CityView Media
Magazine Editor & Lead Copy Editor
My main responsibility is to lead the production of the media company’s legacy product: its lifestyle magazine. CityView Magazine is published monthly, online and in print, and has around five annual special publications, some of which are published in partnership with advertising clients.
I research and assign stories and photography, as well as graphic design elements. Then I first and second edit, fact check, copy edit, and collaborate with our graphic designer to lay out the magazine.
Here’s my favorite magazine I’ve put together so far as the magazine editor:
Editorial Assistant & Lead Copy Editor
In my role as editorial assistant and lead copy editor, I continued my previous copy editing roles, adding on a more substantial magazine editing responsibility. I became the lead editor for the monthly and annual magazines, leading the production process in assigning stories, photography assignments, art direction and more.
Here’s my favorite magazine I put together as editorial assistant:
Freelance Copy Editing
I have experience in freelance copy editing across CityView Today (daily news publication) and CityView Magazine, in my post-graduation career.
Through CityView Today I’ve refined editing local government stories, spanning from city and county commissioner meeting pieces to City Council candidate forum articles, event coverage stories, and features on the military community, arts and culture.
Using the editing process I learned thanks to Andy Bechtel’s News Editing course (scroll down to bottom of this page), I give CityView Today’s stories an initial read, fixing grammar and AP Stylebook mistakes, but also focusing on organization and sentence structure. As always, I do a final pass to fact-check, making sure all proper nouns, names, places, numbers, addresses and dates are correct using search engines.
I’ve also proofed for CityView Magazine‘s Guide to Giving 2023/2024 edition and its Faces of Fayetteville 2023/2024 edition. My process was to read through the whole Guide to Giving, checking for grammatical mistakes, and AP Stylebook errors, and to make sure that the table of contents aligned with the correct content on each page. Though the current edition is not published on the website yet, here is the 2022/2023 e-edition.
Chatham News + Record
At this weekly publication, I expanded my copy editing skills by being in charge of copy editing press releases received through the company email — such as the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department’s Arrest Blotter released every week — sports, opinions, recipes, obituaries, legals, photo captions and the community calendar.
I used search engines to verify names, addresses and dates, and the AP Stylebook and the newsroom’s stylebook I created using Google Docs to maintain correct style.
I would also proof the weekly print newspaper in a collaborative environment for last-minute errors with the rest of the newsroom on production day.
Triangle Media Partners
One of my responsibilities as editorial intern was to do “wall readings” where I was assigned to copy edit any and every feature, table of contents, engagement and wedding notices, relocation guides, short event recaps or notices, and vendor-funded pieces.
I learned to proofread and edit for a positive, whimsical and descriptive voice through Chapel Hill, Durham and Chatham Magazines, as well as Heart of NC Weddings.
UNC Media Hub
As the main copy editor for John Robinson’s UNC Media Hub, I was the second reader after he edited for content and clarity.
I would fact-check every story and check for AP Style and return it within a few hours of receiving copy. Some of the stories I copy edited were published in NC Health News, Triad City Beat, The Charlotte Post, Chapelboro, NC Newsline and many others.
News Editing with Andy Bechtel at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Through this course, I would edit the articles of John Robinson’s Feature Writing course every four weeks.
I would give the article an initial read, highlighting glaring AP Style, punctuation, grammar, clarity and confusing sentences with a partner. The second readthrough my colleague and I would walk each other through the errors and fix them accordingly.
Some pieces required more reworking of sentences and text reorganization, and leaving questions for the writer when we needed their help to understand the copy. These stories would be given to us and returned fully edited in an hour and a half.
Each story would be posted on the UNC Omnibus website, and would potentially be pitched and published on news sites.