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"Zigzagging thoughts about life and living in Brookings" is not bad at all

2 comments | Monday, September 17, 2007

I believe the revised article, "Zigzagging thoughts about life and living in Brookings", that I submitted for publication this week won't get published still. GC, the Collegian editor who rejected the original article because she insisted it was too critical for the newspaper and requested a revision to make it a little lighter-sounding, again thought that the revised one isn't any better than the first. She said and here printed verbatim:

Hi Eric,

I am still willing to run your last article if you do the appropriate revisions.

I want to be clear that I did not pull your article because we have different writing styles. All I ask was that you tone down the anger in your article, suggest ways to make situation in Brookings better, and if your going to site statistics of your own observation, you need to let reader know that this is your own observation and not an institutional survey done on the city of Brookings to determine the extent of racial descrimination.

I like your writing and that is why I choose you to be a columnist this semester.

Hope to hear from you.

I don't know what is wrong with the revision. Maybe there isn't really wrong with the article, rather the problem lies with the editor. Yes, I am referring to GC.

After my great disappointment caused by her rejection last week, I submitted the article to the leading newspaper in South Dakota, The Argus Leader. On the sideline, I emailed the editors and told them about the injurious fate experienced by the article in the hands of GC. Then I waited for two days. If the article gets rejected, GC was right; if it gets a light for publication - GC was wrong.

Lo and behold, the critical article that GC rejected was accepted and published online on The Argus Leader website. Everything was there, verbatim. Now, that's a slap on GC's face!

What I learned from this experience is that, never trust the editing capabilities of unexperienced editors. These editors would fail your dreams and their ideas won't do any good to you.

Go to the tried and tested editors - those who have braved all the criticisms possible and stood through time. If you get rejected by them, you'd never suffer hurt feelings because you believe in their journalistic skills and long experience. However, if your article gets accepted, it is a big confirmation that you may have a writing career ahead of you.

I know what type of articles GC wants [that probably explains why students I had chats with don't like the Collegian - telling me it's a crap]. To satisfy her premature skills, I plan to play around with her with my light articles, just for the fun of it. From now on, everyone's gonna be happy...I hope.

*****
Note: I will post the "controversial" article "Zigzagging thoughts about life and living in Brookings" tomorrow.

Labels: Blogging, USA Blogging