Buy Your Copyeditor a Drink Night
Coming home now from "Buy your copyeditor a drink night." There was a pretty good turnout--about 15 people. Everyone was bitching about the recent news and the personalization department that's behind it all. David M was telling me that someone crafted a sarcastic personal ad tribute to Amabot in The Stranger, and now someone in that department has blown up the ad to be life-sized and they've posted it up around the office.
It's tempting to think of it as a struggle between good, customer-centric editors and heartless machines--or as we call it in our department, Monkey vs. Robot--but it's just not like that. It's not personal, it's business. A company has got to continually measure its trade offs, and economize where it can. Management reports to shareholders, not to employees. As much as I like to join in with the jeering of my fellow editors (it's great for comraderie), I don't really believe it. But, then again, I never really believed that "making history" jive, either. Certainly no one, or perhaps I should say no editor, will believe that stuff anymore.
It's tempting to think of it as a struggle between good, customer-centric editors and heartless machines--or as we call it in our department, Monkey vs. Robot--but it's just not like that. It's not personal, it's business. A company has got to continually measure its trade offs, and economize where it can. Management reports to shareholders, not to employees. As much as I like to join in with the jeering of my fellow editors (it's great for comraderie), I don't really believe it. But, then again, I never really believed that "making history" jive, either. Certainly no one, or perhaps I should say no editor, will believe that stuff anymore.
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