Q: One question on clippings.

I am a staff writer for a campus newspaper. I've written about ten stories for the paper this year. The problem: virtually every one has been butchered in some way by a copy editor. I don't mean "butchered" in the way ever-complaining reporters usually use the word - I don't mean that the editors have "cramped my style" or "killed my flow" or any such thing. I mean that the editors have made much of the copy in my articles objectively incorrect. For example, they'll insert apostrophes where I correctly put none ("The Wildcats dominated the first half" became "The Wildcat's dominated..."), alternate the present and past tense in the same paragraph, and cut passable sentences down the middle to create two obvious sentence fragments.

Many of these mistakes are elementary and embarrassing. They'd be immediately obvious to a trained eye. If I were the person in charge of screening applications, I'd instantly remove from consideration any application in which they occurred. The problem is that I do not have enough error-free clippings to completely avoid using the ones that contain errors.

The question: is there any way whatsoever I could make clear in my application that I was not responsible for the stupid errors without coming off as a liar/a troublemaker/a whiner? I've thought long and hard about it, and I don't think it's possible.

Is there a way out? I'd hate for incompetent superiors to ruin my chances.

Daniel

A: I agree. Those clips will reflect poorly on you or on the publication you write for -- still not a good thing.

And an interview based on the mistakes in those clips is not headed anyplace good. We rarely want to talk to editors about how incompetent our superiors are.

Some strategies:

• Write for another publication.
• Baby-sit your stories as they go through the desk.
• Work with the editors at the paper to improve the hiring or training of the people doing the copy editing. Sometimes, I find that college papers place so little importance on copy editing it is done by people who have no interest or time for it. It sounds as though your paper actually doesn't have any real copy editors.

I can't resist a final word: I started my career as a copy editor -- and then I started at the Detroit Free Press as one. (And I wish I had one on this blog!) So, I know good editing and good editors. Don't let the bad editing that you get now sour you on some of the biggest allies you'll ever have if you're every really going to make it big.

Others? (Ne nice.)