The 'boring part'

Dr. Byers said he gets the fun part of teaching JOUR100.

Byers teasingly mentioned this to Dick Feyrer, his scholarly counterpart who teaches the editing portion of the class.

“And you get stuck with the boring part,” a smiling Byers said. 

Byers taught the editing component last year. He has apparently paid his dues.

But I wouldn’t call editing “boring.” Sure, it’s not exactly as interactive as a flashy Web site and it certainly doesn’t involve audio/video storytelling, but it’s still valuable. I’d call editing wearisome before I’d call it boring. It’s investigating a story so thoroughly that the editor becomes mentally (and sometimes physically) tiring.

And that’s quite a feat.

Of course an editor must eliminate redundancy. They must rework sentences to avoid the passive voice. An editor must also catch those pesky "affect" and "effect" errors. But as Feyrer said, you can’t correct or improve upon what you don’t understand.

Editing is getting to the heart of the story. It’s posing big picture questions and retrieving meaningful answers. It’s asking, “Why should I care?” And then it’s actually caring.

That’s not boring.