During my two-decade long writing career, I have worked under dozens of editors (1). Sometimes our working relationship lasts a couple of weeks, other times it lasts for years. There are a few I have been working with in one capacity or another since the very beginning. After a while, for better or for worse, you begin to identify certain character traits that distinguish them from each other (and normal people). If you’ve ever worked for a magazine or newspaper, no doubt you’ll be able to put almost every boss man (or woman) you’ve ever had into one of these convenient boxes.
The steady hand
In my opinion, the best kind of editor. Unfortunately this is also the rarest, and a dying breed. Usually older and more experienced, they are calm under pressure and nothing seems to phase them because they’ve seen it all before. They are always available but never interfere, preferring to let the various departments do their jobs. They see their role as more of an organiser and overseer, and they step in only to prevent things going into meltdown. After that, they calmly retreat again. Until the next crisis.
The up n’ comer
These guys are rarely equipped for the job and are very often thrown in the deep end, usually as a cheap option by a company that don’t want to pay a real editor (like the aforementioned Steady Hand) to do the job. Consumed by arrogance and an overbearing sense of self-importance, the first thing they do is try to impose their authority by handing out jobs to their incompetent mates and making radical changes, forgetting the fact that readers hate it when you make radical changes. Destined to fail, they invariably do so and end up with PTSD driving an Uber or something.
The Trail Blazer
This kind of editor once experienced huge success somewhere else, probably more through luck than judgement, and has been living off the proceeds ever since. ‘Has been’ being the critical phrase here. They are often brought in to spearhead a new launch or in a last-ditch attempt to boost circulation at an ailing publication. It rarely works, and the job is usually reduced to putting out a sequence of ever-escalating fires. He or she will be down the road in six months, but don’t worry, because they did that thing at that magazine that one time, they won’t have any trouble finding alternative employment.
The Dictator
Usually suffering from some kind of delusional mental disorder, these people want, no, NEED, to control every aspect of the operation, striving to micromanage every little detail and extending their influence into areas that have literally nothing to do with them. They think they know everything, even when they clearly don’t, and want to be CC’d on every internal email so they never miss a thing. Worst of all, they flatly refuse to even entertain anybody else’s opinion thinking it would somehow undermine their authority. They see the publication they work for as their baby, and want to dress it, bathe it, and feed it with no input from you, thank you very much. The problem is, the poor baby often ends up starving to death.
The Lazy Allocator
For some reason, these guys think being an editor simply means taking home the most money for doing the least amount of work. Experts at emotional manipulation and gaslighting, everything they do is geared towards making their jobs easier and they couldn’t give a toss if that attitude makes yours harder. They allocate all their duties to other people, and get the intern to fill in on the picture desk, sub the freelancer’s work, and write five features a week. To add insult to injury, in their final report they’ll give the poor overworked rookie a score of 2/10 and say they should have tried harder. To fill their time they arrange meetings with people who are far too busy to have any more meetings because of their increased workloads, and fixate on tiny details that make absolutely no difference to anyone.
The Lifer
Usually found in the B2B or on ‘niche’ speciality titles, these people have been quietly devoted to the job, and the industry their publication serves, for their entire working lives. By now, their knowledge pool is so deep and vast that recognised industry experts call them for advice. Seriously, what Justin doesn’t know about Korean-made kitchen worktop surfaces isn’t worth knowing. It’s that simple. The highlight of their year is the annual worktop surface conference in Milton Keynes. I often wonder whether they work for a particular title because of their natural affinity to the topic, or whether they have an interest in the topic because they work for this title. It’s the chicken or the egg paradox.
(1) For the purpose of this article, when I use the word ‘editor’ I am referring to traditional magazine and newspaper editors, of which there are still some left. Not the kind of ‘editor’ an indie fiction writer might send their stuff before they self-publish it on Amazon. That’s a different thing, and we should really have a different word for it but we don’t because I guess we haven’t progressed that far as humans yet.
cmsaunders 