Founded as St. Louis Journalism Review in 1970
Former St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Arnie Robbins has been named the executive director of the American Society of News Editors.
The Gateway Journalism Review reported on his retirement here. Read the ASNE news release here.
The Illinois General Assembly failed this month to change the state’s tough eavesdropping law even though federal and state courts have said it violates the First Amendment. Currently, audiotaping without the permission of everyone involved in a conversation is a felony in Illinois, making it unlawful for citizens to tape encounters with police.
Last month, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Illinois law – viewed as the toughest in the nation – could not be enforced as written because it barred recording of public officials’ actions in public. The decision was handed down just before the NATO meeting in Chicago, which attracted large protests and citizen-police confrontations.
Today’s copy editors face the prospect of being tomorrow’s unemployed as the copy desk has begun to go the way of the pica pole and proportion wheel. Just as technology made those ancient tools of the trade obsolete, it has contributed to the decline of the position itself. As more of the job has been mechanized, copy desks have begun to resemble assembly lines. With the growth of centralized editing hubs, where copy for multiple newspapers in a chain is edited and pages are designed, copy desks might better be called copy finishing plants.
These changes have implications for the future of journalism on paper and online, and for how we teach future journalists.
“The role of the copy editor today is to move copy as they get it,” David Arkin,
vice president of content and audience for GateHouse Media, said when he announced the company’s plan to centralize design and copy editing.
In the wake of her successor’s resignation, former Post-Dispatch editor Ellen Soeteber talked to the Riverfront Times about her recollections of the Pulitzer newspaper. Story
The Illinois Times, a weekly and online newspaper based in Springfield (Ill.) does a good job of reporting on local media in the central Illinois region.
Recently, the Illinois Times wrote an in depth piece about Illinois Statehouse News, an online newspaper that started in 2009 and has broke a number of stories about Illinois state politics. The May 10 piece about Illinois Statehouse News questioned its conservative ownership but also reported that its coverage to this point seems fair.