Over the past few days I've had an exchange with a paper-mag editor that highlighted the extent to which blogging has eroded my respect for printed media.
I was asked by a print mag to write 400 words about archaeology, and they were in a big hurry. I wrote a quick piece (blog-entry length composition sort of comes naturally to me) and submitted it. The editor then began to fuck around with my text. He did things to it that I didn't like at all, and when I reinstated a few key bits of my original wordings he politely asked me to be more cooperative. "I know it's frustrating for a scientist to go through this, but trust me, I'm an editor." I thought about it briefly, and wrote the following letter.
Dear N.N.,I'm both an editor (two quarterlies for many years) and a scientist. I don't mind you trying to make me sound better, but I am very unhappy to see you change the sense of what I say.
I don't know how to tell you this without sounding rude, but you really aren't offering me much of anything I want: little money, little control, little space, very short deadline. Seeing my name in print is no big deal to me. It isn't anywhere near worth putting that name to an article I don't agree with. You, on the other hand, have a page space to fill, apparently quite urgently. And I can help you.
[...] I append a third version for your consideration.
Best,
MR
P.S. Humanities scholars are the worst for an editor, because they actually believe that they can write.
I just got the guy's reply. He has backed down and sent my version to final copy-editing. This whole attitude only worked, of course, because I truly didn't give a damn whether I got into print or not.
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A bit masochistic to put yourself through that again... I remember reading an entry about a similar event a while back.
Love the PS though!
Yeah, the Vice Magazine case was a little different as they never consulted with me over editing. They communicated their interventions to me by printing some horrible mutilated remnants of my piece and giving me a copy of the mag.
I wrote a piece for a newspaper a couple years back about a bright meteor that had been seen over Alaska. One of the sentences in the piece was something like this:
"The meteor did not reach the ground."
The editor changed this to:
"The meteor reached the ground somewhere on the Alaskan penninsula."
I went ballistic....
You should have offered to write a piece on how print is dead.
BCC, that's awful! Did he misspell peninsula too?
I have every sympathy for editors who try to translate science into popular science, because for the most part scientist are bad at writing in a way that is intelligible to anyone else.
However, editors far too often have an oddly inflated opinion about their own renaissance-style abilities to write brilliantly about everything. Face it, if they could, they'd be bestselling authors instead. If an editor of Nature or The New Yorker asks you to change some wording, you really should take notice. The editors of most magazines do not inhabit the same startosphere (few of us do). Humility and a willingness to compromise is essential not just in the researcher, but definately also in the editor.
Headline: "Pork fat gives you cancer"
Article body: "Pork fat doubles the risk of cancer"
Scientific paper: "50% of people who eat more than 1 kg of pork fat per day experience the risk of bowel concer increasing from 0.01% to 0.02% over their lifetime."
OK so I made the subject and facts up for the example (mmmm! pork fat), but I have seen meaning of a scientific paper completely changed so many times. I'm afraid that "news" has now become another word for "entertainment".
I liked your approach though.
One violation often commited by editors is to work peer-review material into articles. I have several times found my suggestions used verbatim in articles I have reviewed. This, in my opinion, is impertinent and rude both to the author and the reviewer.
/ Mattias
To stick up for my humanities brethren, when I was in grad school (MA, German Studies) I was friends with a lot of Biology grad students, and some of them sought my help for editing papers, etc. I always worked closely with them, because I was very self-conscious of accidentally distorting the meaning of the science they were writing about, but god damn some of them couldn't write worth a damn...it was painful to read. I think they did get tired of having to explain the science to me so I wouldn't over-fix with my stylistic revisions. Clearly I had to defer to them on the science content, but yes, these science grad students had a thing or two to learn about composition and expressing themselves clearly. I think I had more fun than they did, however.
I actually had pretty low self esteem, hanging around all the Science and Engineering students, but when they would wander off their professional expertise and begin pontificating on things that were more my turf (history, economics, etc), I could laugh out loud at some of the ridiculous assertions they would come up with, and it made me feel better about myself, that yes, what I had studied had real weight and content and value to the world also.
I was kind of their one token "weird Liberal arts friend" in that circle, and yet I got on better with them than many of my colleagues in the English department, and while I enjoyed philosophy (from an Intellectual History angle) I could never stand Philosophy grad students.
Mattias, isn't that just the paper authors themselves incorporating your material in post-ref revision?
JJR, I consider myself one of your humanities brethren. In Europe, archaeology isn't in the social sciences, but where it belongs, with history and art history and religion studies.
It probably is, Martin, but I think it is irresponsible of the editors to allow big chunks of text from the reviewers into the article unprocessed, rather than encouraging the author to attune it to the rest of the article. Besides, you know how angular my prose can be and nobody deserves that in their work. :-)
/ Mattias
JJR, in Aus it seems to be the other way around. I (doing maths/geology) had friends doing humanities subjects, who brought me their essays to proof read. One friend, in particular, had appalling spelling and grammar. There was a phase of teaching English as "creative writing". The aim was to get the kids expressing themselves, and never mind spelling and grammar, they'll come later, except that they never did. I was lucky and had a lot of older teachers who believed in teaching the rules, so that you had the framework to be able to express yourself in a way that others could understand. My younger sister had a lot of young teachers, with arty, creative theories, and still (in her thirties) has trouble getting a point across intelligibly.
In dealing with the press, this is still very much what it feel like sometimes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc9WLMCygTU
It looks like you have learned the secret of negotiating - be willing to walk away. If you really aren't willing to walk away, do what you can to convince the other party that you are.
Print media has always been rather awful on science. Good science reporting was exceptional. The difference is that we can now go online and read blogs and articles from real scientists explaining their field and work. They may not be the greatest stylists, but they know their fields, they convey enthusiasm, and they are not subject to the same pressures as a reporter with a deadline and a slot to fill.