? But even deadlines are subject to contingencies. The deadline published on the BWNA website (www.bwna.us) for submission of articles, ads, announcements, and Letter-to-the-Board editorials is the second Friday of even-numbered months. But what if either I as editor or Amy Gwilliam as graphic designer are indisposed at deadline time due to travel or other circumstance? Simple: just move the deadline up a week. Or what if a prominent BWNA event, say a general meeting, is scheduled a few days after the deadline? Same thing, only the reverse: move the deadline forward a few days. It’s an example of practicality trumping rigidity for the good of the order. All the same, deadline changes can backfire if not announced far in advance.
Commitments: the mission of our newsletter is threefold—to provide stories of interest to the B-W neighborhood, facilitate communication between the BWNA Board and its constituents and generate enough revenue through advertisements to keep this publication afloat—with the latter a balancing act between maximization of ads and adequate space for articles. A recent decision emanating from the ads/articles tug of war was triggered when two of our clients requested full-page ads.
It would seem like a no-brainer, right?—the larger the ad, the greater the revenue. But two other considerations factored in: layout flexibility (i.e., the capacity to move ads and articles around so that everything fits) and content sufficiency (i.e., articles sufficient in number and variety to make the newsletter worth reading). The newsletter instruction page on the BWNA website specified only two options for ad size—“standard business card” (3.5 x 2 inches) and “double-size” (3.5 x 4 or 7.2 inches)—with no mention of any other ad size. To resolve the quandary, we ended up creating a new option—a half-page (7.5 x 5 inches) ad, proportionally increased in price with a 10% discount and now appearing on the newsletter instruction page.
What to leave in, what to leave out: this is where the rubber hits the road for an editor. First the nuts and bolts stuff: enforcing the 300-word limit for articles (150 for editorials), checking that the author’s name is included and disqualifying any article of a political nature—e.g., one promoting a candidacy or ballot measure. (Note: we gladly leave advocacy politics to publications with room to spare.) The more substantive part of the job involves decisions on topics to cover, articles to include and composition edits from spelling to sentence structure. For assistance on those tasks, I’m delighted to welcome two well-qualified B-W volunteers to our newsletter team: Jenny Pietka (assistant editor) and Myrna Sheie (copy editor). Weights of responsibility lighten with a little help from my neighbors!