Bill Walsh, national desk copy chief at the Washington Post, on copy chiefing:
Doing a copy-chief job is like having 1,000 baseballs simultaneously dropped on you — and then being asked why in the world you didn’t knock ball No. 778 (which, after all, was right in your strike zone) out of the park.
I figure Bill must have some dark terrible secret in his past — and there are photos. It’d be the only sane explanation for why somebody takes a job with that much pressure. I mean, when I screw something up a few exasperated Britney Spears fans sneer at the paper and call us morons on their blogs; when he screws up, people lose elections and stuff.
(OK, that’s an exaggeration, but a least I won’t get any e-mails saying “Cheney’s pissed about that headline on A27.”)