I used to write for The Arizona Republic. The Republic was my longest-term employer. I worked there from February 1981 through the middle of January 1997, so pretty much 16 years.
Being there so long I held a number of positions, most of them behind the scenes. I was a copy editor in the news department, which was responsible for our daily production of international, national, state and local news, for about seven years. I moved to the features copy desk, which was responsible for the daily production of our entertainment and lifestyle coverage. I used to describe copy-editing as "fixing mistakes and writing headlines." Really, it wasn't just fixing mistakes - such as grammar missteps and typographical errors - but also preventing them by asking the right questions to be sure that what the writer meant to say was conveyed accurately to our readers.
It's not a glamor job.
