Walmart? Wal-Mart?

Here is something from a CNBC web post about Wal-Mart versus Walmart:

What's in a name? Apparently, a lot of complications.

Wal-Mart employees are known for spelling out the company's name in a famous cheer: "Give me a W! Give me an A! Give me an L? Give me a squiggly! M-A-R-T!"

Well, forget the "squiggly".

There's a new rule book of sorts on how to spell the name of the world's largest retailer. Media outlets are being notified by 'Walmart' (Wal-Mart? Wal*Mart?) via an editor's note at the end of news releases.

"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the legal trade name of the corporation," the note says. "The name 'Walmart,' expressed as one word and without punctuation, is a trademark of the company and is used analogously to describe the company and its stores. Use the trade name when it is necessary to identify the legal entity, such as when reporting financial results, litigation or corporate governance."

Um, what?

Gallery Q or Q Gallery

Watch out when you receive a story about the Gallery Q Artists Cooperative in Stevens Point. Whoever submits the copy always gets the name of the gallery wrong.

Area codes

A story on the Daily Herald Web site says state telecommuniation regulators want phone customers in the 715 area code to begin dialing the area code for all local calls because of the upcoming 534 area code overlay. When should our four newspapers start including the 715 area code for all phone numbers listed in our stories?

PBS

Just a friendly reminder that PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service. A story I edited today referred to PBS as Public Broadcasting System.
Which reminds me, CBS used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System. It now just stands for CBS.

It's not easy being "green"

Going "green" is such a hot topic lately: green building, green energy, green jobs. Often in headlines and on first reference, we put quotation marks around the word "green." But I don't think we're 100 percent consistent. So perhaps we need a ruling on how this should be done. Is it necessary and beneficial to use quotation marks around the word "green" in headlines and on first reference?

I searched AP's Ask the Editor archive, and I found this: "AP doesn't put green in quotes on the assumption that it has become virtually a synonym for environmentally friendly policies."

Is there any reason not to follow the AP approach?

-Elizabeth

Station ID

While editing a story, Liz and I discussed how to identify the WSAW weather channel. The story identified it as channel 7.3. Since many of the television sets I see label it with a hyphen, we decided to identify it as 7-3.

Hossein in the membrane

I've noticed lately a recurring problem with Associated Press photos of the protests in Iran, in that the name of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been repeatedly misspelled "Hossien" in the cutlines on DC 5.  It's not the fault of any of our copy editors here, but it's something we need to be vigilant for when reading stories about the situation in Iran.  It's "Hossein" just like Saddam Hussein, just with an O, not a U.

Also, apparently I've read enough Iran stories now to recognize Mousavi's full name on sight.

TV or DT?

When the local television channels switched to digital, their call letters changed a bit, too. WAOW-TV is now WAOW-DT, WSAW-TV is now WSAW-DT, and so on. For accuracy's sake, we should go the DT route, but some stories I've read (and some television station Web sites) are sticking with the TV designation. Any suggestions of how we should go?

Giving the business

I've just received a breaking news bulletin that we have canceled our Motley Fool coverage, making the Central Wisconsin Inc. page no longer able to host our Foolish content.

To help fill the space, we can add more wire articles (preferably with art, as it's a big space to fill).  It's also okay to grab an article from Friday (if the page is done on Saturday) as long as we're sure it's still timely and it didn't already run.

(This post is a bit of a return to form for me, as I will be trying in the future to get more content up on a regular basis.)

Know what you're writing about

A column written for Wisconsin Rapids' GO section had a historical goof. The column was about the Glenn Miller Orchestra coming to Rapids. The writer said Glenn Miller joined the Army in 1938. No so. He started his successful civilian band in 1938, which he disbanded when he joined the Army in the fall of 1942. The only reason I know this is because I'm a big Glenn Miller fan. But what if the copy editor knew little about Glenn Miller? How would he or she know whether anything the writer wrote was correct or not? (OK, this is more for the reporters, but I hope they look at this from time to time.)

And for the record, the Army was known as the Army Air Force during World War II.

City names

Two Wisconsin cities tend to be misspelled when it comes to press releases and the like: La Crosse and Fond du Lac. Many spell La Crosse as one word, while the D on Fond is left out.

Urban legend?

Once, after typing in an obituary into the system, the copy editor added the following note at the bottom for the other editors to see: I know this reads like (blank), but that's how the (blank) of a funeral director wants it to read. And, yes, the blanks do replace what you think they do.

This obituary made it into print, complete with the copy editor's note.

Muphry's Law (sic)

Something I came across this morning that I had to share: Muphry's Law gives a name to conventional copy desk wisdom.

What's in a name?

Like two, to and too, Wisconsin has Menomonie, Menomonee and Menominee. Menomonie is a city in western Wisconsin, home to UW-Stout. Menomonee is a river in Milwaukee and the name of a Milwaukee suburb, Menomonee Falls. Menominee is the county north of Shawano County.

Proofs

Lately, the night desk has been finding several dayside proofs left for us over the weekend. This past Saturday, there were almost a dozen. I understand that with furloughs, people's job expectations have changed and expanded.

Beginning next week, there are 4 people scheduled every Friday on night desk. Please, whoever is proofing pages during the day Friday, continue to do so. If you are working on night desk on Friday night, please make sure that all proofs are looked at before you leave Friday, with 4 of us, it should be doable. It's just a bit much for 2 people to do on Saturday with the normal pages.

Basically, I'm asking that night desk copy editors make sure all day side proofs are edited and to Dan before Saturday. Make sure to check the round table. Thanks!

--Kristy

Double check addresses

I just had an important reminder about the need to confirm addresses. In Wednesday's restaurant review, Brokaw Corners address was listed as 17550 County Road W. Something in my gut said that address was wrong. After checking it out, it turns out the address is T7550 County Road W. T as in town of Texas.

As former Daily Herald managing editor Joel Christopher told me, "If your gut tells you something is wrong, trust your gut."

Internal links

Copy desk,

You folks have, for months, done a fantastic job of including internal links and following the myriad requests I've made of you (adding stories to special sections (themes) ,embedding video, etc.) .

Given our need to keep everyone at the appropriate number of hours during the furloughs and Liz's leave, I'll ease the burden of these "extras". Please, perform this duty when you can, but if you can't, e-mail me and I'll do what I can in the morning (although I'll be helping the day desk quite a bit over the next couple of weeks and likely won't be in as early as usual).

I appreciate the enhancement you have added to countless stories. Just keep me posted on what's left undone.

Thanks,

— Brian O.

Page proofs

With the furloughs and such, I'm trying to find a better way to get Life, GO! and Everest Herald page proofs edited in a timely, efficient manner so the evening copy editors don't have to edit many, if any, pages. I've tried two ways:
1: The honor system, in which I leave them near Amy Kimmes and hope people find the time to edit a page or two.
2: The draft, in which I drop pages off at editors' desks (sometimes when they aren't there) and expect them to find time.
Does anyone have a third way?

Copy desk meeting today

From Mark T.,


I have instructed Kerry to call together a copy desk meeting today to address who will do what tasks to get us through the first quarter. We'll be calling on all able-bodied page proofers and page designers to ensure we're adequately staffed each day.

I propose we meet at 5 p.m.

Age in obituaries

We had a glitch in a Stevens Point obituary that was caught before publication. It said the woman was 89 years old when she died, but she was born in 1922. That means he was 86 years old when she died.

I assume most, if not all, Macs on the copy desk have a calculator on the dashboard. It makes sense to do the math before an obituary runs.

In case you didn't know ...

I've found the following Web site, Noble Desktop, http://www.nobledesktop.com/shortcuts-indesigncs2-mac.html, that show shortcuts for InDesign. I'm guessing we all know some of the shortcuts, but not all of them.
The Web site also has links that lead you to other Adobe programs.

Maintaining quality control

Serious topic here.

In light of the recent staff furloughs, in combination with Elizabeth's current maternity leave, I feel strongly that the copy desk will need some serious help in the coming weeks. Looking at the schedule as it now stands, I am reminded of when Ben Schultz quit right before the holiday vacation season started in December 2007 and how it threw the scheduling into disarray. We have almost constantly only 3 people on staff nearly every day, with only one day in the next four weeks where we'll have four people on staff. Suffice to say this is going to be a very exhausting system that I worry is going to burn out copy editors in the long run.

Even the reduction in the newshole isn't a significant help to us, because there are no fewer essential pages (covers, 3As, region, and obituary pages). These all still need to be paginated and proofed every day, and pagination takes a good chunk of time.

Now, scheduling is something we can't really change right now, it's just something we are going to have to live with. But I think there are ways we can maintain our level of quality control in these rough times without adding staff or hours, and I want to get some dialogue going on how we can do this.

One idea I have — and one that will require cooperation from the editors at all four sites — is for copy editors to get stories on Night Desk as soon as we can get them, as in edited by site editors as soon as can be done. When we can get pagination done earlier, we have more time for proofing, but when we're waiting for stories that could've been done sooner, it leads to a mad dash at the end of the night, and that's when easy mistakes get made.

Any further ideas? If we ignore the problem, we're just going to end up with an exorbitant amount of overtime on our hands, in which case we may as well have not furloughed at all. And I mean real, concrete ideas, not just "work smarter, not harder."

How is it going?

We've now gone a full week with the reduced newshole and the managing editors determining what goes where. Any feedback on what can be improved or streamlined?

Elizabeth sent an e-mail to me last night that lamented a lack of art for Rapids stories in today's edition. A standalone on 1A left the Rapids' site a little short on content for the carousel on our homepage.She asked in the e-mail, "Are there backup carousel items we should use in situations like this?"

The answer is, "Yes."

A shortage like this can be addressed in two ways.

First, you can search for any number of evergreen items I've created for the carousel in Saxotech. If you search under Category: All and Keyword: frontpagecarousel05 (or 08, 09 or 10), you'll generate a list that will include items like momslikeme.com, Cozi or user galleries. You can copy these files into the desired date and you should be set.

You also could find a stock photo at www.clipart.com. This only works with certain stories, but it is an option. If you don't have the login information for this site (and it comes in handy for more than carousels, think 1A promos), I've included it below.

Here is the organization, username and password for www.specdept.com:
gannett
cwgroup
7711

Once you've logged in, click on the clipart.com link. You can then download photos fit for online (or small in print).

Finally, just as it is your job to make sure all the pages are clean at the end of the night, it's my job to make sure all four sites are clean first thing in the morning. If you are stuck with any online issue, let me know and I'll try to correct things in the morning (is it really morning if it is still dark?).

Good question Liz.

— Brian O.

Happy Januaury

Having come back from vacation recently and looking through recent issues to understand how we're filling the smaller newshole, I noticed that every single page of the A section of January 1's Daily Tribune read "Januaury" in the folio info, including news, life pages, and the opinion page. It's a bit of a grievous oversight, but one that is easily corrected. If it's noticed early in the day, don't be shy about speaking up to get the template changed, and if it's later in the day, be vigilant about making sure every page that needs to be resent with the correct info is, well before deadline.