This particular editor used a surly persona to discourage my involvement during editorial review. I saw the word “busted” on screen, but the surly persona discouraged me from challenging what I presumed was the editors first revision and would never appear in print.

Not only did the editor’s slang appear in print under my byline, the paper then printed a letter to the editor that named me and ridiculed my use of such slang in a lede. This was just one of many infractions against my intellectual integrity I suffered while working for “the oldest newspaper in the West.”

I offered a business editor 10 years of compiled real estate data that demonstrated the dramatic downturn at the start of the crash in comparison to the one-year trends based on Realtor’s press releases, which the life-long editor preferred to report. The editor asked, on behalf of the newsroom and in reference to my more careful research “do you know how that makes us feel?”

I left that newspaper, after their staff inexplicably refused to restore my access to databases where I was compiling in-depth research on a variety of topics related to ongoing assignments. Behavior toward me by an obviously offended editorial staff was seldom overtly demeaning — it was more often a posture that indicated my legitimate professional interests were bothersome and irrelevant — even when my interest was focused on widely accepted usage guidelines related to a slang term in a front-page lede.

In 2008, I was a freelance copy editor for a music magazine. The magazine had three regional editors and a publisher, who acted more as a senior editor and, actually, the publisher is who I have the issue with. While I was copy editing, the regional editors often submitted articles to me right before deadline — or after deadline, in some cases — and I was expected to have all articles proofed and edited by deadline regardless of how soon the editors submitted the articles to me or how well they were edited prior to my receiving and, often, they weren’t edited at all.

At the end of 2008, the magazine realized they had no more money to pay three full-time editors and a freelance copyeditor, so they were all laid off and I, after being told “maybe we’ll use you, and maybe we won’t,” was also “laid off,” in a sense. However, I was not paid for the last two issues I copy edited, which were for January and February 2009 but were completed in December 2008. It’s the middle of June and I still haven’t been paid for two months. Whenever I contact the editor/publisher, I’m told they still have no money to pay me yet, but they’ll send me a partial check in the mail. I’ve been hearing that since April, which, prior to March, all of my requests about my pay to the editor/publisher were ignored. At this point, what should a freelancer do to get paid? I want to stay in good terms with the magazine to receive work in the future, if they get their finances straightened out.

“Dumb down” articles and make them wrong. This was during S&L crisis. I wrote an article explaining the purchase of one small bank by another with a brief explaination of goodwill — I was taking accounting courses at the time (had my other degree for 10 years already). She felt explanation was too complex and made it wrong: upsetting some local bankers, who had every right to be upset.

Would leave early with work undone. There were only two of us on the desk, so I’d finish the work — working unpaid overtime — then she’d rake me over the coals for some small item that wasn’t in there.

Would stomp around the office when upset, prompting me to bring up “If xxxx stomps in the forest and no one is there, does she make a sound?”

One of her superiors was a managing editor who (after her departure) had me write a story on a utility budget plan. He had gotten socked at the end of the year with a huge bill. But anyone with a brain cell can follow where they are on a budget plan and know they’re ahead or behind and by how much. He changed the article, basically blasting the utility. Utility came to paper looking to have me (because my name was on it) fired due to blatant inaccuracies/falsehoods. Luckily, I had gone to college with the utility’s PR person. He told management he knew I didn’t write the story that day.

Two days later, editor was gone. I was still there.

Editors I deal with now are wonderful compared to that.