A newspaperman's decalogue

Dave got the ball rolling on this one, all unintentionally, by posting his Business Process Manager's Prayer. Then Ken sidestepped the thing but exhorted the rest of us to take a stab at it.

Trouble is, my job at The Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™ is kind of hard to define. I used to be the cut-and-paste guy, back when we used hot wax and exactos, and then it kind of evolved into what they call "Special Sections Manager." It means I handle the advertising supplements and "custom publications" that would otherwise fall into the cracks between the news and advertising departments. (There are some examples here. On those I do the writing (some of it, anyway), editing and layout, but there are also a bunch of little things that have kind of been dropped on my desk for lack of anybody else to assign to them. (Not to mention maintaining the website, which I'm learning from scratch.) A few years ago, I was the Lord of the Exacto; today, I just call myself the Layout Guru.

So here's my Ten Commandments:

1. I, even I, am Joel thy layout guru, which will be creating the publication that payeth thy mortgage. Thou shalt not piss me off.

2. Thou shalt not make unto me any illegible graven image, so shall thine ads and thy stories be perfect in thy sight.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of Joel thy layout guru in vain; neither shalt thou go tattling to the publisher when thou gettest not thy way.

4. Remember the deadline, to keep it holy. Thou hast had three weeks in which to turn in thy copy; woe be unto thee if thou sit upon it until the day on which it is to print. Five days shall I labor to complete thy project, but for the sixth and seventh I get no overtime, and would rather be home with a cold beer.

5. Honor thy pressmen and thine ad setters, that they may not come back bellyaching to me about thy treatment of them.

6. Thou shalt not cancel projects on which I have just spent thirty sleepless, breakless hours.

7. Thou shalt not drag me into thy silly-ass disputes with other salespeople. Verily, I give not a rat's patoot who said what to whom.

8. Thou shalt keep thy grubby hands off my desk. Yea, though it looketh like a job for FEMA, yet do I know where all things are hid, and will be mightily wroth should they be moved.

9. Thou shalt not throw thy layout guru under the bus when a customer complaineth about thine abjectly stupid screw-up. Face up to thine own incompetence.

10. Thou shalt not covet my job, for lo, it could be done by a trained chimp, except that the chimp would require too many shekels.