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| Bill Walsh is a business copy editor at The Washington Post and creator
of the planet's best copy desker's site, theslot.com. He's also a huge fan of Muhammad Ali and has several pages devoted
to The Greatest at his site. |
8 August 1998 |
| 1 |
What was the first survival technique you learned in the Washington
Post newsroom? |
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|
The first was to stay away from the stuffed peppers in the cafeteria.
The most valuable was much more recent: This is a place, for better
or worse, where good work trumps deadlines. As a pragmatist and
a deadline fanatic faced with an alarmingly small window of opportunity
to read stories and improve headlines, I had to unlearn my previous
training -- which was to do a search- and-replace for the F-word
and hit the typeset button when we were already half an hour late
-- and take a more measured approach to the slot job. I've heard
"Great headline!" and even, occasionally, "Good catch!" I've never
heard "Five minutes early! Way to go!" |
| 2 |
What's your favorite Muhammad Ali story? |
|
I'm among those who consider Ali's third-round knockout of Cleveland
Williams (Nov. 14, 1966, at the Houston Astrodome) not only Ali's
greatest performance, but also the standard by which all boxing
performances should be judged.
Nobody could have beaten Ali that night. Sportswriter Jerry Izenberg
told Ali biographer Thomas Hauser that Ali disposed of Williams
so quickly because Izenberg told him Williams was a spent fighter
and would suffer less that way. It's fascinating to think that
such a display of fury could have been motivated by compassion.
|
| 3 |
What was your most regrettable Copy Desk gaffe? |
| You'd think I'd have a ready answer for this, but I don't. One
that comes to mind is the time we used "Shamir" when we meant
"Rabin" (or was it the other way around?) in a front-page headline
in The Washington Times. I didn't write the hed (in fact, my very
best rim editor -- who also happened to be the only Jewish person
on the desk -- did), but I should have caught it. |
| 4 |
What word or phrase that has recently crept into the language
would you banish for all eternity? |
| Let's start with "bad boys," as in "Are those jalapeno poppers?
Give me some of those bad boys!" |
| 5 |
What was the most surprising thing about moving to the business
desk after years on the news desk? |
| I've written for business sections and edited on universal desks,
so there really weren't any big surprises. Just as I thought,
business news can sometimes be fun. And just as I thought, nobody
gets all that excited about durable-goods orders. |
| 6 |
6) How many headlines do you estimate you've written in your
lifetime? |
| A normal person would blurt out a guess. I pulled out my resume
and created a spreadsheet. And the answer is . . . almost 50,000. |
| 7 |
Who is your favorite author? |
| Nicholson Baker. He's most famous for the pruriently interesting
"Vox," but he's better experienced through his first two books, especially
"The Mezzanine." Who else could get so wrapped up in minute details to turn
a temp worker's lunch break and shoelace-buying expedition into
the plot of a novel? Well, maybe a copy editor could. |
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Copyright 1998, Thomas L. Mangan |
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