we 5

Pavel Sterin

Writing Exercise #5

A newspaper's content is determined by its editors. The managing editor decides which stories are newsworthy and gives reporters their assignments. To an editor, there are two kinds of news: hard news, such as the election of a president or the signing of a peace treaty, and soft news. Soft news includes feature stories about a new dance craze, a beautiful historic building, or an interesting personality. The soft news fills whatever space is left after the hard news is assigned newspaper space. There is also public service news to fit in—announcements of meetings and lectures, free health programs, or changes in a local library's hours.

Tottels:

After spending over three hours sitting in classrooms listening to professors rambling on about how to write the perfect piece I ended the day with a trip to office which was responsible for the school newspaper. Unfortunately, the school I attended at the time was UC Berkeley. My days became busier and busier as I had my mind focused on writing my first very own book, meanwhile I still had to keep up in class and edit the school newspaper. Some of the articles written by my fellow peers were beyond ridiculous and required long hours of editing. Others not so tough, but overall I realized that newspaper editing was something I was good at, something that had to with writing, but not where I wanted my career to end. Newspaper editing as a trade requires much skill, and lots of patience.

 Being a proficient reader is definitely a plus, and being a writer also will not hurt. In the early 70’s working as a newspaper editor wouldn’t make one much money. The reason for doing a job like this would be to advance in a writing career and keep oneself busy in reading and writing. Nowadays, working as a editor will result in a much larger income than when I was writing my first book. I edited a newsletter called Tottels, which I worked at from 1970-1981. Through this newsletter I was first introduced to language poetry. As my reputation grew higher I was editing works that belonged to world pronounced writers. In 1975 I edited  “The Dwelling Place” a feature of nine poets, which ended up being my first attempt at writing language poetry.

While working as a newspaper editor, I was in the motion of writing my first book. I was also obsessing over a couple works by William Carlos Williams and the novel Spring and All , which Frontier Press brought out in 1970, after being out of print for over 45 years. My first book was a combination of a number of my poems which I called Crow. Ithaca House published crow in 1971. I see my poetry as being part of a single poem or lifework.

The managing editor decides how important a story is. If a story is very important, it is marked for a headline on the front page. Less important stories appear farther back in the paper. Many stories of national interest come directly to the newspaper office from a news service. In the past, news services relayed the news through teletypewriters—machines that sent messages over the telephone system and printed them out on a teletype machine. In modern papers, news services transmit news stories and photographs via satellite dishes that feed the information directly into computers and radioteleprinters, or through electronic mail (e-mail). The story editor takes a story "off the wires" and decides to "trim, boil, or slash it." If the editor decides to boil a story, it becomes front-page news. A story that is slashed or trimmed is reduced in size.

In an Interview with Ron Silliman, David F. Hoenigman asks,

DH: When did you first consider yourself a writer?

RS: When I was a teenager, about a couple of years before I seriously started to try to do the real stuff, as distinct from the kid writing projects I did in school.

DH: What inspired you to write your first book?

RS: Crow, which was published by Ithaca House in 1971, was written very much under the influence of William Carlos Williams & especially of Spring & All, which Frontier Press had brought out in 1970, after having been out of print for over 45 years.