My Week at Temple University: All of the Editing, None of the Sleeping

From last Friday through this Friday, I was editing, memorizing, and regurgitating information constantly as part of a pre-New York Times multi-platform news editing residency through the Dow Jones News Fund. I can tell you the names and capitals of 90% of the world's countries, as well as lecture on some pretty obscure chunks of the AP and New York Times stylebooks. (The next time you see me, please quiz me on the names of the major airlines headquartered in every country and how they appear in copy.) One of the other students in the program calculated the number of hours of sleep he got across the past seven days: It came out to 28. That's four hours per night.

Sounds about right.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty tired. But I feel prepared to start at the NYT on Monday. I knew almost nothing about the logistics of print journalism prior to the residency, from page design to the printing process, as all my experience has been in digital journalism. But I'll never look at a print paper the same way, especially when it comes to headlines.

The residency was directed by Dr. Edward Trayes, a journalism professor at Temple University who's taught every Dow Jones multi-platform editing residency at Temple since 1968, and has trained nearly 700 editors. In the 50th anniversary commemorative video, the Marine drill sergeant is described as both a bear of a man and a teddy bear.

Also sounds about right.

The other editors I've spent the past week with are also headed to prestigious papers, from the Wall Street Journal, to Newsday, to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to the Philadelphia Inquirer, to the Associated Press. And, thanks to Dr. Trayes, I know we're all going to be just fine.

Other highlights from the week: Temple has amazing food trucks. My absolute favorite was the beef bibmbap from Korea House, a fried egg, beef, rice, chili sauce, and veggies bowl of heaven that was so good I went back and ordered another one the next day.

I also had some amazing Middle Eastern shawarma from Pita Chip.

My favorite moment from the week? Dr. Trayes lined up an enviable roster of guest speakers. Jerry Schwartz, one of the AP Stylebook editors, spent nearly an entire day going over stories with us line by line and even took suggestions about changes to next year's stylebook (I have my fingers crossed for 'donut' -- I did my best!).

Bill Connolly, a retired New York Times editor and author of the New York Times Stylebook, also delivered invaluable insights from his many, many years in the editing field. Of course, I had both sign my copies of the AP and New York Times stylebooks. Guess I"ll be keeping the 2018 AP edition forever now!

I headed to Philadelphia today for a one-day blitz through the city (I can't move in to my NYC apartment until tomorrow, so I spent Saturday night in a Philly hotel). I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, LOVE Park, Reading Terminal Market, the Liberty Bell, and Independence Hall, then took a ghost tour of the city. That post is coming soon, but rest assured I had oodles of fun!