Content-Type: text/html Pagination and the Copyeditor: Have Things Changed? John Russial School of Journalism and Communication University of Oregon [log in to unmask] 541-346-3750 Paper submitted to the Newspaper Division paper competition of AEJMC, 2000. Pagination and the Copyeditor: Have Things Changed? This study, based on a national random sample of copyeditors and supervisors, re-examines the impact of pagination on copyeditors to see whether conditions found in several earlier studies have changed. Workload, largely the result of the shifting or production tasks into newsrooms, is perceived as higher after pagination, and length of experience with pagination does not appear to diminish the impact. The ambivalence noted in earlier studies was confirmed, but it appears that individuals tend to be either positive or negative about pagination's impact, not both, as an earlier study suggested. The study found some support for the long-held belief that pagination has an adverse impact on traditional journalistic tasks and may lead to an increase in errors, a concern that has been linked to a newspaper credibility crisis. It also found that copyeditors' perceptions of problems in their jobs related to pagination are very similar to those reported more than a decade ago. Pagination and the Copyeditor: Have Things Changed? As newspaper transformations go, the shift to pagination has been a long revolution, one that still has not run its course. In the early to mid-'80s, early adopters installed proprietary pagination systems, and many of these daily papers have since migrated to a second or even a third electronic page-makeup system. Others, particularly a few large metropolitan dailies, just shifted to pagination at the end of the '90s. Still others, though not very many, are not yet paginated.[1] The pagination transformation has been one of the most troublesome in the history of newspapers and technology, in part because it has helped bring about fundamental changes in the nature of news work. A few dailies placed pagination in the back shop or retrained displaced compositors to become newsroom paginators, but the overwhelming majority of newspapers have reduced or eliminated back-shop workers and have editors paginate in newsrooms.[2] As a result, pagination is widely perceived as having increased workload for copyeditors and page designers. Professional publications and a handful of academic studies have raised concerns about the complexity of pagination, the pace of work and the number of additional tasks editors face. They also have examined whether staffing has kept pace, whether the quality of editing and headlines has suffered and whether pagination has had a negative impact on job satisfaction among editors.[3] At the same time, studies and trade journal accounts have noted that editors appreciate pagination's benefits, which include improvements in editorial control of the page-production process, flexibility and creativity. Moreover, publishers appreciate the cost saving that can be realized when page production is moved into the newsroom.[4] Pagination has been a journalistic issue for nearly two decades. The substantial shift of back-shop functions into the newsroom that pagination has engendered also raises broader issues about the nature of professional work in an age of computerization.[5] One such issue is whether information technology frees professional workers to be more creative or turns them into white-collar production workers. This study, based on a national sample survey of newspaper copyeditors and copyediting supervisors, re-examines the impact of pagination on copyeditors. It asks whether the ambivalence seen in earlier, smaller-sample studies and anecdotal reports is evident in a broader, national sample of copyeditors and copy chiefs and whether the problems noted in earlier studies have disappeared over time, as conventional wisdom has long suggested would happen. The study also looks at whether copyeditors feel that the implementation of pagination has had an impact on mistakes, an issue that has been cited as contributing to the crisis in credibility confronting U.S. daily newspapers. The first major finding of a recent American Society of Newspaper Editors report on credibility states: "The public sees too many factual errors and spelling or grammar mistakes in newspapers." It also says, "Essentially, readers don't care whether the reporter was rushed, or that the staff was down three people, or if the copy editor was too busy laying out pages to catch misuses of the common language."[6] Certainly, mistakes are not the only issue in newspaper credibility (the report offers five other major findings), but the relationship between errors and credibility has been a cornerstone of professional education in journalism for many decades, and the suggestion that pagination has led to an increase in errors often has been raised anecdotally.[7] Literature review The rate of adoption of pagination in daily newspaper newsrooms has been slower than the adoption of other newsroom computer systems, such as front-end systems and digital imaging. Trade journals have tracked the progress of pagination since the early 1980s, and academic studies began to appear in the late '80s and early '90s. Proprietary pagination systems, such as those manufactured by Harris, Hastech and Information International, were the first to appear in daily newspaper newsrooms.[8] Pagination using desktop publishing software, such as Quark Xpress, rapidly took hold in small and mid-size papers in the early '90s. The distinction between papers using "off-the-shelf" hardware and software, almost exclusively Quark-based, and those using newer proprietary systems, such as Digital Technologies Inc. or CCI, continues today, with many bigger papers continuing to use the latter systems. Earlier studies indicate evidence of ambivalence and increased workload.[9] Studies of pagination's impact have identified two dimensions of changes in the job. For example, Stamm, Underwood and Giffard factor-analyzed a list of questionnaire items about changes in priorities editors assigned to a list of editing tasks. Two factors - a journalistic task factor and a production task factor - emerged.[10] In examining impacts of computers in newsrooms, Russial makes a distinction between systems and software used for news gathering (such as Computer Assisted Reporting and digital archiving systems) and those used for news production or processing (such as pagination and digital imaging).[11] Impacts may vary by job classification. He argued that those who use news-gathering systems should report positive impacts, because after an initial training period, journalists can use these tools to do traditional newsroom tasks more efficiently. Those who use news production systems should view them with greater ambivalence, because such systems tend to lead to increased workload at the same time as they improve efficiency and flexibility and enhance control of content. Russial calls the process "technological job enlargement" - new production tasks are added to a worker's traditional journalistic tasks. One result may be a limitation in the discretion journalists have in deciding how much time to spend on traditional tasks, such as copyediting and headline-writing. In their examination of pagination at Washington state papers, Underwood, Giffard and Stamm note this workload shift, calling it a "displacement effect."[12] In another study, they find that pagination has contributed to both job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.[13] Similarly, Brill found what she called a paradox of pagination - that creativity was a benefit but that copyeditors were spending less time on word-related tasks.[14] In broader studies of computers and work, the impact of information technology is often construed in either/or terms. Information technology, for example, has been characterized as "professionalizing" or "deprofessionalizing.[15] Computer-based technologies have been praised for enriching jobs by increasing workers' skills through flexibility and cross-training,[16] and they have been criticized for degrading jobs by "deskilling" workers through the separation of the conception of work from its execution.[17] Zuboff, a management scholar, offers the following formulation: Technology can be "automating," that is, it can reflect a replacement of human skills by machinery, or it can be "informating." which refers to a shift from action-centered skills to skills such as understanding and judging information. The computer can be used either to automate or informate.[18] Zuboff says the informating capability of the computer, "the smart machine," tends to eliminate the distinction between white and blue collar work. She suggests that the integration of mental and manual dimensions of work is a positive result of technological change.[19] Russial has suggested that news production systems can be both informating and automating (or enriching and degrading) at the same time and that ambivalence is the likely attitude among journalists who use them. Method This study examines a variety of potential impacts of pagination. To address these areas, a random-sample survey attempted to reach two groups of editors - copyeditors and copyediting supervisors. Previous work indicated that supervisors may not view the impact of pagination in the same ways nonsupervisors do.[20] Surveying copyeditors is not a straightforward matter. In fact, a word often used to describe copyeditors is "invisible." They are not listed in typical reference material, such as Editor & Publisher International Yearbook. To achieve response from both copyeditors and their supervisors, and to avoid the time and expense of trying to get staff lists from a large number of randomly sampled papers, one contact was chosen for each paper sampled and multiple surveys sent to that person. In most cases, the contact was a copyediting supervisor (a copy chief or a news editor) whose name was listed in the 1998 Editor & Publisher International yearbook or in the membership list of the American Copy Editors Society.[21] In several cases where neither reference turned up the name of a supervisor, surveys were sent to a copyeditor whose name was on the ACES list. The contact was asked to fill out one survey and pass the other or others on to copyeditors or a supervisor who fit the following criteria: If a supervisor, he or she was asked to give the other survey to a copyeditor without supervisory responsibilities. In larger papers, supervisors were asked to give copies to non-supervisors in different departments. Different departments often have different constraints, particularly concerning deadlines and staffing. Another rationale for seeking multiple copies from the same paper is that staff members may have differing views on technology and technological changes. Multiple copies are more likely, then, to reflect the range of opinion at a given paper. One caveat is that a supervisor might have passed surveys along to copyeditors who share his or her attitudes. The researcher felt this concern was outweighed by the need to reach copyeditors as well as supervisors efficiently. The sample did not include papers of less than 15,000 circulation. Relatively small dailies typically lack the specialized job descriptions and level of editorial organization of larger papers. Many copyeditors on small-circulation dailies perform a wide range of tasks, including photography, graphic arts and even reporting, depending on the paper's needs on a given day. Consequently, the impact of a technology such as pagination might not be as striking as it is for an editor who spends almost the entire workday on copyediting and pagination tasks. The following procedure was followed: Papers over 15,000 circulation were divided into four roughly equal circulation categories. Each group accounted for 12 million to 14 million daily circulation. Because the number of news staff members, including copyeditors, increases with circulation size, it was assumed that roughly the same number of copyeditors would be working in each group. Papers were asked to return either two, three or four surveys, depending on circulation size. Within each category, papers were randomly selected according to the following schedule: Circulation Papers Surveys/ category sampled paper 350,000 and up 18 4 150-350 25 3 50-150,000 38 2 15-50,000. 36 2 The sample thus contained from 72 to 76 subjects in each of the four groups for a total of 295. An initial mailing was sent in early 1999. Follow-up phone calls or e-mails were made within the next four weeks to newspapers that had returned no surveys. A second mailing was made to contacts at those papers. Additional follow-up contacts, by e-mail or phone, were made to non-responding papers in the smallest circulation category, which was underrepresented in returns. The overall response rate was 174 returned surveys or 59 percent of the sample of 295. Of the 117 newspapers, 88 returned at least one survey, representing about 75 percent of the sample. Seventy-seven supervisors and 96 non-supervisors returned surveys. One failed to note his or her status. Responses were somewhat skewed by circulation group. The number of responses ranged from a high of 59 surveys in the 150,000-350,000 group to a low of 24 from the 15,000-50,000 group, primarily on the lower end of the range, even with additional effort made to get those returns. The study explores four main areas: workload, ambivalence, errors and job characteristics. I. Workload. Has pagination increased workload and, if so, have newspapers increased staffing to accommodate the increase? Workload, according to many anecdotal reports and a few studies, is a key issue. For example, more than 10 years ago, Russial found that editors spent, on average, 15 minutes a page on electronic makeup tasks, a finding that he said had implications for editing quality if staffing did not keep pace. By many accounts, newspapers did not hire enough staff (at least initially) to address the perceived workload increase that resulted from the introduction of pagination systems, and concerns often were raised in trade journals and at professional meetings about overwork, burnout and quality.[22] Respondents were asked whether workload changed for copyeditors as a result of pagination and whether the paper added or cut staff to accommodate pagination. They also were asked to estimate the percentage of time editors spend on page-makeup tasks that used to be done in composing rooms. To examine whether perceived workload decreases with experience, as anecdotal reports suggested it would, copyeditors and supervisors were asked how long the paper had used pagination. It is a common perception in newspapers as well as in other white-collar environments that workload will increase sharply when a complex new technology is introduced and that it will return to a more typical level as employees move along the learning curve. This study hypothesizes that perceived workload will not decrease with time, largely because of the displacement effect noted above. In addition, it is likely that copyeditors and supervisors will report that they spend a considerable amount of time on what had been back-shop makeup functions. It also is likely that workload will be perceived as lower at papers that added staff than at papers that stayed the same or reduced staff. Workload is likely to be perceived as higher by paginators, who bear the brunt of the displacement effect, and it is likely to be perceived as lower by supervisors, who, unless they also paginate, often are not as close to the action as line copyeditors are. II. Ambivalence. Do copyeditors remain as ambivalent about pagination as they were years ago? A related question is, What is the perceived impact of pagination on quality of work and quality of work life? Stamm, Underwood and Giffard used factor analysis to identify dimensions of priority for journalistic vs. production tasks and to identify dimensions of change in the job of editor. They found increased priority on production, which contributed negatively to job satisfaction.[23] In a study of digital imaging, Russial used factor analysis of impact statements to test the hypothesis that because digital imaging is a news production technology, photo editors would be ambivalent toward it - that they will feel it has positive as well as negative impacts on quality and on work life. That analysis produced a key factor that loaded highly on positive impacts, such as flexibility, autonomy and control of images as well as negative impacts, such as increased production responsibility and routinization of work.[24] In this study, also of a news-production technology, copyeditors and supervisors were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about the impact of pagination. The statements were based on variables identified as important in the Stamm, Giffard and Underwood and Russial studies. Responses to the following statements were registered on a 7-point scale with the midpoint as neutral: Deadlines have improved Editors have more autonomy Form and looks tend to be emphasized over content The work is more routine More time is spent on computer glitches Copyediting has improved Editors have more flexibility in design Editors have more control of pages Editors have less time to spend on copyediting and headlines Editors have less flexibility in deciding how to spend their time Editors have to work harder Editors can be more creative Headline writing has declined More mistakes get into the paper Production is a greater priority Computer skills are valued more highly than editing skills Editors now perform a wider variety of tasks The paper looks less attractive The hypothesis is that ambivalence would emerge as a mixed factor - one that had high loadings on both positive and negative impacts, such as greater flexibility and creativity as well as greater production priority and routinization of work. The implication, then, would be that, as suggested by Russial's results with digital imaging, the same editors would appreciate pagination's benefits and dislike its drawbacks. III. Errors. Studies to date on pagination's impact indicate that many copyeditors felt that because pagination increases copyeditors' production responsibilities, less time is available for traditional copyediting. A related perception is that the number of errors in the paper will increase.[25] If this is the case, a perception of increased workload should positively correlate with the time a copyeditor has available for traditional editing tasks, such as copyediting and headline-writing. It also should correlate positively with a perception of more mistakes. IV. Job Characteristics Have conditions of work and problems in the job of copyeditor related to pagination improved over the last 10 years? The expectation often voiced a decade ago (and longer) was that pagination's problems were temporary. Americans have a long history of optimism about technological change, typically equating it with progress.[26] Editors may be born skeptics about many issues, but they are no exception when it comes to optimism and technology. Trade journal accounts of pagination, and interviews with editors in the '80s and '90s often quoted editors as acknowledging problems brought about by pagination but expressing optimism that those problems would disappear as systems improved and editors became more familiar with the technology.[27] In 1989, Russial examined a variety of problems copyeditors faced in the earlier years of pagination. Categories were: Lack of time and deadline pressure, computer problems, stress, eyestrain, inadequate work area, complexity of computer coding and commands, incomplete or poorly edited copy, insufficient staffing and missed deadlines by others. He also examined the nature of work at paginated papers, listing a variety of categories to describe the job. These categories included how creative, varied in scope, challenging, boring, mechanical, people-oriented and production-oriented editors at those papers felt their jobs were. Russial also found that editors who paginated responded differently from those who didn't on some issues.[28] For example, editors who spent a great deal of time paginating reported that computer problems were a greater concern for them than non-paginating editors reported even though both groups spent most of their workday using a computer. Paginating editors also were more likely to complain about inadequate work area. Paginators and non-paginators, however, were very similar in their reports about the nature of the work they did, that is, whether it was creative, varied, challenging, difficult, boring, etc. [29] The hypothesis is that problems in job and quality of worklife, as seen in job characteristics, are likely to show little, if any, improvement over the last 10 years because workload pressures continue. Results/Discussion I. Workload. On the whole, copyeditors and supervisors reported that workload was somewhat higher after pagination as compared with before (Table 1). On a scale with 4 as the midpoint ("the same"), the overall mean was 5.15. As predicted, perceived workload did not drop as a newspaper's experience with pagination increased (Figure 1). All categories indicated increased workload, and the differences between categories was not significant. Anecdotal reports suggest that workload is considerably higher earlier in the pagination process because of the difficulty of putting out the daily paper at a time when staff members are trying to get up to speed on systems that many papers feel take months, if not years, to become second nature to users. This result suggests that the perception of increased workload is roughly the same regardless of experience. This finding is consistent with Stamm, Underwood and Giffard's findings about job satisfaction and pagination. They said, "The results_suggest that the negative contributions of pagination might well persist beyond the first year of introduction."[30] Other hypotheses on perceived workload were unsupported. Editors who paginate perceived workload about the same as their colleagues who do not paginate, not higher. The difference between supervisors and nonsupervisors (t=1.83, p .07) approached significance, but the difference was not in the direction predicted. Supervisors felt workload was slightly higher than non-supervisors did. Also, there was no difference based on size of paper. The difference between perceived workload at papers that added staff and papers that didn't also was not significant. Respondents estimated that copyeditors spent about 40 percent of their time on page makeup tasks that once were done in the back shop. This figure is slightly higher than estimates reported by editors in the early '90s.[31] No appreciable differences were seen in this estimate when broken down by paginators vs. non-paginators or supervisors vs. non-supervisors. With workload somewhat higher across-the-board, has staffing kept pace? In general, the answer seems to be yes and no. Of copyeditors and supervisors who responded to the question about staff size increase or decrease, about 40 percent of copyeditors and supervisors reported that their papers added staff (from 1 to 40 FTE), but most said their papers did not. About 48 percent said their papers kept staff at the same level and about 13 percent reported that staff was cut as a result of pagination. II. Ambivalence Ambivalence remains an issue, but not in the way predicted. Five factors were returned in a principal components factor analysis using Varimax rotation of the item variables (Table 2). Three are clearly negative and two are clearly positive in terms of perception of pagination's impact. This result differs from the prediction that a key factor would have high loadings for both "positive" and "negative" items, as occurred in Russial's study of digital imaging.[32] For example, the first factor, which explained 27.7 percent of the variance, had high loadings (>.5) on four items reflecting new time constraints brought about by pagination. The item "Editors now perform a wider variety of tasks" also loaded highly, and the item "Production is a higher priority" had a moderately high loading (.39). A wider variety of tasks can be construed positively or negatively, depending on whether the impact on the worker is job enrichment or enlargement, and there is some indication that the variety of tasks that accompany pagination are perceived differently by different copyeditors. The same item, for example, showed a slightly high loading on Factor 2, which clearly is a positive-impact factor. Factor 2 had very high loadings on items reflecting greater flexibility, control of the page and creativity and a moderately high negative loading (-.41) on the item reflecting routinization of work. Factor 3 seems to reflect a perception of degradation of work, loading highly on routinization, on the perception that form and looks are now more emphasized than content and that computer skills are more highly valued than editing skills. This factor also had the highest loading for the related item "Production is a greater priority." Factor 4 is another negative-impact factor, reflecting a decline in quality in headlines and attractiveness of the paper and more mistakes. The fifth factor is a positive-impact factor, suggesting improvement in deadlines and autonomy and copyediting. Factor scores were computed and correlated with copyeditors' perception of workload after pagination. The first factor - reflecting new time constraints - correlated very highly (.58, p<.001) with perceived workload. The greater the perception of increased workload, the higher the score on this factor, perhaps explaining a bit better the nature of the workload impact.) Factor 5 - the positive factor suggesting improved conditions - correlated highly (negatively -.27, p=.001) with workload. The internal consistency of the factors suggests that editors tend to be of different minds about pagination, not that they all feel both good and bad about pagination. III. Errors The results on perception of increased errors were somewhat equivocal. Means hovered around the neutral point of the scale (Table 3), and no significant differences were found between papers that added staff vs. those that didn't, between supervisors and non-supervisors or paginators vs. non-paginators, though the latter difference (3.9 vs. 4.4 approached significance p=.07). It may be the case that the overall perception of no additional errors is the result of a socially acceptable response. Asking editors if there are more errors in effect is asking if they are making more errors. Other variables that get at the issue more indirectly provided some evidence of a linkage between pagination and increased errors. For example, as perceptions of workload increased, perceptions of mistakes increased r=.24, p=.005. Responses to the question "In general, do you feel you have time to do your job well?" negatively correlated with perception of mistakes (r=-.22, p=.005). Copyeditors who felt workload increased felt they had less time for copyediting and headline-writing (r=.55, p< .000). They also felt that copyediting had not improved as workload increased (r=.37, p<.001) and that headline-writing had declined (r=.19, p=.03). Computer problems, as well as a number of the other problem issues, correlated significantly with a perception of more mistakes: Item r p Computer problems .194 .015 Eyestrain .257 .001 Complexity of computer commands .240 .003 Incomplete or poorly edited copy .194 .016 Recognition .185 .022 Chance of advancement .223 .006 To summarize, it is unlikely that pagination is the smoking gun responsible for a plethora of errors and by extension, the crisis in credibility identified by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It seems reasonable to conclude, however, that by increasing workload and placing new constraints on editors' time, pagination does contribute to the error problem. IV. Job problems and characteristics. A comparison of job problems with Russial's data from more than 10 years ago shows great similarity. (Figure 2). Lack of time and deadline pressure, insufficient staffing and missed deadlines by others remain the key problems. Means of paginators(4.9) vs. non-paginators (3.9) on the impact of computer problems show a significant difference (t=3.9, p<.001). There was no significant difference between those two groups on any other problem listed. Computer problems also showed the greatest difference in Russial's study in 1989, which did not use inferential statistics. Figure 3 shows that copyeditors' perceptions of job characteristics also is very similar to what Russial found in a non-random sample in 1989. Overall, problems in one's job and job characteristics show little change, despite csignificant improvements in and greater overall experience with pagination systems in the last 10 years. Conclusion The study offers some support for the idea that pagination has changed the job of editor for both better and worse, and that adequate staffing is needed to preserve quality in the face of the additional tasks copyeditors face as a result of pagination. However, the impact of staffing was not clear in the results. Earlier work has indicated that there is considerable variation in how pagination has been handled at papers, even at papers of similar size,[33] and that one paper's heavy burden may seem light to another. Staff size is relative to circulation, but even at papers of similar size, staff size varies considerably. Few differences were seen in this study between papers that added staff vs. those that didn't. This analysis, however, did not address the increase or decrease in positions relative to existing staff size. It is possible that taking copyediting staff size into account would change this result, but data were not collected to address the issue. Another limitation is that a number of the key variables in this study are based on editors' perceptions and/or opinions, not on actual measurements of, say, workload, the number of mistakes and time constraints. It is possible that actual measurements might differ with perceptions, though the results in this study are consistent with one study that measured the time burdens that accompanied pagination.[34] Moreover, perceptions, though perhaps not as definitive as actual measurements, are important. Burnout, stress and satisfaction may be based as much on perception of conditions of work and workload as on the actual conditions. Based on this survey, it appears that copyeditors have come to an accommodation with pagination, some perhaps more than others. Editors feel in general that pagination does increase workload and the production burden, in effect, turning them into back shop workers as well as journalists. Some feel that these constraints degrade the job and result in lower quality work, while others seem to notice little negative effect and greatly appreciate the positive impacts in flexibility and control of the work. Possibly the most important overall finding is that things have changed little over time. Copyeditors today feel much the same about pagination's and benefits drawbacks as their colleagues (in some cases, perhaps, they themselves) felt more than 10 years ago. Pagination is still good, bad and occasionally ugly. This finding offers a cautionary note about technological change - what journalists have seen in a number of instances - that introduction of a technology can have unintended consequences, consequences that may not necessarily disappear once "we get past the learning curve." It pays to remember that in an age of ever-increasing computerization and media convergence, technological changes can have impacts beyond efficiency. They can also affect the nature of the work done and the ability of journalists to do their jobs as well as they might like. Figure 1: Perceived increase or decrease in workload as a result of pagination 1=1 yr. or less 2=2-3 yrs. 3=4-5 yrs. 4=6-10 yrs. 5=more than 10 yrs. Table 1: Perception of Effect on Workload Category Mean n All 5.14 134 Paginators 5.14 103 Non-paginators 5.13 31 Supervisors 5.32 61 Non-supervisors 4.97 75 At papers that added staff 5.28 49 At papers that did not add 5.03 79 or that cut staff Table 2: Pagination impacts and factor loadings Impact F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 Editors have to work harder .809 -.054 .077 .128 -.078 Less time for copyediting and headlines .705 .071 .176 .361 -.169 Less flexibility in deciding how to spend time .700 -.133 .162 .361 -.023 More time spent on computer glitches .526 -.001 .270 -.132 -.305 Editors perform a wider variety of tasks .584 .322 -.037 .047 .004 Editors have more flexibility in design -.002 .861 .008 -.131 -.030 Editors can be more creative -.097 .838 -.039 .037 .121 Editors have more control of pages .221 .716 .031 -.134 .130 Form and looks emphasized over content -.000 .138 .835 .038 -.153 Work is more routine .171 -.415 .687 -.057 .037 Computer skills more valued than editing skills .243 .042 .657 .383 -.032 Production is a greater priority .393 .016 .449 .186 -.347 Headline-writing has declined .282 .013 .056 .753 -.139 The paper looks less attractive .001 -.326 .013 .654 -.088 More mistakes get into the paper .264 .020 .235 .653 -.328 Deadlines have improved -.121 -.082 -.022 -.144 .830 Editors have more autonomy .042 .364 -.133 -.143 .723 Copyediting has improved -.359 .139 -.091 -.198 .525 Percent variance explained 27.7 14.8 7.8 7.1 5.8 Table 3: Perception of Mistakes After Pagination Category Mean n All 4.03 154 Paginators 3.92 108 Non-paginators 4.48 43 Supervisors 4.01 68 Non-supervisors 4.09 85 At papers that added staff 3.88 51 At papers that did not add 4.17 80 or that cut staff FIGURE 2: Comparison of 1999 results for Job Problems with 1989 report 1) Lack of time and deadline pressure 2) Computer problems 3) Stress 4) Eyestrain 5) Inadequate work area 6) Complexity of computer coding and commands 7) Incomplete or poorly edited copy 8) Insufficient staffing 9) Missed deadlines by others [1] At the 1999 American Copy Editors Society convention, held in Dallas, representatives of several dozen newspapers discussed problems with newer pagination systems, such as those manufactured by Digital Technologies Inc., and others, such as the Los Angeles Times, discussed planning for a first newsroom-wide system. The Baltimore Sun is one metro that recently became paginated. [2] Russial, "Pagination and Digital Imaging: A Contrarian Approach," Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 1995, 42-56. [3] In 1999, for example, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Society of News Design published a handbook, Technology and Pagination: Integrating the New into Your Newsroom, aimed at newspapers looking to upgrade or to purchase a first system. Trade publications such as The Seybold Report have tracked pagination innovations since the early '80s. For academic work, see, John Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Question of Time," Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 1994, 91-101; Doug Underwood, C. Anthony Giffard and Keith Stamm, "Computers and Editing: The Displacement Effect of Pagination Systems in the Newsroom," Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 1994, 116-127; Keith Stamm, Doug Underwood and Anthony Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction of Editors," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly , Winter 1995, 851-862. Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations," doctoral dissertation, Temple University, 1989; Ann Brill, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Study of Implementation of New Technology," doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1994. See also Carl Sessions Stepp, "Editor Meltdown," American Journalism Review, December 1993, 27-30; and M.L. Stein, "Joys and Sorrows of Pagination," Editor & Publisher, Dec. 24, 1994, 24-25. David Cole, "Pagination Page by Page," presstime, February 1995, p. 29. Leland Ryan, "Goodbye Copy Desk, Hello Display Desk," ASNE Bulletin, April, 1991, 7-12. "Pagination, Anyone," APME Journalism Studies Report, Photo, Graphics and Design Committee, 1994. [4] In a discussion recalling a recent Society of News Design seminar in which designers were disagreeing about how to define pagination, Tom Coleman of the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group pointed out that a publisher spoke up: "Pagination is a newspaper process that is supposed to save you money." Tom Coleman, "Defining Pagination: Not Reinventing the Wheel," in Technology and Pagination, The Society for News Design and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1999, 19-26. [5] Russial, "Computers, Ambivalence and the Transformation of Journalistic Work," paper presented to the Communications Technology and Policy Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, August 1995, Washington, D.C. See also, Russial, "Digital Imaging and the Photojournalist: Work and Workload Issues," Newspaper Research Journal, forthcoming, Winter 2000. [6] See The American Society of Newspaper Editors, "Examining Our Credibility," http://www.asne.org/works/jcp/credibility.htm. [7] Janet S. Weaver, "Wichita Is Doing Fine Without a Copydesk," The American Editor, January-February-March 1996, 14-16. [8] Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations"; Russial, "Digital Imagining and the Photojournalist: Work and Workload Issues." [9] Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Question of Time"; Underwood, Giffard and Stamm, "Computers and Editing: The Displacement Effect of Pagination Systems in the Newsroom"; Stamm, Underwood and Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction of Editors"; Brill, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Study of Implementation of New Technology." [10] Stamm, Underwood and Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction of Editors." [11] Russial, "Computers, Ambivalence and the Transformation of Journalistic Work." [12] Underwood, Giffard and Stamm, "Computers and Editing: The Displacement Effect of Pagination Systems in the Newsroom." [13] Stamm, Underwood and Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction of Editors." [14] Brill, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Study of Implementation of New Technology." [15] Charles Derber, ed., Professionals as Workers, 1982, (Boston: G.K. Hall); See also, Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1994; Robert A. Rothman, "Deprofessionalism," Work and Occupations, 1984, Vol. 11, 183-206. [16] Sociologist Daniel Bell, computer scientist Herbert Simon and other information society theorists argue that advanced technology benefits workers by eliminating unskilled, tedious jobs and providing in their place jobs that offer greater variation and greater opportunity for meaningful work. See Daniel Bell, 1973, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, (New York: Basic); Herbert A. Simon, 1979, "What Computers Mean for Man and Society" in John Burke and Marshall Eakin, Technology and Change, (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser), 68-76. Flexible specialization theorists adopt a similar view of technology enhancing skills. See Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide, (New York: Basic) 1984. [17] Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Monthly Review Press) 1974; Harley Shaiken, Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer Age, (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston), 1984. [18] Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, (New York: Basic) 1988. [19] Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, p. 393. [20] Russial, Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations. [21] As of 1999, ACES numbered about 1,000 members representing several hundred papers. [22] Stepp, "Editor Meltdown"; Stein, "Joys and Sorrows of Pagination," Ryan, "Goodbye Copy Desk, Hello Display Desk," [23] Stamm, Underwood and Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction of Editors." [24] Russial, "Digital Imaging and the Photojournalist: Work and Workload Issues." [25] Brill, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Study of Implementation of New Technology"; Underwood, Giffard and Stamm, "Computers and Editing: The Displacement Effect of Pagination Systems in the Newsroom"; Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: A Question of Time." [26] See, for example, Anthony Smith, Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper revolution of the 1980s. Oxford University Press, 1980. [27] See, for example, "Total Pagination Not Yet Here, But It's on the Horizon," presstime, July 1986, p. 68. Russial, Pagination and The Newsroom: Great Expectations. [28] Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations," p. 241. [29] Russial, "Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations," p. 227, 239. [30] Stamm, Underwood and Giffard, "How Pagination Affects Job Satisfaction," p. 859. [31] Underwood, Giffard and Stamm, "Computers and Editing," p. 120. [32] Russial, Digital Imaging and the Photojournalist: Work and Workload Issues. [33] Russial, Pagination and the Newsroom: Great Expectations. [34] Russial, Pagination and the Newsroom: A Question of Time."