Bottom-top editing

Anyone with experience in journalism knows that often stories are edited at the last minute because of space restrictions. You can't put a square peg in a round hole. When I was managing editor of Oregon Business Magazine, and before that editor of a trade newspaper, I participated in pasting up the publication, which happened on a light table in those days. What usually happened is that a last minute ad meant that room had to be made for it, which meant removing short stories or editing longer ones. If the latter, we usually edited from the bottom -- indeed, stories were written this way, so they could be cropped at the bottom if necessary. This is practical writing, not dramatic writing.

The profile on me in the student paper was written dramatically. As such, it is well constructed because it leaves the most important thing I say until the end, that writing is an existential act. I think this makes for a powerful and revealing ending. However, when moving the online story to the paper version, a fraction of an inch had to be cut and what got cut was the ending. So the most important thing I say is not in the published profile, only in the online version. This, I suppose, suggests the inexperience of the writer, working without noting the practical constraints of the craft.

What I tried to do if I had time was to edit in the middle of a story but frankly there seldom was time to do much thinking. You just made space for the ad as quickly and as best as you could -- bottom-top editing was the rule. It's something that makes journalism so tricky in the real world. You write realizing that the bottom of your piece may well be chopped. This makes dramatic writing if not impossible at least insecure. You never know your published ending until you see it.