FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 6, 2006
Contact: Amy Klein
E-mail: akklein@iastate.edu
Phone: (515) 450-9640
Register's Helland speaks to SPJ
AMES—Kurt Helland, the assistant news editor at the Des Moines Register, addressed the Iowa State Student Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and other ISU students October 6.
Helland talked about his duties as a news editor. A copy editor, Helland takes stories submitted by writers during the day and edits, writes headlines and helps lay out pages.
"We make a newspaper out of it," he said.
An ISU alumnus and native of Story County, Helland described the many problems that come with his job, and the assembly-line approach the daily newspaper is set up with. If a reporter is a little late with a story, it makes the first-edition editor late. A piece of copy goes through more and more editors before it goes through a set of people who run it through the press. A few minutes late can mean editors have to rush through editing copy later.
"We are the ones who rush—rush too fast some of the time," he said.
Helland works to get three different editions to the press every night. The first edition, which goes to the far corners of the state, goes to the press at 8:30 p.m. The second, circulated to the areas surrounding Des Moines, goes to the press at 11:15. The last edition, for the Des Moines metropolitan area, hits the press at 12:30 a.m. The editor said the copy desk is really rushed because the Des Moines Register promises that all readers will have their papers on their front porches by 5 a.m.
Helland said sometimes editors will catch errors after the first edition has printed and will change the copy for the second edition, but that decision boils down to money. He said he has to decide how big of a mistake it is, because it costs money to make new plates for the press.
"Yet I love what I do," he said. "I know I’m doing what a lot of people in that newsroom can’t do."
Helland was a member of ISU SPJ in the 1980s, when it was the top student chapter in the country.
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