Mary, Mary, Quite the B*tch

My organization publishes a quarterly newsletter for our members. My job description states that I am responsible for gathering, editing and laying out the newsletter with assistance from staff and others. Gathering consists of me reminding the board prez and the director that I need their articles, requesting the applicable content from M, the office/travel manager and others, and then filling the rest of the pages with news and content. I try not to edit the first two so that their messages have a distinct "voice". The content I provide is already edited as I write and insert it. Most of the content from M does not require editing because it just lists the information from a database.  The travel section however is a freaking nightmare every time.

First of all, she sends it to me already formatted. This is a pain because it is formatted for Word, but not for the program I use to publish. So I spend too much time changing the formatting to fit the publication template. Second of all, she does not like me to edit the trip descriptions at all, even though when I do it is to make the listings uniform (heading, date, description, price, etc.) or so that I can avoid a widow or cut a line for space. You know, for pics and content more interesting than heading, date, description, price. Third, she expects me to include an entire column of content describing the travel program itself.

This last is the most annoying. First, it takes up too much space that could be used to tell or show the actual trips. Second, she uses a narrative style instead of easy to read bullet points to give basic information. It is poorly written with incomplete sentences and info like the web address and phone number buried in the middle of a paragraph. Third, one whole poorly-written paragraph is a testimonial for our travel agency. This would be less annoying if she didn't have a regular hissy fit about people trying to use our publication to get to our members.

For this last issue, she sent it to me and pointed out that she had rewritten the descriptive column. It was worse than before. I entered all of the trip listings first so I would know how much space I had to work with, and then I tackled the column. I tried to compromise, leaving some of it like it was before and adding the new content she had provided. It read OK and fit the space, but she was not happy about me changing it and let me know it.

I explained everything I said above, but stopped short of telling her that her writing was terrible. So she "tweaked it" and sent it back with the comment that it should fit the space as written, as if that was the problem. This time she included a closing and her name.

With her rewrite, she included the original trip descriptions. This time, I cut and pasted everything exactly as she had written it. The only changes I made were to the formatting so that it at least looked like it should. I did not spell check it. I did not correct her punctuation. I did not inquire about missing info on one of the descriptions. I cut and pasted everything exactly as she had written it, including her signature.She glanced at it long enough to see that I had put her column as written and never looked at the rest of it because her material doesn't need edited.

Part of me is glad that we got the issue out in time, in spite of this and several other challenges. But another part of me is angry that I put out an issue that wasn't as good as it should have been. As the editor, that is my job too. Even the board prez and the director actually want me to double-check them and make them look and sound good. Part of me hopes no one reads it that closely or thinks poorly of my editorial and publishing skills when they do. The b*tch in me dares her to say anything about the "errors" so that I can point out that they were her errors, with her signature, and that I tried several times to fix them.

This is both true and not true. I did try to fix them in a way that was satisfactory to us both. Her refusal to compromise on even one word, in spite of the fact that I am the editor and it is my job, defies logic. I keep telling myself that it is her signature on it, not mine, but that is not entirely true either.