When applying, mention you saw this opening listed at JournalismJobs.com.

Position: Editor Location: Reno, Nevada Job Status: Full-time

Salary: Not Specified Ad Expires: November 3, 2011 Job ID: 1286008

Description:

RGJ Media, a Gannett Company, has an excellent opportunity for an experienced Reno Magazine and Custom Publishing Group Editor. This position is responsible for the editorial direction, design and development of our award winning Custom Publishing products. The successful candidate will have a history of outstanding achievement and superior quality in magazine or newspaper publishing, managing expense budgets, supervising editors, assigning duties and must possess a keen grasp of audience development and public relations. Requirements: A minimum of 3 years experience as an editor or manager for a newspaper or magazine. In addition, a bachelor’s degree in Journalism or Public Relations is preferred. RGJ Media offers a competitive salary and an excellent benefits package including medical, dental, vision, paid vacation and company match 401K. RGJ Media recognizes and appreciates the benefits of diversity in the workplace. People who share this belief or reflect a diverse background are encouraged to apply. To apply, send your resume and samples to [e-mail].

Company: BusinessAgility.com

Position: Contributing Editor

Location: San Francisco, California

Job Status: Other

Salary: Negotiable

Ad Expires: November 3, 2011

Job ID: 1286036

Description:

Are you a talented technology journalist with experience in areas such as cloud computing, analytics, connectivity, SOA, and BPM? Are you an artful writer who can capture and hold the interest of IT professionals? Do you have a passion for new media and building active communities?
BusinessAgility.com, a new site focused on BPM and adaptable businesses, has an immediate opening for a Contributing Editor, preferably in the San Francisco Area. This is a full-time contract position with competitive pay, and may be expanded to a full-time staff position with benefits in coming months.
Your role will be to write daily blogs, edit contributions by other writers, take an active role in community discussions, and assist the editor-in-chief in managing this fast-growing site.
The ideal candidate would have all of the following:
• At least five years covering technology, including enterprise systems and business process management (required);
• A demonstrated talent for explaining complex technologies in clear prose;
• Ability to help build and maintain an active online community;
• Experience in working with distant contributors with courtesy and professionalism;
• A passion for new media, including vblogs and social networks;
• Extensive contacts within the technology universe and among enterprise users of IT.
• A strong commitment to journalistic ethics, wit, and high energy.
BusinessAgility is the latest site launched by UBM DeusM, a division of United Business Media and UBM TechWeb that produces award-winning sites such as Internet Evolution, Enterprise Efficiency, and The CMO Site. DeusM, named for the classical theatre term Deus ex machina, specializes in the use of proprietary high-value content and Web 2.0 technology to attract highly qualified audiences to its communities -- and keep them engaged there.
To apply: please send a short cover letter and resume to: [e-mail]. (No phone calls or unscheduled visits, please.)

 

If you’re producing professional documents – whether you’re a copywriter, PR, small business owner, marketing manager, press officer or other media professional – you should copy edit any text you write before submitting it to clients or potential clients. Copy editing improves the quality of your writing, reassures clients that you’re a capable business expert, and gives whatever you’ve written more credibility and impact. Here are the nine ‘how to copy edit’ rules for business writers:

1. Read SLOWLY. Taking time is really the key to copy editing. Once the creative work is done, it’s easy to feel that the work is over. But it isn’t. Dedicate time to copy editing – ideally at least 30 minutes per thousand words. Read SLOWLY, reading aloud if necessary to impede your progress. You’ll catch errors by being slow and pedantic, not by scanning documents quickly. Read documents at least twice, and for over 10,000 words you should be aiming for three reads. Try and have a break in between reads to avoid memorizing the text and reading what you expect to see rather than spotting errors. Scrutinize every word and punctuation mark, and if you’re not sure about anything, double-check it.

2. Add proper nouns (names, places etc.) to your Word dictionary. Isn’t technology marvelous? It goes without saying that professional text should be spell-checked by Microsoft Word before submission to clients. But when you copy edit, you should also double-check all proper nouns not recognized by your Microsoft Word spell checker. Check spelling in a dictionary or online, and add the correctly spelled and capitalized word to your Microsoft Word dictionary – using the ‘add’ button on the ‘Spelling and Grammar’ pop-up box. This will halve your copy-editing time in the future and help eliminate misspellings of proper nouns.

3. Create an error log. Pay close attention to the sorts of errors you most frequently make that aren’t picked up by your spelling or grammar checker. I’ve got a habit of missing out joining words such as ‘to’ and ‘an’. I’ve also been known to write ‘speciality’ instead of ‘specialty’ from time to time. Log your errors and be doubly sure to watch out for them.

4. Be stylish. A style manual is the copy editor’s secret best friend and tells you everything a dictionary doesn’t. For example, should you capitalize academic subjects? How should you format song titles? Which words should be capitalized in a paragraph header, if any? Where should you place commas? Newspapers tend to have their own ‘house style’ and a reference book to match, but if you’re working freelance or for an advertising agency, your best bet is to buy the Oxford Style Manual and stick to it religiously. You might also ask your clients if they have a ‘house style’ before you start writing (although most of them won’t have a clue what you’re talking about).

5. Look it up. If you’re not sure about something, be it the spelling of a proper noun or whether you’ve placed your semicolon correctly, look it up. There’s no shame in it. The English language is a vast, complicated thing and even the most experienced writers frequently double-check that they’re using it correctly. Use your style manual, dictionary and Google to double-check any writing queries, and it’s a good idea to check any figures, dates and facts on Google too. Don’t trust yourself – it’s alarmingly easy to forget a rule you’ve used a million times, especially if you’re looking up several rules a day. Just yesterday I had to double-check whether ‘summer’ needed a capital letter, even though I learned this particular convention at junior school!

6. Keep style records. Consistency is vital when editing professional text, so keep a style sheet to make sure you’re sticking to the same rules throughout. Yes, use a style manual, but sometimes there are little oddities that crop up with a specific client and you need to make sure you’re accounting for these in the same way throughout a document – and perhaps in future documents. For example, if you or your client decides there is a very good reason for all major headings to be in lower case, write this down. If you don’t keep records, it’s easy to get halfway through a document and think, ‘Silly me! I’ve written the first three headers all in lower case. I’d better correct that…’

7. Print text. Your eye interacts differently with text on screen. We tend to look ‘behind’ it and miss key errors. So print out text when you’re editing – you’ll be more accurate.

8. The client is always right. If you’re writing for a client, you can advise about the correct use of English, but when all is said and done, what they say goes. Your job is to make sure you consistently apply the rules, and politely suggest alternatives if necessary. But if your client wants the word Africa to begin with a lowercase ‘a’, assume they’ve got a good reason for it and follow what they ask of you.

9. Nobody’s perfect. Errors happen, and nobody can expect you to be 100% perfect, 100% of the time. Occasional inaccuracies happen to the best of us. The more experience you have, the less errors you’ll make, so be easy on yourself if you’re new to all this. Remember: creativity really is the most important part of writing. But good copy editing will show you’re an intelligent business professional with something important to say.

Copyediting and proofreading are terms used to describe the process of examining written work for errors. While professional editors recognize some differences between the two activities, this article will focus on their similarities. In order to make the process accessible to beginners, the activities involved in proofreading and correcting basic errors will be referred to as "copyediting." By the time you finish reading this, you should be able to perform basic copyediting tasks.

"Copyediting" differs from so-called "substantive editing" in that the goal of the copy editor is to avoid changing the original text any more than necessary. Copyeditors do not generally make heavy-handed changes to an author's work. Instead, the goal is to correct the obvious problems, make the text readable, and preserve the author's "voice" (an author's unique form of expression).

Basic proofreading is always a part of the copyediting process, but it can also involve some deeper restructuring. If a sentence just doesn't flow the way it should, a good copyeditor will improve the sentence by rearranging or rewriting it. See step 2 of this article for an example of this. Rewriting should be done only when necessary, as the goal is to preserve the author's unique voice as much as possible.

If you find it difficult to get the hang of copyediting, remember that it is really just a combination of good English skills and simple common sense. Put punctuation where it belongs, remove extra punctuation, eliminate extraneous words, be sure that sentences make sense when you read them, and watch for misspellings and typos. If the text sounds good when you read it out loud, you're on the right track.

A helpful way to find mistakes is to read it backwards. If there is a mistake in the writing, your mind may ignore it and assume it says the right thing. This happens a lot. Your brain has to actually understand each word if you read it backwards. Read it out loud, too.

If you are proofreading your own work, you might find it beneficial to proofread it again the next day. People often read what they thought they wrote, rather than what is actually written.

Words are like cockroaches – only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor.

One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing, presumably figuring that if a drooling gum-brain like me can scrape a living witlessly pawing at a keyboard, there's hope for anyone. I rarely respond; partly because there isn't much advice I can give them (apart from "keep writing and someone might notice"), and partly because I suspect they're actually seeking encouragement rather than practical guidance. And I'm a terrible cheerleader. I can't egg you on. I just can't. My heart's not in it. To be brutally honest, I'd prefer you to never achieve anything, ever. What if you create a timeless work of art that benefits all humankind? I'm never going to do that – why should you have all the glory? It's selfish of you to even try. Don't you dare so much as start a blog. Seriously. Don't. Sometimes people go further, asking for advice on the writing process itself. Here I'm equally unhelpful. I've been writing for a living for around 15 years now and whatever method I practise remains a mystery. It's random. Some days I'll rapidly thump out an article in a steady daze, scarcely aware of my own breath. Other times it's like slowly dragging individual letters of the alphabet from a mire of cold glue. The difference, I think, is the degree of self-awareness. When you're consciously trying to write, the words just don't come out. Every sentence is a creaking struggle, and staring out the window with a vague sense of desperation rapidly becomes a coping strategy. To function efficiently as a writer, 95% of your brain has to teleport off into nowhere, taking its neuroses with it, leaving the confident, playful 5% alone to operate the controls. To put it another way: words are like cockroaches; only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor. I'm sure I could think of a more terrible analogy than that given another 100,000 years.Anyway the trick (which I routinely fail to pull off) is to teleport yourself into that productive trance-state as quickly as possible, thereby minimising procrastination and maximising output. I'm insanely jealous of prolific writers, who must either murder their inner critic and float into a productive reverie with ease, or have been fortunate enough to be born with absolutely zero self-critical reflex to begin with. As for me, I'm stuck in a loveless relationship with myself, the backseat driver who can't stop tutting and nagging. There's no escape from me's relentless criticism. Me even knows what I'm thinking, and routinely has a pop at Me for that. "You're worrying about your obsessive degree of self-criticism again," whines Me. "How pathetically solipsistic." And then it complains about its own bleating tone of voice and starts petulantly kicking the back of the seat, asking if we're there yet. Some days, when a deadline's looming and my brain's refusing to co-operate, I'm tempted to perform some kind of psychological cleansing ceremony. More than once I've wondered whether I should prepare for the writing process by wishing my inner critic inside a nearby object – a tennis ball, say – which I could then symbolically hurl out of the window before taking a seat at my desk. It sounds like the kind of thing Paul McKenna would do. He's massively successful and can probably levitate.

But before I can even get round to it, I'm plagued with doubts. How far should I throw it? How hard? If I toss 95% of my personality into the garden, do I have to go and retrieve it later? What if it actually works? What if I wind up utterly dependent, and need to perform this ritual every time I'm called upon to do anything – even something as simple as asking for change in a newsagent's – and before long I'm zealously carting a trolley full of tennis balls everywhere I go, violently hurling one into the distance at the start of every sentence, breath, facial expression or bowel movement, and before I know it I've woken up screaming in my own filth in a hospital bed until the man comes in with the needle to make it all go away again? What if that happens?

Yes, what if? So the tennis ball remains untossed, and those typing fingers move unsurely and slowly until the deadline draws sufficiently near enough to become a palpable threat; a looming iceberg whose ominous proximity transforms whines of self-doubt into cries of abject panic. And eventually the page is filled. So then. To everyone who has ever emailed to ask me for advice on writing, my answer is: get a deadline. That's all you really need. Forget about luck. Don't fret about talent. Just pay someone larger than you to kick your knees until they fold the wrong way if you don't hand in 800 words by five o'clock. You'll be amazed at what comes out.

 

ЦЕЙ ТЕКСТ ПЕРЕКЛАСТИ ПОВНІСТЮ, СКОРОТИТИ ДО 25 РЕЧЕНЬ ТА ВИВЧИТИ – ЩОБ МОГЛИ ДАТИ ВІДПОВІДЬ НА ЗАПИТАННЯ:

1. Що входить до роботи редактора

2. Яким має бути редактори

3. Що має вміти та знати редактор

4. Чого хоче редактор

5. Чому я хочу бути редактором

What editors want

Based on my experience on both ends of the process, let me tell you what editors want. Editors want writers who understand grammar and syntax, who know how to gather accurate information, who write with clarity and without affectation, who know what their point is and get to it, and who exhibit intelligence and wit and style. Editors want those writers to submit their work on time, at approximately the agreed-upon length, in the requested format, about the agreed-upon subject. Editors want ideas they haven't thought of on their own. Editors want intelligent, informed, skeptical judgments and insightful observations about the world outside their offices. Editors want writers who work hard and have a professional's regard for craft and professional courtesy. Most of what we see is, sadly, useless. Most of it should never have been mailed, because the writer can't yet write, or wasn't careful, or didn't submit to an appropriate publication, or has nothing fresh to say, or sent in the story hand-scrawled on the backs of envelopes (don't laugh, I know the editor who got such a submission a few years ago). I know the hopes with which writers send us this stuff (I see that hope played out daily in these workshops), and I hate to step on anybody's dream, but the fact is most of what we get should never have left the writer's hand. Most of it wastes our time and, unfortunately, makes us cautious about trying to work with a new writer instead of relying on our stable of dependable if sometimes boring regular contributors. For what it's worth, here's my recipe for success, to the extent that there can be such a recipe:

Learn the fundamentals. And I mean learn them down to your bones. Editors have no time or patience for bullshit about "style" or "but-it's-the-content-that-counts." If your grammar and syntax and spelling are lousy, you're not stylish, you're childish. Yes, the content matters, but if you can't use the language properly, we're not interested. Be an astute, insightful observer. Fiction and non-fiction both rely on detail, detail, detail, on all the meaningful things that escape the attention of the distracted public-at-large. If you can't see and listen and think, you'll have nothing to say, and if you have nothing to say, you're going to have to print your own pages in order to say it. · Think. Editors get more witless comments, empty analogies, dumb comparisons, twisted metaphors, bad similes, and careless statistics than you can imagine. What gets our attention is the carefully reasoned, carefully researched, carefully written, acutely observed, thoroughly thought-out piece. Crawl over your piece word by word by word and question your assumptions, conclusions and choice of phrase at every turn. · Work very hard. If you think three people will be enough to tell you what you need for your story, talk to 10. Then, when you've had it, call an eleventh. I'm serious about this. I've lost count of how many times the last phone call, the one I didn't want to make because I was tired, made the story. You may send me a piece that quotes only one person, but if you've talked to 10, I'll know. Your piece will be informed, it will have a heft and a weight of convincing detail that's lacking in the less-researched, less-reported piece. If it's a work of fiction and you've only half-done the process of gathering what you need for convincing setting, character and dialog, I'll know within five sentences. · Be professional. That means on time, with a clean, proofread manuscript that delivers what you promised and what the editor requested. Surprise us with your talent and effort, not with a story twice as long as what we requested and on a different subject. · Carefully select your markets and be professional in your presentation. Brief, informative queries. Listings of your publication credits. SASE's. Clean manuscripts. If it's nonfiction, facts checked and double-checked (don't assume an editor will do this for you; it's *your* job). No quirky punctuation unless you've got a damned good reason for it; don't assume you're Cormac McCarthy when it comes to making up your own rules of dialog punctuation. · Be persistent. Query your favorite publications over and over again. Submit short stories to your favorites over and over again. Shop your cherished idea or story all over the place. After you've gotten into a magazine, bombard them with follow-up ideas and stories. We're neither deaf nor blind here in editorland, but we are distracted, and the people who get our attention are the ones who will not be denied. Not only do they get our attention, but they make the best writers because they bring the same persistence and determination to their research and writing. · Accept criticism. Even the blunt sort that hurts your feelings. Writing, like any art, is not for sissies. This isn't macho posturing, it's simple truth. Writing may be tougher than it needs to be sometimes, but you won't change anything by whining. Editors are not going to change to accommdate you, at least not when it comes to the fundamentals. As Robertson Davies said, Art precedes and transcends democracy. It is inherently elitist. You make it in the arts on merit and labor (yeah, I can name some exceptions too, but forget them; you can't count on being an exception). When things get tough -- and they will -- be tougher. Do all of the above, and I and other editors will publish your work and pay you, probably poorly. Do all of the above and do it with original style and grace, and we'll kiss you on the lips. Better yet, we'll call you with more assignments and make the effort to dig your next envelope out of the mail pile.

 

Finally, a word about talent. The dreaded T-word. It matters. And not everybody has it. I have never and will never tell a writer that it's time to give up. That's for each person to decide. But no amount of labor will make you a great writer unless you have a talent for it. Some people hear the music, some don't, and I can't explain why Person A was blessed and Person B was not. You can earn a living as a writer without much of it, provided you do everything else I've noted above. But don't kid yourself that talent doesn't matter. I hope this is helpful. That was my intention, at least. Writing is my life and something that I think is essential to a healthy culture. I wish it were done better by more people. Keep trying and keep working. We're watching for you out here, really we are.

· Take a break! Allow yourself some time between writing and proofing. Even a five-minute break is productive because it will help you get some distance from what you have written. The goal is to return with a fresh eye and mind. Leave yourself enough time. Since many errors are made and overlooked by speeding through writing and proofreading, taking the time to carefully look over your writing will help you to catch errors you might otherwise miss. Always read through your writing slowly. If you read at a normal speed, you won't give your eyes sufficient time to spot errors. Read aloud. Reading a paper aloud encourages you to read every little word. Role-play. While reading, put yourself in your audience's shoes. Playing the role of the reader encourages you to see the paper as your audience might.

· Get others involved. Asking a friend or a Writing Lab tutor to read your paper will let you get another perspective on your writing and a fresh reader will be able to help you catch mistakes that you might have overlooked. In addition to following the general guidelines above, individualizing your proofreading process to your needs will help you proofread more efficiently and effectively. You won't be able to check for everything (and you don't have to), so you should find out what your typical problem areas are and look for each type of error individually. Here's how: Find out what errors you typically make. Review instructors' comments about your writing and/or review your paper with a Writing Lab tutor. Learn how to fix those errors. Talk with your instructor and/or with a Writing Lab tutor. The instructor and the tutor can help you understand why you make the errors you do so that you can learn to avoid them. Use specific strategies. Use the strategies detailed on the following pages to find and correct your particular errors in usage, sentence structure, and spelling and punctuation. Proofreading can be much easier when you know what you are looking for. Although everyone will have different error patterns, the following are issues that come up for many writers. When proofreading your paper, be on the lookout for these errors. Always remember to make note of what errors you make frequently—this will help you proofread more efficiently in the future! Do NOT rely on your computer's spellcheck—it will not get everything! Examine each word in the paper individually by reading carefully. Moving a pencil under each line of text helps you to see each word. If necessary, check a dictionary to see that each word is spelled correctly. Be especially careful of words that are typical spelling nightmares, like "ei/ie" words and homonyms like your/you're, to/too/two, and there/their/they're.Reading the paper aloud (and slowly) can help you make sure you haven't missed or repeated any words.Make sure each sentence has a subject. In the following sentence, the subject is "students": The students looked at the OWL website. Make sure each sentence has a complete verb. In the following sentence, "were" is required to make a complete verb; "trying" alone would be incomplete: They were trying to improve their writing skills. See that each sentence has an independent clause; remember that a dependent clause cannot stand on its own. The following sentence is a dependent clause that would qualify as a fragment sentence: Which is why the students read all of the handouts carefully. Review each sentence to see whether it contains more than one independent clause. If there is more than one independent clause, check to make sure the clauses are separated by the appropriate punctuation. Sometimes, it is just as effective (or even more so) to simply break the sentence into separate sentences instead of including punctuation to separate the clauses. When you have plenty of time to revise, use the time to work on your paper and to take breaks from writing. If you can forget about your draft for a day or two, you may return to it with a fresh outlook. During the revising process, put your writing aside at least twice - once during the first part of the process, when you are reorganizing your work, and once during the second part, when you are polishing and paying attention to details.

Use the following questions to evaluate your drafts. You can use your responses to revise your papers by reorganizing them to make your best points stand out, by adding needed information, by eliminating irrelevant information, and by clarifying sections or sentences. Find your main point. What are you trying to say in the paper? In other words, try to summarize your thesis, or main point, and the evidence you are using to support that point. Try to imagine that this paper belongs to someone else. Does the paper have a clear thesis? Do you know what the paper is going to be about? Identify your readers and your purpose. What are you trying to do in the paper? In other words, are you trying to argue with the reading, to analyze the reading, to evaluate the reading, to apply the reading to another situation, or to accomplish another goal?

Evaluate your evidence. Does the body of your paper support your thesis? Do you offer enough evidence to support your claim? If you are using quotations from the text as evidence, did you cite them properly?