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Lessons from a First Editor
By Paula Tarnapol Whitacre
She was prickly and changeable, whether because of medications or moods. Some
days, she would sweep in around 11 a.m., dark glasses on, and immediately go
into her office. It was glass-enclosed, so she could never totally disappear,
but it was as if she had encased herself behind a concrete wall. We knew not to
intrude.
Other times, she would circulate around the common area where we staff sat with
our "VDTs" (visual display terminals, the PCs of the day), the center of
conversation and banter. I don't know what her two editors (calm, chain-smoking
word guy and highly excitable graphics guy) thought of her, but they deferred to
her decisions and dropped everything to chat with her when she chose to do so.
Today, I read her obituary in the same paper where she worked for 20 years. Dead
at 73 of "complications from colon cancer."
Now I realize that when she was my editor in the late 1970s, when I was a
20-something in my first full-time job as an editorial aide, she was in her
early 40s. I perceived her as old. She was probably shuffled aside in her
position. She was editor of the supplements, rather than an editor on the more
prestigious news desk where she had worked before I joined the staff. I don't
know whether it was because of her gender (30 years ago, women were still a
rarity in hard news) or because of her ups and downs.
She had favorites, people she liked and people she didn't. One of her favorites
was an outdoors reporter named Hank, who would hunt, fish, and otherwise spend
the workweek having fun in the woods and then deliver a beautifully crafted
article at the last possible minute before deadline. Another was Annie, a
freelancer who wrote about the activities she did with her children, lots of
creative crafts and puppet shows and such. Annie would come into the office to
drop off stories in a long skirt and hiking boots, papers falling out of her
muslin tote bag, the two little girls in tow. She could reduce the women she
hired as secretaries (all would-be journalists) to tears, yet gave plum
assignments to two reporters who had crossed the divide from clerical work.
She liked me, maybe not as much as Hank or Annie, but enough. She gave me good
assignments and encouraged me to take on work in other sections of the paper to
advance. Yet, I always felt on edge when I talked to her. We never had one of
those mentor-mentee relationships that I yearned for but did not know how to
find-- or, perhaps more accurately, did not know how to seize when it was within
my reach.
But I did learn from her. Even though I did not want to "grow up" to become like
her, I saw a woman who had independent means and was comfortable with power. I
saw the devastating effect that her moods could have on others. Yet I also saw
her appreciation for good prose from wherever it came, on whatever the subject,
as long as it rang authentic.
We recognized each other immediately when I ran into her in the late 1990s at a
coffee shop. She invited me up to her office nearby, then at a small monthly
magazine. Even though we had both many other jobs in the interim, that nervous
feeling I had with her two decades earlier returned. She introduced me to her
new coterie of young assistants as a friend and former colleague. Was that how
she saw me? Was there more to the relationship that I should have gained?
Since working as an editorial aide at The Washington Post from 1977to 1979,
Paula Tarnapol Whitacre has worked as a staff writer and now freelance writer
and editor. She is principal of Full Circle Communications (www.fullcircle.org)
in Alexandria, VA.
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