A Day in the Life of a Journal Editor

Since this blog is linked to GW's policy journal Policy Perspectives, I thought it might be useful for people interested in working for the journal to know just what it is we do. So here's a day of my work as this year's Managing Editor.

11:15
Meet with Micah at the office for our weekly catch-up. We discuss where we're at--three of our four articles are in layout and all five book reviews have been laid out--and figure out what we need to do to keep the team on-track. He e-mails the three article teams a reminder to have their layout edits done by tomorrow so I can incorporate them. I tell him I still need to point the hideous old website to the glorious new address. We also talk about the submissions we got for next year's EIC and Managing Editor and how/when we'll do the hand-off.

12:00
Micah and I meet with librarian/associate editor Caroline in the library. We go over the work we still need to do to get the journal's archives online by mid-May: finish tagging metadata (article subjects and keywords for online searches), use her XML procedure to upload all the PDFs, check the site to make sure the links work and everything's how we want, e-mail past authors to inform them what we're doing, write a press release announcing the new site and the digital archives.

1:30
Lunch

1:45
Call the ISS Help Desk to get password for old GW website access. Talk with Glenn, who is amazingly helpful, and resets the password in ten minutes.

2:00
Respond to e-mails from book reviewers and editors about metadata assignment, the layout QC, and due dates. Route old website to new one. Discuss web access citation standards with Micah: we agree to set the style at full access date (i.e., month day, year). I update the style guide.

2:15
Start blog post.

2:30
E-mail Caroline master metadata spreadsheet. Sift through inbox, answering additional assorted questions.

3:15
Lay out editor biographies; incorporate final book review edits into journal layout.

4:00
Download and start reading applications for Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor.

4:30
Run into Lauren, one of our authors. We talk about proper citation, the timeline to publication, and her final edits.

4:45
E-mail Teresa, another of our authors, about data for some of the figures in her piece. Format one of her graphs in Illustrator and lay it out in the journal.

5:15
Receive Linnea's final edits to the layout of Amanda's article (i.e., the QC). Put them in backpack to incorporate later.

5:30
Finish up blog post and start packing up for class.

6:10
Class!

Guerrilla Government at the Environmental Film Festival

For Capstone, I recently finished reading Rosemary O'Leary's fascinating The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government (also reviewed by Eric Boyer in the journal last year). Imagine my surprise when I saw similar stories of bureaucrats fighting the bureaucracy from the inside during this week's showing of The National Parks: America's Best Idea and The World According to Monsanto as part of the Environmental Film Festival. The former told how George Melendez Wright and Adolph Murie, two Park scientists, fought against Park policies regarding wildlife management by writing copiously researched scientific reports (yes, thousands of sample of wolf poop were dissected for science), limply implemented hated policies, and using personal contacts to spark dissent from outside the system. The latter interviewed both political appointees on Monsanto's payroll and rank-and-file employees who both went along with and stood up to the FDA's GMO food policy.

These stories make me proud to call myself a bureaucrat. Although O'Leary rightly points out that guerrilla activism in government agencies isn't always for the greater good, it is important to keep in mind that government policy is not created in a vacuum by political appointees, but is often crucially shaped by career experts who are passionate about what they do. (Monsanto shows how shamefully civil servants can give in to private interests.) This is important to remember, because even perfectly intelligent people like George Packer tend to paint government as "sluggish and indifferent" with only rare examples of employees worthy of being singled out for even two (rather than three) cheers.

I won't hold back. I say, three cheers for the bureaucrats!

MPA's Wall of Shame

I don't like hearing Hannity & Colmes or Chris Matthews on my way to class. I don't like being bombarded with car and oil company commercials while waiting for the elevator. I especially take offense to the notion that cable news networks could possibly fall under the aegis of "journalism."

We MPAs at the Trachtenberg School tend to think that the MPA building, which houses TSPPPA faculty and staff offices (as well as Policy Perspectives), was named for our degree. It's easy to forget that between class on the 3rd floor and offices on the 6th and there are two floors dedicated to the Media and Public Affairs program that really gave the building its name, as well as the wall of shame in the lobby.

American media have a long and proud tradition, assorted gems of which are encased in glass outside the Jack Morton auditorium. These artifacts are important for future journalists to remember what they're aspiring to accomplish; less useful is the wall of televisions constantly blaring the completely useless 24-hour news networks: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. True, GW's television station and C-SPAN are also broadcast, but without sound, forcing everyone who has to wait for the elevator to listen to the offensive, partisan, but worse--uninformed--opinions and commentary that form the core programming at the big three. Are the TVs there to show our journalism students what news is supposed to be? Does the school really think anything of value comes out of cable news programming, and not realize how it's contributing to the nation's
intransigently partisan news-junkiness?

For an MPA like me, the wall of shame is a constant reminder of how difficult it is to implement good public policies when the level of discourse is so pathetic. Why not save some energy by unplugging the TVs and replacing them with newspaper front pages? Or broadcast classic news segments alongside the current drivel? Anything would beat having to see Wolf Blitzer ever again.