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Archive for the ‘Copy Editors’ Category
By Patrick ~ Aug 04, 2010
How to Battle Writers
Finally getting around to emptying out and cleaning my mailbox.
Had another insider send me this a while back.
It’s more CE guides.
Now, I know everyone is blowing off our “DS hates writers” conspiracy theory. And this little document seems to bear this out. It says to always address the writer as an esteemed collegue and always be very nice.
It still seems strange to me that writers don’t get to look at this. I mean, it’s got some pretty good tips in here that would help a lot of people avoid rewrites.
As far as people not grooving on the “DS [...]
By Patrick ~ Aug 03, 2010
How To Queue For Your Paypal Check
DSSer Ken had a really handy tip yesterday on avoiding rewrites…
If the CEs are dropping articles in “batches” of say 20 at a time, and you submit 10 articles in 15 minutes..chances are all 10 articles are queueing up to the same CE. Drop an article every 30 minutes and hundreds of other articles are between each one of yours, you will not run into that problem.
So simple that it’s genius!
That’s actually what triggered my first rant two years ago. I could tell – just by the [...]
By Patrick ~ Aug 02, 2010
How To Copy Edit for DS
I just bought a Blu Ray player with some DS scratch.
Pretty awesome.
We don’t even have a HD tv! But it hooks up to the Internets.
Me & Mrs. DSS have been rocking out to some 80s MTV videos and Beavis & Butthead.
So lately I’ve been hearing of friends who are getting attacked by the CE’s. In most of the cases, my friends have decided that the rewrites aren’t worth it so they just abandon them.
Now, here’s the question part – what happens to the articles? Do they get resampled back into [...]
By Patrick ~ Jul 31, 2010
How To Be A Newspaper (Or How To Eventually Get Tired of Trying to Come Up With Clever Captions)
Hey DSSers!
Hope your weekend is a great one.
A helpful reader dropped me this story from the Los Angeles Times about working for Demand Studios.
Here’s a little bit:
Welcome to the infuriating brilliance of the DS model, which succeeds precisely because it is a tangle of gray contradiction rather than the black-and-white operation its detractors claim to see. DS contributors and editors are at once faceless output devices and emotional human beings, evidence that the more we’re treated like [...]
By Patrick ~ Jul 10, 2010
How To Be Steam Punk
Again, my sources will remain nameless on this.
Actually got this from a couple of different people.
My only point is why don’t the writers get to see this too? Wouldn’t it be just as beneficial?
Demand Studios, like any business (count us in on that), is about making money. The more articles that Demand produces with the least amount of friction will make them the most money. If you tell CEs one thing, and not the writers, then you’re just adding an extra step in there.
I dunno. Like I said, it ain’t the Pentagon Papers.
Real life still continues to [...]
By Patrick ~ Jul 05, 2010
How To Fix Demand Studios
I’ve been getting reports of lots of stupid rewrites lately. Anybody else having this problem?
This is always been my biggest problem with the Demand way of doing things. And I think even the DS Zombies have to agree with me on this one.
To DS, a copy editor that has 3 or 4 articles under his belt has as much power as a writer with 1,000 articles. Even more power, because this CE can simply say, “No, that’s wrong” and trap the writer in the endless rewrite appeal saga, thus denying him/her that $15 that can be used for [...]
By Patrick ~ Jul 02, 2010
How to Celebrate the 4th
Hey there, DSSers!
Happy 4th of July weekend! Hope all of you are going to stuff your face with hot dogs, apple pie, and celebrate kicking the Brits asses!!!
And what better way to celebrate freedom than to read something you’re not supposed to see?
That’s why our July 4th present to all you loyal DSSers out there is a COMPLETE VERSION OF THE DEMAND STUDIOS GUIDE FOR COPY EDITORS!!
See, I told you not all Copy Editors were bad. These were uploaded to a file sharing service by one of the DS CEs who pointed out their location for [...]
By Patrick ~ Jun 28, 2010
How To Be a Demand Studios Forum Reader
We were left this comment by DSSer Robin.
In the interests of fairness, I wanted to put it up here on the front page for discussion.
I agree there are issues with DS, but I also know no one forces me to write for the company. The one thing I don’t understand is the crack about Mr. Lally. I’ve dealt with him about a dozen times over the past two months. He took his time to deconstruct my work, so he not only showed me how to earn approval for those articles, but how to avoid queries [...]
By Patrick ~ Jun 27, 2010 Oh man…
After I was turned onto that Demand Studios music video by a loyal DSSer yesterday, I had a bunch of fun combing through YouTube for some other Demand Studios videos.
None of them will truly live up to the horror that was the music video, but these ones I found all have their own special charm.
In our first installment, a Copy Editor turns some of her harder articles over to her dog.
Enjoy.
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