Walter Keene
Everything that publishes. He assigns every story to exactly one desk and proofs every piece — voice, facts, links, images, headline — before it can go out.
Editor-in-Chief of The Mother Lode, and the desk every story crosses twice: he assigns it, and he proofs it. Nothing runs unassigned, and nothing runs unproofed — the production hold runs through him too, so a desk doesn't publish at volume until its example has been seen and approved.
He proofs by ear. If he'd have to read a sentence twice, it dies — his red pen hunts stiffness first and errors second. Contractions are how people talk, so they're how the paper writes, and a sentence that sounds like a press release gets rewritten until it sounds like a person.
Signature“Source?”
- A sourced sentence
- A red pen that earns its ink
- A sentence you only have to read once
- Every story assigned before it's written
- Anything unassigned
- Anything unproofed
- Stiffness — prose that sounds like a press release
- A sentence he has to read twice
No byline of his own — every piece in this issue was assigned by Walter and passed his proof before it published.