Connections: Fast News
It’s been at least 10 years since people started asking me if I had retired. Even habitual readers seem surprised when I tell them I work a whole lot, and that the boss, my son David, finds plenty of jobs to assign me. I guess my title of publisher doesn’t make that clear.
What I love most is editing (whether it’s called copyediting, or line editing, or what have you). Editors here are responsible for the whole shebang: the structure and clarity of a story as well as the finer points of grammar and text style. Carissa Katz, our managing editor, and Baylis Greene, an associate editor, are at it full time, although they also write interviews and features whenever they can and Carissa edits the photos. Irene Silverman, editor at large, and I edit part time.
What I tell my questioners when they wonder if I have retired — after I’ve explained that, no, I’m still going strong — is that I am really not cut out to run the show in the very changed world of the 21st century. My time was the 1980s and the early ’90s. Today, the responsibilities of the editor in chief have grown exponentially, not just as the community has grown radically but as technology has taken over the world. Me? I don’t even remember how to follow someone on Twitter. Forget Instagram.
These days, not only is the boss thoroughly tuned in to the digital world, but we now have a digital-products editor here at The Star. Together, David Rattray and Taylor Vecsey (who also finds time to report and write, especially about the work of the East End’s volunteer first responders) are making our website the place to go for breaking news and colorful features. Even if you, like me, are generally more comfortable reading a printed page, The Star’s easy-to-find online version is compelling. We don’t always have space in print for everything of interest, but the vastness of the Internet leaves room for it all.
The truth is, I am becoming addicted. I take a look when I go to the computer in the morning, and I check it out before this column goes to bed — that is, as the presses are about to roll. This morning, I saw four news stories that had been posted the previous day, and a batch of news and features about events that occurred after last week’s print edition went to bed.
There’s no getting away from the speed with which everything moves now, and The Star is meeting the challenge of being there when it happens. Among other things, the online edition gives readers (lookers?) the opportunity to enjoy a slew of photographs that can’t make it into print, from images of fires and accidents to snaps of Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton making the scene. Try it, you’ll like it.