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In appreciation for the daily task facing reporters, editors

The purpose of today's column is to demonstrate the difficult job that Daily Herald reporters, editors and copy editors do, but through the experiences of others. A good place to start is with this excerpt from a letter writer we asked to revise her submission to conform to our 300-word maximum:

"I understand your position and policy, but I have reread the letter and ... I cannot condense the letter any further. ...

I would ask you give consideration to the letter as written, as it is a response to a very important issue in this area."

What struck me about this request was not so much the writer's self-assurance that she could address her topic satisfactorily with no other words than the considerably more than 300 she had submitted as the common nature of her appeal. We hear it frequently from letter writers, and moreover, it's half of a near-daily conversation between our own reporters and editors.

The other half of that conversation, the editor's half, is usually, "Too bad. Write it shorter."

A similar conversation sometimes is inserted between those two halves. In this one, the reporter's editor goes to the copy desk and relays the message that a promised story absolutely, positively cannot be trimmed to meet the budgeted space dimensions. Copy editors accommodate when can; when they can't, the supplicants hear those five cold words. "Too bad. Write it shorter."

And they do, and their reporters do. Sometimes, the exercise in self-discipline results in a better-written story. Sometimes, details are simply saved for later stories. Sometimes, ideas are lost to the four winds, but they are rarely mourned. There isn't time. There's always the next story hurrying near. So, the writers and editors trim, edit and move on.

Which brings me to an interesting variant on this theme that occurs frequently but was especially evident in discussions with a representative of an agency over a guest column he wanted us to publish. We pointed out that his essay was too long, and he agreed to trim it. Two days later, it came back, still a little long, but manageable. A day later, the author wanted to make a small revision and send us an entirely new version, which arrived a couple days later. Before the piece ran, he decided on some additional changes and the piece was revised yet again. It actually went through several rewrites before he determined it was in final form.

None of that is bothersome. Any experienced writer, any earnest individual, understands the need to write and revise and edit and rewrite and revise again. That's all part of the process. But this example reminded me of how often would-be guest columnists or letter writers can take days to produce a piece that comes in far exceeding the understood length, and that led me to this thought: This gives cause to appreciate what our front-line reporters and editors do - which, most times, is to compress all that angst, editing and rewriting into a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, and fit it into a prescribed space over which they have almost no control.

Yes, they're professionals and they should be able to do it, certainly more comfortably than folks who write only rarely. But situations like these emphasize just what a difficult and demanding task it is.

Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.

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