Editors

The American Society of Newspaper Editors, assembling in )) Baltimore for its 70th national convention, will be inaugurating its first black president this week. He is William A. Hilliard, editor of the Portland Oregonian, and observers within the industry and without are probably thinking, it's about time.Big newspapers are published in big cities, where African-Americans cluster in huge and often majority numbers. Yet news and editorial operations, in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, do not often look like these cities.

A brief but fatuous article, "The Lonely Life of the Lowly Copy Editor"  by Yoni Goldstein in Canada's National Post  manages to retail every creaky cliche about the craft and its practitioners while displaying a startling ignorance of what is involved in editing.   The copy editor, we are to understand, is a socially awkward creature assigned to tend to minuscule errors after the reporters and assigning editors have vetted...

FREEING six editors from prison would be a positive result of the amnesty enacted by Turkey's parliament Thursday. They include a prominent Kurdish editor, Ocak Isik Yurtcu.This would reduce the journalists imprisoned for journalism in that NATO country to 72, as counted by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. It is a pay-off for a visit by leaders of the committee in July.Since Turkey is in many other respects a mature democracy, this continuing imprisonment of many more editors, writers and broadcasters than any other country holds is a continuing outrage.

The Baltimore Sun was judged to have one of the top 10 daily sports sections in the country at last week's Associated Press Sports Editors meeting in Tampa, Fla. The Sun's Sunday section was honored as one of the top 20 in the country, and The Sun's preview section on the 1993 Baseball All-Star Game at Camden Yards was voted one of the top 20 special sections of the year.In writing categories, Bill Glauber of The Sun was voted to be a finalist in feature stories for his piece on the fifth anniversary of the Orioles' 0-21 start.

Larry Bingham, a Sun staff writer, has won first place for general feature writing in the 14th annual Excellence-in-Writing Competition sponsored by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. Bingham won for "The Farmer's Wife," an Oct. 21 profile of Terri Wolf, an Eastern Shore woman widowed by a fire that destroyed her family home. It was the second consecutive year Bingham has won first place in the category for newspapers of more than 300,000 circulation. The award carries a $1,000 cash prize.

Two foolish, under-aged, teenage girls drinking and sitting on a freight train bridge, dangling their feet 20 feet above the street at midnight while Tweeting ("Derailed lives," Aug. 22), then buried in coal? The girls contributed significantly to their tragic demise. As in "self-inflicted. " The Sun's coverage included information about CSX accidents of the past ("CSX has history of Md. mishaps"). Why not a companion article about the jobs and economic benefit that CSX brings to Maryland and the danger of trespassing on railroad tracks and freight train bridges?

If your organization is holding a holiday craft show, the LIVE editors would like to know. We must receive all information (date, time, street address, admission cost, a phone number for the public to call) no later than Nov. 3. Material may be faxed to 410-783-2519 or sent to LIVE/Holiday Craft Shows, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21278.Pub Date: 10/30/97

It is difficult for me to decide what approach to Maryland's budget morass is worthy of more derision: the histrionics of the education establishment, Gov. Martin O'Malley and the legislature whose mantra of "moving forward" seems to be limited to their habit of kicking the can down the road, or The Sun editors for letting them off the hook ("Maryland budget: tough choices remain," March 23.) At the beginning of the piece the editors admit that there has been an "annual muddle of fund transfers and budget gimmicks.

For the next week and a little more the lights will be out at Wordville as the mayor takes a little time off, to sit on his ass and read books, mark the setting of the sun with the benison of bourbon, and maybe even try one more time to like Henry James. During this interval you are welcome to consult that lovely man Stan Carey at Sentence First for his always thoughtful explorations of language. Or Jonathon Owen's post at Arrant Pedantry about his master's thesis on the role of editors in standardizing English usage, which I have been either to rushed or too lazy to tell you about.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - What are the lessons for newsroom editors in the management meltdown at The New York Times that ended last week with the resignations of the two top editors? Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned, with the approval, if not at the request, of their publisher, following a month of tumult created by the forced resignation of a junior reporter who turned out to be a fraud artist. An investigation published by the Times revealed the reporter, Jayson Blair, faked stories, lied to his editors and was generally distrusted by line editors for more than two years.