When the dinosaur wakes up, once a year...

Chisinau School of Advanced Journalism

‘I beware of being the dinosaur that says over and over again “in our time it was use to be...” Though I would lie if I said that I never did that -  on the contrary, I am successfully transforming into a dinosaur especially when I see grammar-related crimes...’. I made this confession (a necessary auto-citation for the context and text) a month ago, in a quite sleepy morning (the dinosaur was sleeping too), when challenged by my colleagues from Ea.md to discuss about the new generation of journalists and the way they are taught how to do their job. Today, however, I can admit that the grammar - rather its absence - is not the only phenomenon in media that can wake up the monster. A common reaction for most of my colleagues who are or were editors once. Even though, the editors, like spy agents, never stop doing their job.
Is all this lyrical-Mesozoic introduction for the sake of editors? Yes, for them and for us. But, especially for the sake of press consumers.  There are few media people who were not asked at least once: ‘What the hell? No one is going to check the materials today before publishing?!’. Also, there are few of those who did not answer ‘Yes!’, most of the newsrooms gave up on editor proofreading to save either money or time.
The thing is that in a mass-media culture based on a ‘here and now’ principle (and this happens all over the world, not only in our country), an editor who is determined to bring the text to a decent logically and linguistically appropriate condition is regarded as a slow down factor at the best. While, it is known that ‘the break hindering progress’ has to be tackled at the roots, even with the risk of quality loss. The approach based on a ‘it's good enough’ principle — less correctly and responsibly, as people don’t know it anyway, or, being always in a hurry they do not notice the mistakes — became a lifestyle and ... a new way of doing journalism. It's an approach that I felt on my own skin in my last days of working at a newspaper. It’s an approach that I can neither accept any more, nor prevent from spreading at a geometric rate. It‘s an approach that I see and feel from a mile away in the materials of some editorial teams, which often have extravagancy as their only strength. Even though I can’t get enough of extravagant people.

We wailed, got ready and went to the wedding...

Let’s make the things clear: I don’t have any axes of my own to grind. I have been an editor (inclusively) for more than 13 years and I think that it is the most unappreciative job one can do in a newsroom - at least in one from the Republic of Moldova, whether it is a newspaper, television, radio or news portal. This job is unappreciative of editors in the first place, because they are usually trained journalists with a rich professional experience who accept to give away ‘a little’ of their inner journalist in order to take care of the final form of other colleagues' materials.
And they make bricks without a straw in order to get a finite, well-rounded and logically drawn media product. After that, they stay in the shadow. Why? Because the journalistic product belongs to the reporter. He is the star who eventually takes the prizes at the end of the year and who learns from mistakes and never repeats them. There is also a much worse version when the editor becomes a kind of reporter’ lifetime nanny. And it does not matter if the reporter is 20 or 40, or even 60 years old... Actually, it matters.

In this situation, why is this ‘advocacy’ in favor of editor’s institutions? Because there is one for the sake of whom we all claim that we came into the media - the press consumer who does not know what happens besides the scene of an editorial. He does not know that most of those who come to work in journalism today are graduates from the Moldovan educational system that has been wallowing for years in the vicious pot of superficiality. And, inexplicable, there are more and more of those who do not know where to put the hyphen or the comma correctly, though the trend should go into the opposite direction. Also, the consumer does not know that many of the young or older journalists from our country still did not learn to synthesize, analyze and ... give an inspired title, after all. In fact, this consumer often does not know that there is such a system. He just wants to be not confused.

That’s why there is an editor. The editor is the person who makes the journalistic product as perfect as possible and who, arriving home, feels that the whole day he has moved from one place to another some enormous stone boulders that he had to polish before.  At least, this is the feeling I've lived for over thirteen years, almost like in the stories about beaten wives who wiped their tears, put on their flowered dress on and went to the wedding.   

The required and ... invisible binder

What is actually about the position of editor, which neither reporters need, nor editors themselves are happy about? As far as I am concerned, I still think that it is necessary for the press that wants to be professional; an invisible binder, the absence of which is felt only when it disappears. And this is not only because an editor gives you the chance to look smarter and better (as a reporter) or wiser (as a manager). Besides grammar, the editor also means approach, structure, and why not, moral highlights.  
I already see the big smile on the face of some colleagues: spare us, we are doing fine without such binders! Personally, I'd love to know I'm not right. But it is enough to open - page by page, a printed or an electronic paper - any of Moldovan media and convince yourself that those who ‘are doing fine’ sadly stretched the balance.

Consequently, every day we are confronted with wrong names, positions and names of settlements. I still have not understood how, in a TV report, my grandparents' village Horodiste, with an emphasis on the second ‘o’, became Gorodiste, with emphasis on ‘i’. Every day we feel that ‘the material has not been finished’, and that we are reading a raw text - ‘it’s good enough...’. That they have not dug/investigated/got informed enough. The essential question was not discussed enough. Severe deontological mistakes were made.

Being an editor is not only about correcting grammar mistakes - however in a country where the native language is a big intellectual challenge for 90% of the population, and the Baccalaureate, Bachelor, Master, and Doctor’s degrees are given away too easily to everyone, journalists are not an exception. And we correct, and rewrite, and polish stones ... Getting over this ‘rubbish’, however, the editor is an university after the university. There you learn that journalism is a dignified and fair attitude to your profession and the people you write for. Reading is a must in press. One of the key words in journalism is responsibility. In reality, it is exactly the university where young people receive, free of charge, something that cannot be found in any university curriculum - the unwritten on-the-job experience.

Fortunately, my generation had that. Today’s generations... You can call me a dinosaur (I wake up once a year), but I would paraphrase an old proverb and I would say that if you do not have an editor, buy one! Just imagine what a perfect symbiosis it would do with the CEO, Social Media Manager and other smart boys and girls for whom also in the beginning was the Word, no matter how they deny this idea.
Everything else...  ‘I appreciate greatly the emotional intelligence of today’s youth, their ability to keep up with the technologies, but we cannot ignore the more frequently lack of an essential general knowledge’, I said in the same morning interview for Ea.md.  ‘That is why our goal is to create a balance. It's absolutely okay to keep up with the technologies, but it's even better to know how to apply them in tandem with your knowledge. It is essential but also of common sense to know the basic things about the state, politics, government, institutions and events, especially if you want to work in press. By the way, the CSAJ entrance test is based on these basic things!’.

Yes, the second stage of admission was initiated at Chisinau School of Advanced Journalism. And we will tell the students next year that the editor is always right, even when he/she does not. Of course, this is true in case of editors with good human and professional faith - a precondition with which this text was written.
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The article was published within the Advocacy Campaigns Aimed at Improving Transparency of Media Ownership, Access to Information and promotion of EU values  and integration project, implemented by the IJC, which is, in its turn, part of the Moldova Partnerships for Sustainable Civil Society project, implemented by FHI 360.

This article is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The content are the responsibility of author and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.