5/3/93

The Editor Shrugged

We never make mistakes, but then it happened: We left out a comma.

    Finally the weekend was over and I could go back to work. It was a stinky Sunday morning, rainy and cold, but I threw myself out there into the misery and hummed a happy tune all the way to the office.
    "Good morning, everybody! Coffee ready?"
    "You bet. I came in early to make sure it - hey, did you see the paper this morning? We made a mistake. A mistake! In the doggie story on page 2, fourth graph, there was a comma missing. Jeez, we screwed up!"
    The Editor-in-Chief was sure to be in a state. He doesn't allow us to make mistakes. And we never do. We would have to print an apology.
    I hurried over to my place on the newsdesk. At each work-station there was a hot cup of coffee, a copy of the morning newspaper, a clean keyboard, a sharpened pencil, lots of work to do and an eager-beaver preening the work of prize-winning journalists. I was 45 minutes early, but everyone else was already hard at it.
    I could feel, with my feet, the beat of the thrumming presses downstairs, higadoon, higadoon, higadoon, higadoon. That great old Goss ES-180. I was married to it, we all were. God, we were lucky to be working here.
    I loosened my tie, started up my computer and cleared my throat. Everyone said "shh!"
    The President-and-Publisher came by. Like most mornings, he had printer's ink on his shirtsleeves. He liked to personally inspect the big blue presses first thing every morning; he did not like to hear complaints about his product during his bus-ride to work.    Of course, everyone on the bus reads his paper every morning, and he likes them to get their money's worth (he carries a bag of change in case anyone requests a refund).
    The P-P looked tormented, exactly as one would expect a newspaper's CEO to feel when his readers have spent NIS 3.20 and got gypped a comma.
    The Editor-in-Chief might have to resign.
    The proofreader would surely try to jump off the roof again, just as she did back in '74 when she let "indivisibiliities" go by.
    Our ace reporter ran into the newsroom and breathlessly handed me a sheet of paper. "I got a scoop!" He was so proud, and we all gave him the thumbs-up. I whipped out my blue pencil and read through his dramatic account. I said: "I'm sorry, I have to change a word." The reporter responded, "Thanks for improving the story." I volunteered to type it into the computer myself, as the typing pool would be extra-busy today working on the prime minister's fascinating speech, which we got as an exclusive.
    A young, pretty orphan wearing rags walked by selling roses, and me and the guys bought one for each of the ladies in the office. They squealed in delight, and we blushed.
    The telephone rang. "Good morning," I said cheerily. "This is the Post Newsdesk. May I help you please?" It was a wrong number, but I managed to convince the caller he should be advertising in our newspaper. If we had space for any more ads.
    We'd certainly have lots more space if we kept leaving out commas.
    We all knew that the copy-editor who committed the omission was in deep trouble. There had been whispering. She's a gold-bricker. She doesn't do a good job. She's moody. And now this. The workers' committee would not defend her from the ire of the Editor-in-Chief, because she had let us all down.
    An elderly gent raised his hand and was excused from the room. We knew he was not going to the bathroom, because it wasn't the lunch-break yet. He needed a breath of fresh air, and so he hurried to the archives for an invigorating full-lung sniff of musty old newspapers. It was a quick-fix addiction we all enjoyed.
    Finally, the Editor-in-Chief arrived. We rose out of respect as he came into sight. He greeted us with a glower. Clearly, there was a comma on his conscience.
    But instead of walking directly to his office, he stopped at the newsdesk. He took off his fedora, shed his jacket and rolled up his white sleeves, revealing the printer's garter above his elbow. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. He puffed on his cigar. After a long fear-filled silence, he spoke.
    "Mistakes can happen."
    And he was gone.
    A cub sub-editor named Sparky spat indignantly. "No they can't happen, not if we really cared about this old journal. Gosh, you never see goof-ups in other newspapers." Other newspapers? You wouldn't catch me reading any of that trash!

THEY FIRST discovered me when I was just a boy, selling the paper at the corner of First and Main. "Get yer Post here, best newspaper in the world, only a grusch." I had a very loud voice. It was just my luck that the Editor-in-Chief lived across the street.
    One day he handed me a grusch and I gave him a copy of the paper. I flipped the coin high in the air and caught it deftly. I grinned. He winked. It was just like in the movies.
He motioned me over and snapped open the newspaper to the Wanteds. He pointed to a small notice:

HELP WANTED
Boy
Required for Newspaper Work
and it was signed, "The Editor-in-Chief."

    He looked at me with twinkly eyes. "Can you spell 'Cat,' kid?"
    "Can you spell 'anthropomorphology?' "
    I got the job.
    I was a copy boy for 18 years. I learned the business from the bottom up, inside out, left to write over and above my duties. Then I got a promotion: Copy-Editor In Charge Of Obituaries, Ferd'nand And The Bottom Half Of Page Eight. As far as I was concerned, it was the bestest job in the whole world. I still think so, after 14 years.
    In all that time, I never flubbed. In this business, any error is a public scandal; folks all over town talk about it for days. You see, the public trusts us. We're like the men and women of the Knesset, people look up to us, they have faith. How could we let anyone down?
    I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. That's no big deal, we're all like that here. All of us were hand-picked and spent 30-odd years proving we were good enough to get into the Editorial Department. But so what, we're just like anyone else in any other establishment. That's what makes this country great.

I FINISHED my coffee and put down my pencil. My work was already done, and just to make sure it was the best I could do, I did it all again. The managing editor, a crusty but benign man with wise eyes and a big heart, placed a hand on my shoulder and said, "Good work, son."
    There were still a few minutes to quitting time, so I grabbed a broom and swept out the place.
    I paused briefly, thinking to myself how lucky I was to be working at this proud institution, smiled, and went right back to work. For the salary I was getting, it was immoral to waste my owner's time.
    The owner. He was like a grandpa to all of us. He wanted us to be happy, we wanted him to be rich. And vice versa.
    Well, there's nothing so unusual about that, is there?