Asheville News

Asheville Citizen-Times prepares to consolidate copy desk, lay off more workers

Jason Sandford August 5, 2009

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

It appears to be official now at the Asheville Citizen-Times – the newspaper will consolidate its copy desk function with two other newspapers, thus reducing the number of local employees who do that job.

Sources tell me that the Citizen-Times will merge its copy desk with two other Gannett-owned newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Greenville News. It appears that in Asheville, there will be one supervisor slot and three copy editor slots. Current copy editors in Asheville can apply for those three jobs, and if anyone’s willing to move to Louisville, that will be an option. If you don’t make the cut, you’ll be laid off.

This will all come to pass in the coming few months, loyal Ashvegas readers tell me.

I’m not sure how many copy editors are currently employed at the Citizen-Times. Perhaps eight or 10? I’m not sure. Copy editors at the Citizen-Times are essentially page designers – they lay out the newspaper on computer and send it off to be printed – and do minor editing. Copy editors usually have a specialty. There are sports copy editors and features copy editors and news copy editors.

I’ve been waiting for this copy desk consolidation to happen, and thought it might occur in the recent round of lay-offs at the Citizen-Times. It’s just another blow to the local production of news. You lose institutional knowledge, and knowledge about the local community, when you don’t have copy editors who live in that community editing the work that comes out of that community.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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5 Comments

Lena August 6, 2009

In response to Confused, yes, with the recent developments in software, *almost* anyone can lay out a page, but it takes special talent to truly *design* a page. There’s a major difference between those who layout and those who design. Unfortunately, most of the true, trained designers, a task not just ‘anyone’ can do, have since left the paper a long time ago. The crazy layouts that are in horrible, hard-to-read configurations are called ‘doglegs’ – a sight that makes me cringe every time I see one!!!! Just because it moves to a centralized location doesn’t mean it’ll stop though.

Sad state of affairs for my former colleagues, some of them who brought me up when I was a copy editor cub …. CS, KH, MS, RM, KW, DP, JM & DH, I’m wishing the best for all of you right now!

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Soni August 6, 2009

brbill may be snarky, but he has a point. Pretty much the one and only time I ever read the ACT was years ago when I bought a subscription to the Sunday paper when I was living in Missouri prior to my move to Asheville, just so I could get the feel of the place.

They somehow managed to totally screw that up (I ended up getting something like 2 or 3 papers after about 3 months of back and forth "We don’t know what’s wrong" discussions), and I ended up just canceling out of frustration.

About a week or so after I arrived, I picked up my first Xpress and that was pretty much all she wrote for the ACT – the stories in the Xpress were fresher, more interesting, more relevant and better written.

These days I get my national news from the Times and the net, and local news from the Xpress. I don’t know when the last time I even glanced at the ACT was. In fact, I pretty much forget they exist until Ash reminds me with one of these layoff posts.

That said, I’ve most certainly got no beef against newspapers (my mom worked the newsroom beat for years, I read the Times religiously and I love the Xpress). Just ravening indifference to one specific paper that’s largely made itself irrelevant by it’s publishing choices.

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Confused August 6, 2009

Not sure where the roles overlap, but I think that a copy editor is one who actually edits the text for style and formatting, which I would expect are the few remaining positions. Maybe they will actually proof the stories for grammar and non sequiturs.

I would also expect that all positions tied to page layout will be eliminated, as nearly anyone could be taught to use a computer to layout a newspaper page. I have seen demos of Adobe software that will make stuff for you like using PowerPoint.

One thing I hope will stop is the crazy page layouts where the Citizen-Times squeezes text into horrible configurations. It makes reading an article nearly impossible.

Does anyone doubt that the Citizen-Times will start to look like the Courier-Journal? From the pages I have found online, I think it will be a good change and I will welcome being able to read an article from one page to another. Dare I dream to think that errors of fact will be prevented? Maybe this will be the start to real reporting too…

Unrelated, it looks like downtown Louisville just had to deal with major flooding. If summer has been this mild, then will Asheville have another flood this fall or winter?

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blueridgebob August 5, 2009

Wow, blueridgebill. A disparaging remark about the local newspaper. What an original, insightful thought. I think people have been ragging on newspapers since the invention of movable type. Thank you for advancing the dialog on this emerging topic.

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blueridgebill August 5, 2009

Who really cares what happens at the Citizen Times? I certainly don’t.

This paper is a non event and has been for years. It keeps getting smaller and smaller and the crap that is still in it is not worth reading. And their web site is also pathetic. I don’t know of anybody who subscribes or reads it.

This paper has become irrelevant for our city and region. A sign of the changing times.

R.I.P. Citizen Times.

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