Jerry Springer, ’gators and assigning editors

When a promotion isn’t and words that make you read

Dr. Ink offers advice, serious and humorous, to editors on a full range of problems and issues, journalistic and managerial. Questions may be real or hypothetical, and may be rephrased to protect personal or institutional privacy. Send them to drink@poynter.com.

Dear Dr. Ink: I’m a reporter now, but have an opportunity to become an assigning editor. The trouble is that almost all the assigning editors I know and respect seem like they lead miserable lives. And it’s no wonder, when I look at the lives they lead: Long hours, no overtime, not all that much more pay, cut-throat competition with their colleagues for advancement, and an endless parade of reporters (including me) with legitimate and spurious gripes. So tell me, Doc, why newspapers have let these jobs get this way and why anybody would take one of them?

Answer: Dr. Ink shares this reporter’s concern for the fate of assigning editors. Concern is not enough. Newspapers need to do something to recruit, develop and reward a new generation of assigning editors. Such editors need a constellation of talents:

• News judgment that contains the traditional and unconventional.
• A strong sense of what makes a story good.
• A desire and ability to coach reporters.
• A technical knowledge of the reporting and writing process.
• A willingness to listen and ask questions.
• Enough political savvy to steer a story through the process.

Even if a person had these skills, they would be wasted if the editor had to spend too much time and energy in meetings.

Therefore, Dr. Ink suggests a new distinction, which could lead to two separate job descriptions. The Meeting Editor and the No-Meeting Editor. The Meeting Editor would do nothing but attend meetings. The No-Meeting Editor would perform the useful, creative, and ennobling tasks above.

Dear Dr. Ink: You obviously read a lot of newspapers. Do you watch much television news, and don’t you think newspapers get a bad rap for the things that TV does?

Answer: Most days, Dr. Ink tunes in to watch Jerry Springer. It is a guilty pleasure, to be sure. Since the show has turned down the physical violence under the pressure of political scrutiny, the producers have settled on a new format. It could best be expressed with the title: “Trailer Park Love Triangle.”

Most of the guests are ridiculed by an audience that serves as an ostracizing Greek chorus. Adultery, betrayal, bizarre sexual practices, adult incest provide the common story lines.

Now the devolved doctor has been known to rationalize his peccadilloes, so be not surprised that he tries again. Where else in the media, beside Springer, do middle class, mainstream Americans get a look at the lives of those living at the margins. On Springer the poor and dispossessed get their say.

Springer candidly attaches no redeeming social purpose to his display of the polymorphous perverse. That’s not Doc’s point. If we don’t like Springer, where else can we turn where the media give authentic voice to the voiceless? Where readers, oh where?

Dear Dr. Ink: Why are there so many alligator stories in Florida newspapers?

Answer: Because ‘gator’ is such a great newspaper word. Recently, Dr. Ink was served up a breakfast news treat to go along with his oatmeal: This story in the St. Pete Times: “Alligator attacks swimmer at resort.” The blurb reads: “The reptile drags a woman under as she swims naked with her family at a Pasco nudist camp. She survives.” And then the lead: “A woman swimming naked with her family at Pasco County’s Lake Como Nudist Resort survived a bloody attack by an 8- or 9-foot alligator Wednesday.”

(The Writing Doc would be tempted to put “Wednesday” after “attack” so the lead would land on “alligator.”)

The reporters and editors take the story as far as it will go. The words alligator, reptile, gator are repeated nine times before the jump. The words naked or nudist five times. The Doc’s favorite sentence is “Other nudists who had been lounging nearby on the sandy lakeshore applied pressure to gashes on [the woman’s] ankle and arm.” (Film at eleven!)

Dr. Ink thinks he will read any story with the word alligator or nudist in it, and especially if both words are in the same story. Here are some other news words that Doc finds arresting:

• Lightning
• Bizarre
• Headmistress
• Puppy
• Margarita
• Shark
• Stiletto
• Tattoo