The Daily Designer October 29, 2019
Learning to
Design
DAILY DESIGN
Photographs and stories by Elizabeth Quinlan
Janette Wah’s desktop screen, surrounded by bunnies and other memorabilia, displays 10 pages to be printed the next day, including previews of the pages and whether they will be printed in
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10.29.18
MIDTERM MAGAZINE
At The Arizona Daily Star, Janette Wah designs the all-important, most seen page of the newspaper— A1.
On Saturday, October 13, at 2 p.m. at the Arizona Daily Star newsroom, Janette Wah was working on the front page of Sunday’s paper. For Janette and many other designers and editors in the newsroom, their day begins at a budget or news meeting, discussing and confirming what will be in the next day’s paper. On the weekends, senior editor Hipolito Corella draws a mark-up of the layout for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s pages on a whiteboard. As the budget meeting commences, people sit at a nearby table and go through the layout together. They also discuss content going into the different sections inside the paper. At her desk, Janette pulls up all the important applications and web pages she needs, including databases and websites that provide the designers with their needed photos and text. Janette also pulls up Slack, the main communication application, and InDesign. InDesign is connected to InCopy, and as Janette puts material into the program, the borders become different colors to indicate their progress. A story with a green border is finished. Orange means the story isn’t ready and yellow means it is being worked on. For photos, Janette also puts the photos in, decides which ones to include in the story, then converts them from RBG— used online—to CMYK for print. Janette knows many hotkeys, but this is one process that requires going photo by photo to the legacy image options to export them as a new image, essentially. Merlin is where designers store their stories, including the converted versions. Janette’s journey began with copy editing, where she worked for the Dow Jones News Fund. “I didn’t think anything of it but I got in and I thought they were prank calling me,” she said. Now with a 33-year-old journalism record, Janette has worked at QuarkXPress and in Palm Springs, Hayward, Calif., Dallas and Mesa, among others. After working on copy desks, Janette said she asked, “Since you’re copy editing why not learn design also?” and began working on the design desk. While newspaper design applications have changed since she first started designing papers, Janette said the fundamentals, like knowing what a story will
be like so she knows how to play it on a page and the basic formats of a page, haven’t changed. “You have to know what goes on, have to use your head and can’t just let everything go on around you,” Janette said, which was part of why she wanted to branch out onto the design desk: to learn more about the intersectionality of all the different desks, and get involved in a different part of newspaper design. That, and it’s fun, too. Janette said her favorite part of working on the design desk is seeing how the end product turns out. She keeps a level head as she designs, calmly navigating awkward gaps between ads and story space, working with the copy desk to obtain content to squeeze into spaces in the newspaper. On the other side, Janette said that the whiteboard dummy “doesn’t dictate what I do.” It is more of a way to visualize what content needs to be there, without setting everything in stone yet. As a designer, too, “every day’s a puzzle,” Janette said. It is the designer’s job to take all the stories and ads and piece them together into one carefully crafted newspaper that includes jumps, photos and alternative story forms like Q&As, FAQs and more. It is a challenge to work with so many moving pieces all at once but an experienced designer manages to make it work. As an experienced designer of many years, Janette does not even bat an eyelash when a situation goes awry. Working with a database has its downsides too, like InDesign freezing intermittently or photos being connected to the wrong cutlines. In the face of stressful or frustrating situations, it is instead easier to let it go and start back at square one. While technology is not always on our side, autosave can also help cushion the blow of a frozen application. When asked what suggestions she has for beginners, Janette said, “Just say you’re interested.” It is rare for people to turn down an offer at free help, and many experienced staff members at the Star are more than willing to talk to any student interested in getting more involved with journalism. Expressing an interest in design opens new pathways up to internship and networking opportunities that may eventually lead to a job or at least a conversation about what design really is.
“You have to know what goes on, have to use your head and can’t just let everything go on around you.”
n grayscale or color, also known as CMYK.
Elizabeth Quinlan
MIDTERM MAGAZINE
The Daily Designer
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...and editing
Most editors and designers have designated desks with desktop computers that use a network on Indesign to access all media content, copy and other material used.
Each day, a senior editor makes a mock-up of what tomorrow’s paper should look like, and on the weekends, they put up the layout from Friday to Sunday.
At 6:35 p.m. Friday night, the Arizona Daily Star newsroom is relatively quiet. A few keyboards click-clack as editors and reporters work on stories, designers create layouts for tomorrow’s pages, and some of us with free time browse the web. But conversat ion easily flows between us when we go to grab snacks from the back, or see someone score a point in football or baseball—when there’s a game playing, you can bet we have it pulled up on one of several TVs distributed around the newsroom, and have it playing from a wireless stereo sitting on Martin Rosales’—the Star’s night editor and copy chief’s— desk. I enjoy working as an apprentice at the Daily Star’s copy desk because each day is a new wealth of learning moments, friendships and professional development. You really feel like you’re contributing to something when you work there, seeing all the energy being put into the newspaper daily, whetting my journalist appetite with images of working at top-tier newspapers editing pages upon pages of content and working with the top leaders in the newsrooms to make decisions. The reality is that, while I may be far from the dream, my contribution makes a bigger difference than I think. There is always content that needs to be edited, and the larger staff a newspaper has the more content they are able to produce and edit to put into the newspaper. With my contribution, we complete tasks more quickly and are able to move onto editing more content. Editing is a fundamental skill for many students and I am proud (and relieved) to be such a valued asset in this newsroom. So valued, in fact, I will be coming back next semester. Copy editors are my favorite people in the newsroom, and not just because most are staffed by intelligent individuals. It’s also because we are the behind-the-scenes workers who people never really think about or even con-
sider in the production of the newspaper, but we are the ones who keep the metaphorical newsroom well-oiled and clean. I love the fact that I can see the print product everyday and know that I contributed by editing and writing headlines for a good chunk of Saturday’s, Sunday’s, and Monday’s paper.
that were fine the way they were or making unnecessary changes that affect a writer’s voice or take from the flow of the story. Rookie editors often feel that they must prove themselves to their higher-ups, but keep in mind as you learn and develop toward your larger goals that less editing may be OK.
Headline writing and cutline writing are the essential pieces of a story, sometimes even more than the copy. Every letter can change the meaning of a sentence, and to a point affect the credibility of a paper if an error eludes us. People’s eyes are always drawn first to the bolded letters at the stop of a story, then to the photos and captions below. As an editor, my eyes dance across the cutlines several times, checking for clarity, accuracy, and spelling. Beginning editors encounter a larger learning curve than seasoned ones—we must build a repertoire of good editing and understand in-house style, from President Trump (no Donald on first reference) to local street names and tweaking the preferred vocabulary here and there. From August to mid-October, Martin looked over my shoulder after every edited story to check everything— headlines, cutlines, copy. He adjusted text, checked vocabulary and referenced the Associated Press Stylebook. At first, it may feel a little daunting to have someone looming over your shoulder all the time, examining your edits and making sure that they are accurate, and are leaving the story better than it was found. In the beginning stages of editing, it is normal to feel like you must make changes to show that you are capable and are making a difference. By that same token, as an editor becomes more experienced, they know when to leave their hands off clean copy instead of inserting mistakes into a story just because they want to feel like they’re making a difference. Editors also sometimes edit too much, changing things
On the copy desk, several editors are all assigned different tasks: we have editors assigned to specific desks, like the sports editor Ryan Finley and editorial page editor Sarah Gassen. We also have Martin and good ‘ol copy editors. One of us hunts for what wire stories to put into the paper. Wire stories are usually taken from the Associated Press and are usually hard news about the biggest stories at the time. We have an A1 page editor and several other members who pick up copy as it comes. I edit wire stories usually, and some local stories for the home and life and business sections. While the stories may not be as riveting as the local breaking news, they make up a good portion of the paper. I have worked at the Arizona Daily Wildcat and Tucson Local Media in the past. Each one requires different skills, and I use different parts of my tool belt. While the Star does not focus so much on fact checking and is more focused on the AP Style, TLM was the complete opposite. As you edit, you learn that each place varies by size (both of the staff and paper itself), and content. AP Style is a transferable skill no matter where you work and is a must if you want to enhance the clarity of a story. Good grammar and syntax also apply to everything, while InCopy knowledge and in-house style will depend on where you work. Overall editing is a very essential part of any newsroom. It is what makes a cohesive news organization look professional to readers and tells people we are serious about our product.
ELIZABETH QUINLAN
MIDTERM MAGAZINE
Unless there’s breaking news, designers will create what has been planned on the mock-up, creating a clean front page for readers to glimpse when they look at the paper.
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