When you become an editor, the first thing you need to absorb is that the buck stops with you. As cliche as it may seem, it is as true as it comes.
Reporters come and go, some are more prone to mistakes, some less, but both trials and triumphs reflect directly on the editor. We’re the men and women behind the scenes who are ultimately responsible for crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s, but even so, we’re not infallible. We miss some T’s and I’s along the way and don’t always exercise the judgment we should when editing a piece.
In short, we screw up.
And while everyone does this, when an editor blows it, it’s virtually permanent once it sees the light of publication. It is in print after all and the medium of newspapers — while bowing to some degree to TV and the Internet — is still where many people turn to for information.
What information they receive and what format it is in is the decision of the editor.
When changes were first announced for the What’s Up Entertainment section last week, the news was there but the format was wrong. Dirty laundry was aired and wrongly so.
As an editor, I did have my concerns with the article but I OK’d it and have been second guessing myself ever since. It was a mistake to run it as was and I regret my oversight greatly.
Motives and reputations were questioned but my main failing was to the readership that What’s Up serves.
The changes that are in the wind for the piece are exciting and will ultimately make it a more complete A&E section.
These modifications, which will follow in the coming weeks and months, will indeed make What’s Up a better section. This message was lost in translation in the article, a fact that descended too late for the editor.
What’s Up was in need of an overhaul and although community music, art and events were featured prominently for years, the bigger picture of entertainment and how it affects us all was sometimes glossed over.
It is a changing world.
Thirty or so years ago, the VCR began making its way (slowly at first) into homes across the nation. It was followed by the home video game console. All of the sudden, people had options to books and board games — options, not necessarily replacements. Those who were so inclined also realized that they no longer had to get out of the house or surf through TV channels to find “the best of the worst” to be entertained.
VCRs have all but been replaced by DVDs and video games have made advances so far that the days of “Pong,” “Tank,” “Missile Command,” and even arcade favorite “Pac Man,” seem like not only ancient history but relics of some forgotten civilization.
Throughout it all, movies, art showings, book readings, musical performances, comedy acts, plays and the like, kept on drawing crowds. They always will but by and large no longer command the audience they once did.
Like I said, the world is changing and with it our views of entertainment. It’s becoming as individualized as what each of us likes to eat.
And while What’s Up was serving up well prepared helpings of some things, others were barely touched upon. Some not at all. This too will change as the section strives to evolve into a publication the readers of the North Kitsap Herald, Port Orchard Independent, Central Kitsap Reporter and Bainbridge Island Review immediately turns to for all things entertainment related in the county.
Change doesn’t always come easy or go smoothly, so please bear with us and feel free to comment along the way.
Joe Irwin
Editor, What’s Up
editor@northkitsapherald.com
